Klemzig, South Australia

Klemzig is a suburb of Adelaide in South Australia. This place was founded in 1838, the first German settlement in Australia. The emigrants left the then Prussian Klemzig, which is now in Poland and Klepsk is, because of religious disputes with the authorities of Prussia. The Australian village of Klemzig was also the starting point for further German settlements such as Lobethal, Hahndorf and Bethany.

Reason for emigration

The Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm III. wanted the Lutheran and Reformed Church united to the Church of the Old Prussian Union, while people wanted to continue to remain in the Old Lutheran Church in the area of Klemzig. Therefore, there were confrontations with the powers that be are not relented and penalties threatened, whereupon some of the Old Lutherans decided to emigrate.

Emigration

Initiator and leader of the emigration from Prussia was Pastor August Ludwig Christian Kavel (1798-1860) and on the Australian side supported George Fife Angas, the project, which was instrumental in the founding of the British colony of South Australia.

Angas was in the years of the German state was founded one of the largest landowners in South Australia and Director of the British Colonial Bank, the Loan Company and a committee member of the South Australian Company. As Angus lived in the UK, he had had sent business relationships with the Lutheran Mission in Dresden, the pastors of proselytizing Aboriginal Australia.

On June 8, 1838 left more than 200 people on barges on Tschicherzig on the Oder their German home to Hamburg, which they reached on July 6, and sailed on the Bengalee and Prince George to Australia, where the Bengalee on 18 November with the first 21 Germans and the rest arrived in Port Adelaide on 20 November. A further 600 citizens of Brandenburg, including farmers, craftsmen, clerks, teachers and clergy from the eastern Brandenburg region of Züllichau Schwiebus, Möstchen, Skampe, Muschten, Friedrichsfelde, clip village, Kay, cracks, Jehser, Rentschen, Palzig and Nickern followed them and established Hahndorf and Glen Osmond.

In Australia, the first emigrants settled on 60 acres on the banks of the River Torrens, where they built houses, the church and the school of Klemzig and operated vegetable production, manufactured their own bread and worked in the nearby town.

The first settlers were given a loan of £ 1.200 to 15% interest and a lease for seven years from five shillings annually per acre. First they were in the English settlers not welcome, but they changed their minds and the Governor George Gawler wanted into the country even more hundreds of thousands of them.

Memory

In memory of their homeland they called the place Klemzig. Among the emigrants who left Klemzig, John Fiedler, who came in 1838 to South Australia in Bethany in 1847 for the first time operational Viticulture and Joseph Ernst Seppelt, who came to Australia in 1850 and one of the most famous early wine growers Australia has been and also tobacco and wheat grew.

During the First World War it came to anti-German sentiment in Australia and Klemzig was renamed as numerous other places founded by Germans. The place was named Gaza to commemorate the Battle of Megiddo (1918 ), which won the British under significant role of Australian troops.

In 1935, the location corresponding to the South Australia 's Nomenclature Act of 1935 rückbenannt to Klemzig and kept the name even during the Second World War. However, the local Football Club retained to this day the name of Gaza.

At the place where was the first German Lutheran church building of Australia, is now the " Klemzig Pioneer Cemetery ," a cemetery on the replicated reminds a bell tower on the early settlement.