Christian Gottlieb Teichelmann

Christian Gottlieb Teichelmann (15 December 1807 – 31 May 1888) was a Lutheran missionary, who worked among the Australian aborigines, and was a pioneer in describing Australian languages.

Life

Teichelmann came from humble origins. He was born in the Saxon village of Dahme (part of Prussia from 1815), the son of a master clothmaker, and, after an early schooling, was apprenticed as a carpenter's assistant at the age of 14. After several years practicing his trade in Saxony and Prussia, he took private lesson to qualify for entry into the Royal Building Trades School in Berlin, where he studied from 1830 to 1831. During this period Teichelmann, after mixing with students who had missionary contacts, enrolled in Jaenicke's Mission school in 1831, where Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann was a fellow-student. There he received a thorough education in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and English, together with theological and historical studies. Techelmann and Schürmann then enrolled in the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Society's seminary at Dresden in 1836, obtaining their ordination as Lutheran pastors in early 1838. Later that year they travelled to Australia on the Pestonjee Bomanjee, arriving in Adelaide on 12 October.[1] Their fellow passenger happened to be George Gawler who was there to take up his appointment as the new Governor of South Australia.[1]

Missionary work

Notable problems arose when the evangelical Gawler, an evangelical enthusiast himself who had proven supportive of their work, was replaced by George Grey, who insisted rather that aboriginal people be instructed only in English, preferably in schools run by the state. The German missionaries at the time were the only ones thoroughly at home in native languages and gifted with a practical empathy for the customs and modes of Aboriginal life.[2]

Notes

    Citations

    Sources

    • Amery, Rob; Gale, Mary-Anne (2014). "They came, they heard, they documented: the Dresden missionaries as lexicographers" (PDF). AustraLex.
    • Hill, Barry (2002). Broken Song: T. G. H. Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession. Knopf-Random House. ISBN 1 74051 065 8.
    • Kneebone, Heide (2005). "Teichelmann, Christian Gottlieb (1807–1888)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Supplement. Melbourne University Press.
    • Kuchel, Rachel (2014). "Lutheranism in South Australia —its origins and contributions to South Australian life" (PDF). South Australian Geographical Journal. 113: 57–75.
    • Teichelmann, Christian Gottlieb; Schürmann, Clamor Wilhelm (1840). Outlines of a grammar, vocabulary, and phraseology of the Aboriginal language of South Australia spoken by the native in and for some distance around Adelaide (PDF). Adelaide.
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