Johann Flierl
Encyclopedia
Johann Flierl was a pioneer Lutheran missionary in New Guinea
. He established mission schools and organized the construction of roads and communication between otherwise remote interior locations. Under his leadership, Lutheran evangelicalism flourished in New Guinea. He founded the Evangelical Lutheran Mission in the Sattelberg, and a string of filial stations on the northeastern coast of New Guinea.
He was educated at the mission seminary in Neuendettelsau, in Kingdom of Bavaria
. Prior to finishing his education, the Neuendettelsau Missionary Society sent him to the Bethesda mission, near Hahndorf, in western Australia, where he joined an Old Lutheran community. While there, he felt called to serve in the newly established German protectorate, Kaiser-Wilhelmsland
. On the journey to New Guinea, he founded the Hope Vale Mission Station in Cooktown, Queensland
(Australia). In Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, he established a lasting Lutheran presence at the missionary stations of Simbang, near Finschhafen
, another on Tami
, and a third, on the Sattelberg in the Huon Peninsula, plus several filial mission stations along the coast of the present-day Morobe province.
, in the Oberpfalz, Kingdom of Bavaria
. He had at least two sisters. At age thirteen, when he finished his studies at the local primary school, his father apprenticed with a blacksmith, but changed his mind when he discovered that his son would have to work on Sundays. Since, from his early youth, Flierl had hoped to serve as a missionary to the North American Indians, his father tried to send him to the seminary in Neuendettelsau
, but was told his son needed to be 17 years old before he could enroll in the program. For four years, Flierl worked on his father's farm and continued his education informally; he also learned to knit and reportedly he could knit a sock in a day. He finally enrolled in the seminary in 1875; when he was half through the program, he heard about an opportunity for mission work in a mission founded by Old Lutherans and, after his consecration in April 1878, he left for Australia.
(1878–1885). In 1882, he married Louise Auricht, whose Old Lutheran family had immigrated from Prussia
to Australia in 1839. Early in 1885, he heard about the founding of a German colony in New Guinea. On his journey there, he was delayed for more than a year in Cooktown, Cape Bedford, North Queensland; the German New Guinea Company
refused him passage. While the diplomats and bureaucrats argued over technicalities, he founded the Mission Station Elim, (later called Hope Vale, sometimes Hope Valley, but is modern Hopevale) to serve the Guugu Yimidhirr.
, and sought to bring the “undiluted conviction” of the historical Lutheran confession to Australia and New Guinea. The German colony in Australia, similar to the German Lutheran colony in Missouri (US), had left Prussia in 1838 and the 1840s to escape "unionism," the movement toward uniformity of organization and worship imposed upon them by the state. Wilhelm Löhe
, a pastor at Neuendettelsau in Germany, brought a similar ideology to the Neuendettelsau Mission Society, even refusing to cooperate with the Barmen or Basel missionary societies, for example, because such cooperation would dilute the so-called “pure doctrine” by a sinful “unionism” with congregation that complied with state uniformity. The mission society provided clergy and religious education for Lutheran settlements in Missouri, Iowa and Ohio, Australia, and anywhere else “free thinking” Lutherans had settled.
Despite his childhood and youth in a "unionist" parish (and one in which Catholics and all Protestants shared ecclesiastical facilities), Flierl came to mission work in New Guinea with a similar mind-set to Löhe's, formed by his education at Neuendettelsau seminary and his experience among the so-called Old Lutherans
in southern Australia. When he arrived in early July 1886, he established clear boundaries between his work and that of the business and official community; although they maintained respectful relationships, he sought to establish a Mission untainted by "unionism" and collaboration between the church and the state and true to the Word of God.
He and his first colleague, Karl Tremel (also spelled Treml), established the Mission near Simbang, in October 1886. Initially they lived in tents; with the help of some Australian Wesleyans (Methodists) they had recruited in New Pomerania
, they later created a small compound of a few houses, a school, and a church. Another German missionary, Georg Bamler, joined them in 1887; the three men struggled with deadly diseases, primarily dysentery
and malaria
with its associated complications, and their discouragingly slow progress with the Kâte people. Despite these problems, Flierl started a second station on Tami
, which lies in the Huon Gulf
seven nautical miles SSE of Finschhafen, in 1889; it progressed with equally limited progress. New missionaries joined them: Johann Decker, Georg Pfalzer, Konrad Vetter (died in 1906), Johann Ruppert, (who died of typhoid in 1894), Friedrich Held (who died of blackwater fever
) and Andreas Zwanger.
In 1889–91, a particularly bad malaria epidemic wiped out almost half the European population on the coast; even Finschhafen itself was largely abandoned when the German New Guinea Company moved its operations to Stephensort (now Madang
). Louise Flierl arrived later in 1889 but told her husband she would not stay unless he found a healthier place to live than the mosquito – infested delta lands around Simbang; upon further exploration, he identified a promising site at 700 metres (2,297 ft) in the highlands. In 1890, he built the Sattelberg Mission Station there and constructed a road approximately 24 kilometres (15 mi) between the station and the Finschharbor (Finschhafen), which cut the traveling time from three days to five hours.
Two groups of Germans inhabited Kaiser-Wilhelmsland
. By far the largest group were the entrepreneurs, plantation owners, officials of the German New Guinea company, and government functionaires living in Finschhafen and Madang, and at plantations along the coast. They viewed the Kâte, and the other groups they encountered, differently than did the evangelical Lutherans at Finschhafen and the Sattelberg, and the filial mission statements along the coast. For the businessmen and functionaires, the natives were another resource to be managed: for example, as rail tracks were laid along the coast, the products were loaded on to rail cars and pushed or pulled from point to point using human energy, rather than propelled by steam. Official visitors, both German and British, noted that the German plantation owners in particular were far more likely to use the lash than other groups.
This was unacceptable for Flierl. Although the Kâte were indeed different, and some groups occasionally ate their enemies, he still saw them as children of God. For him, it was necessary to bring all children of God to the understanding of salvation. The first baptisms—those of two adult men—were performed in 1899, injected encouragement into the mission life. Personal acceptance of salvation was a fundamental precept of Lutheranism, and the instruction of the two men in Lutheran doctrine had preceded the baptism, although the work was slow and painstaking. Flierl petitioned the Synod in Australia frequently for new missionaries, and in 1899, it sent Christian Keysser
, who, it turned out, offered the spark needed for the great breakthrough in 1905. Keysser understood better than Flierl the corporatist outlook of the Kâte people, and identified ways to bring them closer to the Word, primarily because he grasped a central feature of Guinean life that Flierl never understood: the Kâte could not conceive of themselves as autonomous individuals. Kâte concepts of self were woven inseparably into the context of extended families, clans, and ancestors. Consequently, the Kâte could not come individually to Christ—to do so would place one outside all social and cultural relationships—but rather, they had to come as a group. Keysser invented the method of group conversion, resulting in the first group baptisms in 1903, and mass conversions in 1905 and 1906.
Recognizing that his own usefulness in the Sattelberg had ended, in 1904, Flierl handed the directorship to Keysser, and moved himself and his family—which now included four children—to Heldsbach, 5.8 kilometres (4 mi) away on the coast. There, he started a commercial coconut plantation and acquired the Mission's first large vessel, The Bavaria, in 1907. He also took an extended trip to Europe, Australia and the United States, extending his contacts outside of Germany, and developing the Mission's financial resources.
in 1914 complicated life for the German missionaries in the Finschhafen district, as it did the businessmen and government functionaires. The German population there had never been substantial. In 1902, fewer than 25 Europeans lived on the northeastern coast. By 1914, the number was still low, perhaps 300 in all of German New Guinea and 50 of them in Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, mostly plantation owners and their families, and a couple of dozen missionaries and their own families. Australian troops
invaded German New Guinea, taking the German barracks in Herbertshöhe (now Kokopo
) in New Pomerania (now New Britain). The German defeat at Bita Paka
in September 1914, and their subsequent surrender, brought effective resistance to an end. The missionaries in all stations signed neutrality oaths, required by the Australian administrators, and were permitted to continue their work. The two missionaries running the Neuendettelsau station on the Sattelberg, Otto Thiele and Christian Keysser, seemingly turned a blind eye to the presence of the pesky Hermann Detzner
, a regular army officer stranded on a survey mission in the interior at the outbreak of war; Detzner refused to surrender to Australian authorities and spent the duration of the war annoying the Australians by marching from village to village in the jungle, flying the imperial flag, and singing patriotic songs.
During the war, Flierl also relied more on the connection between Lutheran churchmen in Australia and the United States, which he had nurtured carefully throughout the pre-war years. He did this by sending artifacts and letters to like-minded Lutherans; some of these artifacts are collected in a museum at the Wartburg Theological Seminary
in Iowa, which also awarded Flierl an honorary degree. These new relationships were particularly important to maintain streams of personnel and supplies and became even more critical during the difficult post-war diplomatic and political dynamic of the Versailles Treaty negotiations. Potential territorial changes made it possible that the missions would be expropriated by Australians and the British and probable that their staffs would be expelled from their homes.
The war also wrought havoc on Flierl's family. The oldest boy, Wilhelm, was arrested in 1915, after two German officers (probably Detzner
and another man) appropriated a vessel in an attempt to escape from New Guinea; their gear did not fit into the canoe, and they left behind a box, which caused the Australians to accuse Wilhelm of collaboration. He was incarcerated in Australia, and after the war he was repatriated to Germany. He eventually made his way back to New Guinea, via Texas, in 1927. Flierl's youngest son, Hans (or Johann), went to Germany in 1914 to attend the Neuendettelsau Seminary in Franconia, and instead was conscripted into the German army; after the war, Hans also went to Texas, and eventually returned to New Guinea.
Flierl retired in 1930, age 72, and returned with his wife to her hometown in Australia. After her death in 1934, he lived with his daughter, Dora; he died in there on 30 September 1947.
References
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
. He established mission schools and organized the construction of roads and communication between otherwise remote interior locations. Under his leadership, Lutheran evangelicalism flourished in New Guinea. He founded the Evangelical Lutheran Mission in the Sattelberg, and a string of filial stations on the northeastern coast of New Guinea.
He was educated at the mission seminary in Neuendettelsau, in Kingdom of Bavaria
Kingdom of Bavaria
The Kingdom of Bavaria was a German state that existed from 1806 to 1918. The Bavarian Elector Maximilian IV Joseph of the House of Wittelsbach became the first King of Bavaria in 1806 as Maximilian I Joseph. The monarchy would remain held by the Wittelsbachs until the kingdom's dissolution in 1918...
. Prior to finishing his education, the Neuendettelsau Missionary Society sent him to the Bethesda mission, near Hahndorf, in western Australia, where he joined an Old Lutheran community. While there, he felt called to serve in the newly established German protectorate, Kaiser-Wilhelmsland
Kaiser-Wilhelmsland
Kaiser-Wilhelmsland was part of the German New Guinea, the South Pacific protectorate of the German Empire. Named in honor of Wilhelm II, who was the German Emperor and King of Prussia, it included the north-eastern part of the present day Papua New Guinea. From 1884 until 1918, the territory...
. On the journey to New Guinea, he founded the Hope Vale Mission Station in Cooktown, Queensland
Cooktown, Queensland
Cooktown is a small town located at the mouth of the Endeavour River, on Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland where James Cook beached his ship, the Endeavour, for repairs in 1770. At the 2006 census, Cooktown had a population of 1,336...
(Australia). In Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, he established a lasting Lutheran presence at the missionary stations of Simbang, near Finschhafen
Finschhafen
Finschhafen is a district on the northeast coast of the Morobe province of Papua New Guinea. It is named after the port of the same name.The port was discovered in 1884 by the German researcher Otto Finsch. In 1885 the German colony of German New Guinea created a town on the site and named it...
, another on Tami
Tami Islands
The Tami Islands are a small island group located seven nautical miles SSE of Finschhafen in the Huon Gulf . It is part of today's Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea....
, and a third, on the Sattelberg in the Huon Peninsula, plus several filial mission stations along the coast of the present-day Morobe province.
Early life and education
Johann Flierl was born in rural Germany, near Buchhof, a tiny farmstead (with three houses), near Fürried, in the vicinity of SulzbachSulzbach-Rosenberg
Sulzbach-Rosenberg is a municipality in the Amberg-Sulzbach district, in Bavaria, Germany. It is situated approx. 14 km northwest of Amberg, and 50 km east of Nuremberg. The town consists of two parts: Sulzbach in the west, and Rosenberg in the east. Archeological evidence tells, that...
, in the Oberpfalz, Kingdom of Bavaria
Kingdom of Bavaria
The Kingdom of Bavaria was a German state that existed from 1806 to 1918. The Bavarian Elector Maximilian IV Joseph of the House of Wittelsbach became the first King of Bavaria in 1806 as Maximilian I Joseph. The monarchy would remain held by the Wittelsbachs until the kingdom's dissolution in 1918...
. He had at least two sisters. At age thirteen, when he finished his studies at the local primary school, his father apprenticed with a blacksmith, but changed his mind when he discovered that his son would have to work on Sundays. Since, from his early youth, Flierl had hoped to serve as a missionary to the North American Indians, his father tried to send him to the seminary in Neuendettelsau
Neuendettelsau
Neuendettelsau is a local authority in Middle Franconia, Germany. Neuendettelsau is situated 20 miles southwest of Nuremberg and 12 miles east of Ansbach. Population: 7.833 ....
, but was told his son needed to be 17 years old before he could enroll in the program. For four years, Flierl worked on his father's farm and continued his education informally; he also learned to knit and reportedly he could knit a sock in a day. He finally enrolled in the seminary in 1875; when he was half through the program, he heard about an opportunity for mission work in a mission founded by Old Lutherans and, after his consecration in April 1878, he left for Australia.
Mission in Australia
Flierl spent his first seven years of missionary life working on Lutheran Killalpaninna Mission (Bethesda) Station at Cooper CreekCooper Creek
Cooper Creek is one of the most famous and yet least visited rivers in Australia. It is sometimes known as the Barcoo River from one of its tributaries and is one of three major Queensland river systems that flow into the Lake Eyre Basin...
(1878–1885). In 1882, he married Louise Auricht, whose Old Lutheran family had immigrated from Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
to Australia in 1839. Early in 1885, he heard about the founding of a German colony in New Guinea. On his journey there, he was delayed for more than a year in Cooktown, Cape Bedford, North Queensland; the German New Guinea Company
German New Guinea Company
The German New Guinea Company was a German Chartered Company which exploited insular territory in and near present Papua New Guinea.- History :...
refused him passage. While the diplomats and bureaucrats argued over technicalities, he founded the Mission Station Elim, (later called Hope Vale, sometimes Hope Valley, but is modern Hopevale) to serve the Guugu Yimidhirr.
Connection to Neuendettelsau Mission Society
Flierl was a pioneer missionary for Southern Australian Lutheran Synod and the Neuendettelsau Mission Society. The Synod and the Mission Society combined the post-Reformation Lutheran conviction with 19th century PietismPietism
Pietism was a movement within Lutheranism, lasting from the late 17th century to the mid-18th century and later. It proved to be very influential throughout Protestantism and Anabaptism, inspiring not only Anglican priest John Wesley to begin the Methodist movement, but also Alexander Mack to...
, and sought to bring the “undiluted conviction” of the historical Lutheran confession to Australia and New Guinea. The German colony in Australia, similar to the German Lutheran colony in Missouri (US), had left Prussia in 1838 and the 1840s to escape "unionism," the movement toward uniformity of organization and worship imposed upon them by the state. Wilhelm Löhe
Johann Konrad Wilhelm Löhe
Johann Konrad Wilhelm Löhe was a pastor of the Lutheran Church, Neo-Lutheran writer, and is often regarded as being a founder of the deaconess movement in Lutheranism and a founding sponsor of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod . He was a pastor in nineteenth-century Germany...
, a pastor at Neuendettelsau in Germany, brought a similar ideology to the Neuendettelsau Mission Society, even refusing to cooperate with the Barmen or Basel missionary societies, for example, because such cooperation would dilute the so-called “pure doctrine” by a sinful “unionism” with congregation that complied with state uniformity. The mission society provided clergy and religious education for Lutheran settlements in Missouri, Iowa and Ohio, Australia, and anywhere else “free thinking” Lutherans had settled.
Despite his childhood and youth in a "unionist" parish (and one in which Catholics and all Protestants shared ecclesiastical facilities), Flierl came to mission work in New Guinea with a similar mind-set to Löhe's, formed by his education at Neuendettelsau seminary and his experience among the so-called Old Lutherans
Old Lutherans
Old Lutherans refers to those German Lutherans who refused to join the Prussian Union in the 1830s and 1840s.Attempted suppression of the Old Lutherans led many to immigrate to Australia and the United States, resulting in the creation of significant Lutheran denominations in those countries.The...
in southern Australia. When he arrived in early July 1886, he established clear boundaries between his work and that of the business and official community; although they maintained respectful relationships, he sought to establish a Mission untainted by "unionism" and collaboration between the church and the state and true to the Word of God.
He and his first colleague, Karl Tremel (also spelled Treml), established the Mission near Simbang, in October 1886. Initially they lived in tents; with the help of some Australian Wesleyans (Methodists) they had recruited in New Pomerania
New Britain
New Britain, or Niu Briten, is the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea. It is separated from the island of New Guinea by the Dampier and Vitiaz Straits and from New Ireland by St. George's Channel...
, they later created a small compound of a few houses, a school, and a church. Another German missionary, Georg Bamler, joined them in 1887; the three men struggled with deadly diseases, primarily dysentery
Dysentery
Dysentery is an inflammatory disorder of the intestine, especially of the colon, that results in severe diarrhea containing mucus and/or blood in the faeces with fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, dysentery can be fatal.There are differences between dysentery and normal bloody diarrhoea...
and malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
with its associated complications, and their discouragingly slow progress with the Kâte people. Despite these problems, Flierl started a second station on Tami
Tami Islands
The Tami Islands are a small island group located seven nautical miles SSE of Finschhafen in the Huon Gulf . It is part of today's Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea....
, which lies in the Huon Gulf
Huon Gulf
Huon Gulf is a large gulf in eastern Papua New Guinea, at . It is bordered by Huon Peninsula in the north. Both are named after French explorer Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec. Huon Gulf is a part of the Solomon Sea. Lae, capital of the Morobe Province is located on the northern coast of the...
seven nautical miles SSE of Finschhafen, in 1889; it progressed with equally limited progress. New missionaries joined them: Johann Decker, Georg Pfalzer, Konrad Vetter (died in 1906), Johann Ruppert, (who died of typhoid in 1894), Friedrich Held (who died of blackwater fever
Blackwater fever
Blackwater fever is a complication of malaria in which red blood cells burst in the bloodstream , releasing hemoglobin directly into the blood vessels and into the urine, frequently leading to kidney failure...
) and Andreas Zwanger.
In 1889–91, a particularly bad malaria epidemic wiped out almost half the European population on the coast; even Finschhafen itself was largely abandoned when the German New Guinea Company moved its operations to Stephensort (now Madang
Madang
Madang is the capital of Madang Province and is a town with a population of 27,420 on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. It was first settled by the Germans in the 19th century....
). Louise Flierl arrived later in 1889 but told her husband she would not stay unless he found a healthier place to live than the mosquito – infested delta lands around Simbang; upon further exploration, he identified a promising site at 700 metres (2,297 ft) in the highlands. In 1890, he built the Sattelberg Mission Station there and constructed a road approximately 24 kilometres (15 mi) between the station and the Finschharbor (Finschhafen), which cut the traveling time from three days to five hours.
New Guinea stations
Flierl's old policy at Simbang, and the one that prevailed at Sattelberg, focused on education and called for preliminary language study and literacy development; how else could someone study the Bible, a fundamental precept of post-Reformation with them. The Kâte adults seemed more interested in the practical aspects of European life, particularly the ironware. The local communities, though were curious and frequently ascribed the presence of the missionaries to returning ancestors, benevolent spirit powers bearing material goods, and called them the Miti. To the Kâte, these men were different from the land-hungry planters, who rarely left the confines of their plantations; missionaries, on the other hand, were friendly, willing to explore the interior, and interested in knowing the people, their language, and their country-side. In part the variation in attitudes of the commercial and official interests, geographically located on the coast, and the evangelical attitudes, primarily located inland, but with supply, cultural and language links to the coast, is called by historians of colonialism "the rule of colonial difference." The "rule of difference" explains the ways in which colonizers, and the colonized, legitimate policy and reaction. Primarily it focuses on the ways in which the Europeans justify their own actions, how they view the "colonized" and how they structure policy.Two groups of Germans inhabited Kaiser-Wilhelmsland
Kaiser-Wilhelmsland
Kaiser-Wilhelmsland was part of the German New Guinea, the South Pacific protectorate of the German Empire. Named in honor of Wilhelm II, who was the German Emperor and King of Prussia, it included the north-eastern part of the present day Papua New Guinea. From 1884 until 1918, the territory...
. By far the largest group were the entrepreneurs, plantation owners, officials of the German New Guinea company, and government functionaires living in Finschhafen and Madang, and at plantations along the coast. They viewed the Kâte, and the other groups they encountered, differently than did the evangelical Lutherans at Finschhafen and the Sattelberg, and the filial mission statements along the coast. For the businessmen and functionaires, the natives were another resource to be managed: for example, as rail tracks were laid along the coast, the products were loaded on to rail cars and pushed or pulled from point to point using human energy, rather than propelled by steam. Official visitors, both German and British, noted that the German plantation owners in particular were far more likely to use the lash than other groups.
This was unacceptable for Flierl. Although the Kâte were indeed different, and some groups occasionally ate their enemies, he still saw them as children of God. For him, it was necessary to bring all children of God to the understanding of salvation. The first baptisms—those of two adult men—were performed in 1899, injected encouragement into the mission life. Personal acceptance of salvation was a fundamental precept of Lutheranism, and the instruction of the two men in Lutheran doctrine had preceded the baptism, although the work was slow and painstaking. Flierl petitioned the Synod in Australia frequently for new missionaries, and in 1899, it sent Christian Keysser
Christian Keyser
Christian Gottlob Keyser was a Lutheran missionary of the Neuendettelsau Mission Society. He served for almost 22 years at the Neuendettelsau Mission Station in the Finschhafen District of New Guinea, which had been founded in 1892 by Johann Flierl...
, who, it turned out, offered the spark needed for the great breakthrough in 1905. Keysser understood better than Flierl the corporatist outlook of the Kâte people, and identified ways to bring them closer to the Word, primarily because he grasped a central feature of Guinean life that Flierl never understood: the Kâte could not conceive of themselves as autonomous individuals. Kâte concepts of self were woven inseparably into the context of extended families, clans, and ancestors. Consequently, the Kâte could not come individually to Christ—to do so would place one outside all social and cultural relationships—but rather, they had to come as a group. Keysser invented the method of group conversion, resulting in the first group baptisms in 1903, and mass conversions in 1905 and 1906.
Recognizing that his own usefulness in the Sattelberg had ended, in 1904, Flierl handed the directorship to Keysser, and moved himself and his family—which now included four children—to Heldsbach, 5.8 kilometres (4 mi) away on the coast. There, he started a commercial coconut plantation and acquired the Mission's first large vessel, The Bavaria, in 1907. He also took an extended trip to Europe, Australia and the United States, extending his contacts outside of Germany, and developing the Mission's financial resources.
Mission under Australian occupation
The outbreak of World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
in 1914 complicated life for the German missionaries in the Finschhafen district, as it did the businessmen and government functionaires. The German population there had never been substantial. In 1902, fewer than 25 Europeans lived on the northeastern coast. By 1914, the number was still low, perhaps 300 in all of German New Guinea and 50 of them in Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, mostly plantation owners and their families, and a couple of dozen missionaries and their own families. Australian troops
Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force
The Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force was a small volunteer force of approximately 2,000 men, raised in Australia shortly after the outbreak of the First World War to seize and destroy German wireless stations in German New Guinea in the south-west Pacific...
invaded German New Guinea, taking the German barracks in Herbertshöhe (now Kokopo
Kokopo
Kokopo is the capital of East New Britain in Papua New Guinea. The capital was moved from Rabaul in 1994 when the volcanoes Tavurvur and Vulcan erupted. As a result, the population of the town increased more than sixfold from 3,150 in 1990 to 20,262 in 2000....
) in New Pomerania (now New Britain). The German defeat at Bita Paka
Battle of Bita Paka
The Battle of Bita Paka was fought south of Kabakaul, on the island of New Britain, and was a part of the invasion and subsequent occupation of German New Guinea by the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force shortly after the outbreak of the First World War...
in September 1914, and their subsequent surrender, brought effective resistance to an end. The missionaries in all stations signed neutrality oaths, required by the Australian administrators, and were permitted to continue their work. The two missionaries running the Neuendettelsau station on the Sattelberg, Otto Thiele and Christian Keysser, seemingly turned a blind eye to the presence of the pesky Hermann Detzner
Hermann Detzner
Hermann Philipp Detzner was an officer in the German colonial security force in Kamerun and German New Guinea, as well as a surveyor, an engineer, an adventurer, and a writer....
, a regular army officer stranded on a survey mission in the interior at the outbreak of war; Detzner refused to surrender to Australian authorities and spent the duration of the war annoying the Australians by marching from village to village in the jungle, flying the imperial flag, and singing patriotic songs.
During the war, Flierl also relied more on the connection between Lutheran churchmen in Australia and the United States, which he had nurtured carefully throughout the pre-war years. He did this by sending artifacts and letters to like-minded Lutherans; some of these artifacts are collected in a museum at the Wartburg Theological Seminary
Wartburg Theological Seminary
Wartburg Theological Seminary is a Lutheran seminary located in Dubuque, Iowa. It offers three graduate-level degrees , a TEEM Certificate, and a Diploma in Anglican Studies, all of which are accredited by the Association of Theological Schools and the Higher Learning Commission of the...
in Iowa, which also awarded Flierl an honorary degree. These new relationships were particularly important to maintain streams of personnel and supplies and became even more critical during the difficult post-war diplomatic and political dynamic of the Versailles Treaty negotiations. Potential territorial changes made it possible that the missions would be expropriated by Australians and the British and probable that their staffs would be expelled from their homes.
The war also wrought havoc on Flierl's family. The oldest boy, Wilhelm, was arrested in 1915, after two German officers (probably Detzner
Hermann Detzner
Hermann Philipp Detzner was an officer in the German colonial security force in Kamerun and German New Guinea, as well as a surveyor, an engineer, an adventurer, and a writer....
and another man) appropriated a vessel in an attempt to escape from New Guinea; their gear did not fit into the canoe, and they left behind a box, which caused the Australians to accuse Wilhelm of collaboration. He was incarcerated in Australia, and after the war he was repatriated to Germany. He eventually made his way back to New Guinea, via Texas, in 1927. Flierl's youngest son, Hans (or Johann), went to Germany in 1914 to attend the Neuendettelsau Seminary in Franconia, and instead was conscripted into the German army; after the war, Hans also went to Texas, and eventually returned to New Guinea.
Later years and family
Flierl's four children were also involved in the mission. Wilhelm and Johannes both attended the Neuendettelsau Seminary and were ordained as mission pastors. Wilhelm took an interest in the local dialect, and wrote a dictionary of the Kâte language. Dora was a mission teacher and nurse; she remained single. Elise married Georg Pilhofer, another Lutheran missionary, who wrote a history of the Neuendettelsau Mission in New Guinea. Two of Flierl's cousins also entered the missionary field. Konrad Flierl was only 13 when his older cousin left for Australia, and he entered the Neuendettelsau preparatory program the following year. He was sent as a missionary to the United States in 1885. Another cousin, Johannes, also went to the Neuendettelsau Seminary, and replaced his cousin at Cooper Creek in 1886; after a disagreement with the Mission and the local synod, he left Australia.Flierl retired in 1930, age 72, and returned with his wife to her hometown in Australia. After her death in 1934, he lived with his daughter, Dora; he died in there on 30 September 1947.
Partial list of publications
Gedenkblatt der Neuendettelsauer Heidenmission in Queensland und Neu-Guinea, Tanunda, Südaustralien: Selbstverl., 1909 Wie ich Missioner wurde, 1909 (1928). Gedenken der Neuendettelsauer Mission, 1909 (1910). Im Busch verirrt, Neuendettelsau Verl. d. Missionshauses, 1910. 30 Jahren als Missionenarbeiter, 1910. Wie ich Missionar wurde und meinen Weg nach Australien und Deutsch-Neuguinea fand Neuendettelsau, Verl. d. Missionshauses, 1919, 4. Aufl. Forty-five years in New Guinea, Chicago 1927 Was Gott auf Neuguinea in mehr als vier Jahrzehnten getan hat und was Gott von den Christen in der Heimat erwartet. Neuendettelsau : Verl. d. Missionshauses, 1928 Gottes Wort in den Urwäldern v. Neuguinea, 1929. Von einem alten Australier: Gottes Wort in den Urwäldern von Neuguinea. Gesellschaft für Innere und Äussere Mission im Sinne der Lutherischen Kirche: Neuendettelsauer Missionsschriften, Nr. 62. Neuendettelsau, Verlag d. Missionshauses 1929. Ein Ehrendenkmal für die ehrwürdigen heimgegangenen Väter der luth. Kirche in Australien: Ueber die Toten nur Gutes! Tanunda : Selbstverl., 1929 Wunder der göttlichen gnade. Evangelisten aus menschenfressern! 1931. Christ in New Guinea. Tanunda, South Australia, Auricht’s printing office, 1932. Als erster Missionar in Neuguinea. Neuendettelsau : Freimund-Verl., 1936 Ein dankbarer Rückblick und ein hoffnungsvoller Ausblick auch in schwersten Zeiten, Tanunda:"Neu Guinea Haus", 1936 Zum Jubiläum der Lutherischen Mission in Neu-Guinea. Tanunda, Südaustralien, 1936 Observations and experiences, Tanunda, South Australia: Auricht, 1937, 5. ed. 60 Jahre im Missionsdienst, Neuendettelsau Freimund-Verl., 1938- Also:
- My Life and God's Mission. An autobiography. Transl. and ed. by Erich Flierl. - Adelaide: Board for Church Cooperation in World Mission. Lutheran Church of Australia, 1999. (The original German version was never published.). Ein Leben (collected works). Traugott Farnbacher und Gernot Fugmann (Hrsg.). Neuendettelsau 2008.
Sources
CitationsReferences
- Ganter, Regina German missionaries in Queensland Griffith University, Queensland.
- Garrett, John, Footsepts ion the Sea: Christianity in Oceania to World War II. Institute of Pacific Studies/World Council of Churches ,1992, ISBN 978-9820200685, pp 1–15.
- Linke,Robert The influence of German surveying on the development of New Guinea, Shaping the Change: XXIII FIG Congress, Munich, Germany, October 8–13, 2006, pp. 1–17, p. 10.
- Pröve, H. F. W. “Auricht, Johann Christian (1832 - 1907),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, Online Edition, 2006, updated continuously, ISSN 1833 7538, published by Australian National University.
- Sack, P. G. “Flierl, Johann (1858 – 1947),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, Online Edition, 2006, updated continuously, Australian National University. ISSN 1833 7538
- Steinmetz, George, "The Devil's Handwriting: Precolonial Discourse, Ethnographic Acuity, and Cross-Identification in German Colonialism," Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Jan., 2003), pp. 41–95.
- Wartburg Theological Seminary, Evangelical Lutheran Mission.
Additional material
Johann Flierl: ein Leben für die Mission - Mission für das Leben. (biography). Neuendettelsau : Erlanger Verl. für Mission und Ökumene, 2008- E. A. Jericho, Seedtime and Harvest, Brisb 1961. Neue Deutsche Biographie, vol 7 Berlin, 1966.