Missionaries and their ethnographic instructions

Abstract

When in the 1880s and 1890s German Lutheran missionaries were sent to Australia from their colleges in Hermannsburg in Lower Saxony and Neuendettelsau in Bavaria to work among the Australian indigenous peoples of the Northern Territory, they had no ethnological education to speak of. This was particularly true for Carl Strehlow who, born in 1871 and educated from 1888 to 1891 at the Lutheran Missionary College in Neuendettelsau, arrived in Adelaide in 1892 and went straight to work with Pastor Reuther among the Diari in Killalpaninna, south of Lake Eyre. From there, in 1894, he was sent to Hermannsburg to resurrect the abandoned Lutheran Mission Station of the Finke River Mission, owned by the South Australian Immanuel Synod. The records of the curriculum in Neuendettelsau show no subjects teaching the theory and practice of ethnology. However, his ethnographic work among the local tribes of the Arrernte and Loritja is today still considered a classic in the field. As a contribution to the history of research methodology in the field of ethnology, I intend to give a brief outline of 1) the early development of scientific research instructions in general, and 2) as a special case, Carl Strehlow’s learning process in form of letters with questions and answers between himself in Hermannsburg and his editors in Frankfurt.