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Summary

​A lady in waiting or in charge of the coffee kitchen?

'Under the Southern Cross', by A. BRAUER, 1856 pge 159.  Friederike STERNICKE  "...had been employed for eleven years in the palace of Prince Charles & Princess Marie of Prussia as custodian of the royal coffers & lady in waiting to the princess, whom she had to assist in her face massage & other 'beauty culture' measures.  She was destined to exchange the royal palace for a primitive Australian shack, & the attendance on royalty for the care of uncivilised aboriginals......the marriage of the future missionary & Miss STERNICKE took place on March 4, 1840.  A few days later they sailed for Australia." 

Griffith University, 'German Missionaries in Australia' by Christine LOCKWOOD.  "They set sail from Hamburg on 13 March 1840, travelling via London where they met George Fife Angas who had recruited the DMS missionaries for South Australia with promises of support. They arrived in South Australia on 9 August 1840....... Friederike had been employed for eleven years by Prince Carl of Prussia at his summer palace in Potsdam, where she was in charge of the coffee kitchen." 

They travelled on the 'Caleb Angas'.

See 5.3  FAEHRMANN's, LIEBELT'S, First Nations & Prussian Royalty for more information

"Meyer published a grammar of the Ramindjeri Language in 1843."  Beyond All Expectations Rob Amery

The family names that are mentioned in this article:    

LEIBELT, LOCKWOOD, MEYER, SCHURMANN, STERNICKE, TEICHELMANN

State Library of South Australia, 1836             Original from Glen LIEBELT Collection              Original from Glen LIEBELT COLLECTION

H.A.E. MEYER  [B8236], State Library of South Australia, photograph, 14.3cm x 8.8cm, dated approximately 1836. Artist Jacobssohn S.F.   Photo [Out of Copyright/No Known Copyright Restrictions] 

• 'Portrait of Heinrich August Eduard MEYER, Lutheran missionary & student of the customs & language of the Ngarrindjeri people.'
• History/biography, State Library of South Australia. 

  "The Evangelical-Lutheran Mission Society of Dresden, Germany, was founded in 1819. Although its main work involved sending missionaries to India, in 1838 the society sent two missionaries - Pastor Teichelmann and Pastor Schurmann - to South Australia to work with the Aboriginal people. In 1840 they were joined by Pastors Meyer and Klose. Meyer worked as a missionary to the Aboriginal people at Encounter Bay until 1848 when he was appointed to and served the Bethany community until 1862.

  Australian Aboriginal languages became endangered following European contact which began in earnest with white settlement in 1788. It is estimated that at this time there were over 250 different Aboriginal Languages in use. Aboriginal people were forced to speak English in order to receive rations, to go to school, and to have some way of defending their rights.

  In contrast to this, much work was done towards the study, recording and translation of Aboriginal languages and customs by these early Lutheran missionaries, including Meyer, who was a gifted language student and produced two publicatons about the language and customs of the Ngarrindjeri people. At the time the main aim of the missionaries in this study was to convert people to Christianity, and now such works are invaluable as a major source for the reclamation of the languages and customs of South Australian Aboriginal nations."

FRONT COVER

These two painted portraits are framed identically to the way the Prussia Palace is framed.  They probably belonged to Friederike & Heinrich August MEYER and they now hang in their daughters .....

Griffith University 'German Missionaries in Australia', by Christine LOCKWOOD.  

Theological information.   "Because of his ‘need for a wife’s care and assistance’, MEYERE was permitted to marry Friederike Wilhelmine Sternicke on 4 March 1838. Friederike had been employed for eleven years by Prince Carl of Prussia at his summer palace in Potsdam, where she was in charge of the coffee kitchen."  

Instructions. "The instructions for Meyer’s wife were that Friederike’s first responsibility was to be to her own household with the special request that she also help care for the domestic needs of her husband’s colleagues. She was not expected to have an active missionary role unless she had the time and inclination to visit and instruct the women.⁸

Encounter Bay. "Together with missionary Klose, the Meyers set sail from Hamburg on 13 March 1840, travelling via London where they met George Fife Angas who had recruited the DMS missionaries for South Australia with promises of support. They arrived in South Australia on 9 August 1840. Meyer was disappointed to find that Governor Gawler had asked Schürmann to go to Port Lincoln as Deputy-Protector of Aborigines instead of going to Encounter Bay. Eduard and the now heavily pregnant Friederike proceeded alone to Encounter Bay. Teichelmann had concerns about Meyer. He thought he was too weak to work alone, especially as language work required much effort and, he believed, Meyer was not linguistically gifted.⁹ Meyer was to feel keenly the lack of a colleague, a situation he said would have been unbearable without his wife’s companionship.¹⁰

Governor Gawler provided Eduard & his family with a 'crude one-roomed hut' built for the local police near the current position of the Granite Island causeway and it was "dilapidated by 1843"  In 1840 there were 150 Europeans & 350 First Nations people around Encounter Bay.  He could only survive by growing his own food.  Two publications resulted: Vocabulary of the Aborigines of the Southern and Eastern Portions of the Settled Districts of South Australia, 1843, and Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of the Encounter Bay Tribes, South Australia, 1846.  On 10 April 1844 the family moved into a "school house / chapel / home for student boarders' cared for by "the MEYERS".  "By late 1846 the school had no pupils". Meyer supplemented his income working as a bullocky, carting goods between Encounter Bay and Adelaide.⁸

Friederike enjoyed teaching the girls to knit, sew and make clothes for themselves and the boys.⁶¹ Three evenings a week Meyer taught European children without charge, with Mission Hour and Bible Study on the other weeknights. On Sunday he held services for Europeans (which some Aborigines attended) after which he gathered and addressed Aboriginal adults. He grasped every opportunity ‘to be of use in some way or other to the natives,’ employing them for food and clothing, visiting their huts, caring for the sick, elderly and dying (taking some into his own home), and comforting and interpreting for Ramindjeri prisoners on trial in Adelaide. ⁶²

Beginnings. "The Meyers arrived at Encounter Bay on 13 September 1840. They lived in extreme poverty, often short of food.²³ They spent Friederike’s dowry, borrowed money and relied on sympathetic colonists’ donations and gifts in kind to care for sick and needy Aborigines and do other mission work."  

The Meyers arrived at Encounter Bay on 13 September 1840. They lived in extreme poverty, often short of food.  They spent Friederike’s dowry, borrowed money and relied on sympathetic colonists’ donations and gifts in kind to care for sick and needy Aborigines and do other mission work. Gawler’s promised support fell victim to Governor Grey’s austerity measures in the 1840s’ financial crisis. The hut Gawler supplied was dilapidated by 1843. The location was unsuitable as there were no nearby Aboriginal camps, the soil was too poor for farming and Aboriginal people avoided it as it was too close to the police. Meyer said they hated the police after two Ngarrindjeri men from the Milmenrura lakinyeri of the Coorong were hanged on 23 September 1840 for killing survivors of the shipwrecked Maria in July 1840.  

The Meyers had six children, only three surviving to adulthood. Meyer died of stroke on 19 December 1862, aged forty-nine. Some time after his death, Friedericke went to live with her daughter Maria in Hahndorf. Aboriginal people from Encounter Bay visited the two women annually for as long as they lived.   Friedericke died in1889 and Maria in 1890. Maria and her husband, Rev. Aldoph Strempel, periodically cared for Encounter Bay Aboriginal children in their home.

Impact of MEYER'S work. "Meyer’s Ramindjeri vocabulary and grammar and Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of Encounter Bay: South Australia have played a significant part in this revival.¹¹⁰ Linguist Mary-Anne Gale, a participant in the Ngarrindjeri reclamation project, calls Meyer a perceptive, persistent and gifted linguist.¹¹¹ He produced ‘a remarkably insightful grammar’ with many example sentences, and a comprehensive wordlist of 1,670 entries.¹¹² Meyer’s wordlist and grammar formed the basis for that compiled sixteen or seventeen years later by missionary George Taplin.¹¹³ Gale says Ngarrindjeri people often prefer Meyer’s work to that of Taplin.¹¹⁴ In 2008 Ngarrindjeri Learners Guide was produced, drawing on Meyer’s and Taplin’s work. Meyer’s example sentences have allowed the construction of new and authentic Ngarrindjeri sentences. Ngarrindjeri is being taught in schools in South Australia, from kindergarten to tertiary level, and used by Aboriginal dance troupes, choirs, bands and groups involved in cultural tourism.¹¹⁵

Gale describes Meyer as humble, compassionate, persistent and hardworking, and a thorough, capable linguist.¹¹⁶ Church historian A. Brauer reports contemporaries describing him as ‘a highly esteemed minister’, ‘a most intelligent and exemplary man’, and ‘extremely kind and able.’¹¹⁷

• http://missionaries.griffith.edu.au/biography/meyer-heinrich-august-eduard-rev-1813-1862#sdfootnote6sym
•  

Table of Content

1.    Author's Note. MEYER laboured at Encounter Bay for 8 years, 1840-1848 when he accepted an invitation from the Bethany community which is 2kms S.E. of Tanunda.

A.E. MEYER Will written 30 November 1953, died 17 December 1862, Will proved 21 September 1863.

"Australia, South Australia, Will and Probate Records", , FamilySearch(https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q54R-Z96Z : Sun Mar 10 18:07:27 UTC 2024), Entry for Heinrich August Edward Meyer, 30 November 1853.

August Edward Meyer Pastor deceased.

Be it known unto all men that on the twenty first day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand & eight hundred & sixty three the last Will and Testament of August Edward Meyer late of Bethanien in the Province of South Australia Pastor of the Lutheran Church deceased who died on the seventeenth day of December one thousand eight hundred and sixty two at Bethanien aforesaid a true copy of which said Will is here under written marked "A" was proved and registered in this Court and that Administration of all and singular the personal estate and effects of the said deceased was granted by the aforesaid Court to Wilhelmina Fredericka Meyer widow of the said deceased the sol executrix named in the said Will she having first sworn well and truly to administer the same by paying the just debts of the said deceased so far as she is thereunto bound by law and to exhibit a true and perfect inventory of all and every the said estate and effects on or before the thirtieth day of September next and to tender just and true account of her executorship whenever required by law so to do.  Given at Adelaide the thirtieth day of September one thousand eight hundred and sixty three under my hand and the seal of the Supreme Court of the Province of South Australia.

"A". This is the last Will and Testament of me Heinrich August Edward Meyer of Bethanien in the Province of South Australia.  Pastor of the Lutheran Church. First I direct all my funeral and testamentary expenses to be fully paid and satisfied immediately after my decease.  I give devise and bequeath all my real and personal estate whatsoever and wheresoever and of what nature or kind .... unto my dear wife, Wilhelmina Friedrieka Meyer absolutely and I hereby appoint her my said wife sole executrix hereof hereby revoking all former or other testamentary dispositions by me at any time hereto fore made in Witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand on the thirtieth day of November in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty three.

Signed by the said Heinrich August Edward Meyer the Testatao as and for his last Will and Testament in the presence of you present at the same time who in his presence and in the presence of  each other have hereto subscribed our names and witnesses.  Alfred Atkinson, Adelaide, Johann Friedrich August Hoffmann of Lyndoch Valley, farmer.

Friedericke Wilhelmine STERNICKE 1818-1889 m Heinrich August Eduard MEYER 1813-1862

These photocopies of original documents are not part of the 'Glen LIEBELT Photographic Collection & Other Archival Material' but were scanned by the author at the Lutheran Archives, Adelaide.

Baptism Certificate	Transcription of Baptism Certificate	Workplace reference	Transcription of Workplace reference
Baptism Certificate	Transcription of Baptism Certificate	Ordination Certificate	2nd page Ordination Certificate
Certificate of Character	Transcription of Cert of Character	Marriage Certificate

Friderike STERNECKE

I st seit eilf Jahren im Dienste Seiner Königlichen Hoheit

des Prinzen Karl von Preußen in der Küster Küche Kaffee

angestellt gewesen, hat sich untadelhaft gut betragen und

wird bei Gelegenheit ihrer Verheiratung hiermit

entlassen.

Glinicke den 21 ten September 1839

K. Schöning

Königlicher Ober. Hofmarschall sr. Königl.  Hoheit

des Prinzen Karl von Preußen.