16 November 1838     Pastor Kavel and Captain Hahn

On 16 November 1838 Pastor August Kavel, a Lutheran minister, and about 250 people who had fled from religious persecution in Prussia, arrived in Port Adelaide in two ships from Hamburg. Their passage had been made possible with the help of George Fife Angas. At first they set up huts on land owned by Angas to the north of Adelaide and called their village Klemzig. The rental was to be £10 per acre per year. Early in 1839 a further group of Germans arrived in the Danish ship Zebra, captained by Dirk Hahn. It was first intended that they should join Kavel’s people at Klemzig, but Captain Hahn determined to see them properly settled. On the invitation of William Dutton he accompanied him and his two partners to inspect land they were having surveyed at Mount Barker, which greatly impressed Hahn. An agreement was reached whereby Dutton and his partners would rent 150 acres to the immigrants and help them become established by providing them with animals and seed on credit until they could harvest their first produce. In early March after an arduous trek from Port Adelaide they began to build their village of Hahndorf. The industrious Germans, both men and women, through sheer hard work overcame the difficulties and trials of starting with nothing and after many years of hard struggle were able to buy their land and repay their debts to Dutton and Angas for their passage money.

Anni Luur Fox, Hahndorf, Fox Publishing, 1977, pp.9-22.