Kühn, Wilhelm Julius (1834-1913)

Prepared by:

Regina Ganter

Birth / Death:

born 29 November 1834 Halbau (Silesia)

died 2 July 1913 (Perth, age 78)

Pastor Kühn was destined for the Moravian Kopperamanna mission but instead conducted a Presbyterian mission at Yorke Peninsula.

Julius Kühn received his call to mission together with Wilhelm Kramer [1], Heinrich Walder [2] and Gottlieb Meissel [3], and they were all ordained at Herrnhut on 31 July 1864. Since the interior mission was somewhat speculative, none of them were married. He and Meissel received some surgical training before departing from London.¹ Their journey to Melbourne took more than three months and they learned a little English on the way, arriving on 27 November 1864.

A journey to Coopers Creek was out of the question when they arrived in the middle of a long drought. The four were distributed around among existing mission stations, spending some time here and there. Kühn first spent a few months at Ramahyuck [4].² He was then sent to Yorke Peninsula [5] in South Australia where Presbyterian minister William Wilson was undertaking a mission at Kadina. Responding to local demand, they opened another mission station on Yorke Peninsula in February 1866 with Kühn as teacher and twelve children at school. (Walder joined them briefly but left for Bethel in February 1866). When the call came in mid-1866 to proceed to Adelaide and commence the inland journey to Coopers' Creek, Kühn was permitted to stay at Yorke Peninsula, while Walder went to meet up with the other three in Bethel. The Herrnhut Elders protested against the change of plan, but the Melbourne Committee in charge of the Coopers' Creek expedition had given their approval.³

Kühn married without permission from the Moravian church (presumably around November 1868 when the issue came before the Herrnhut Elders).⁴ However he was not required to leave the church⁵ (like Job Francis around 1866 and Heinrich Stähle [6] in 1874). It is possible that he married into the small Moravian congregation at South Kilkerran near Maitland on Yorke Peninsula, to which he ministered.⁶

According to a 1915 report on the Yorke Peninsula mission, Kühn commenced that mission and superintended it from 1867 to 1880.⁷ According to a directory of Lutheran pastors, Kühn retired from Point Pearce mission in 1884 and worked for the Presbyterian Church in Perth from 1884 to 1913.⁸

1 Felicity Jensz, Moravian Missionaries in the British Colony of Victoria, Australia, 1848-1908: Strangers in a Strange Land. Leiden: Brill, 2010:2010: 159-162.

2 According to the Weiss index of Lutheran pastors, Kühn was at Ramahyuck 1864-1865, and served at Kilkerran, Yorke Peninsula, and Point Pearce mission 1867-84. However both Jensz and Edwards have him at Yorke Peninsula in mid-1866. Johann Peter Weiss, 'A General and Statistical History of the Australian Lutheran Church', 1999/2007, LAA MS (finding aid). Felicity Jensz, Moravian Missionaries in the British Colony of Victoria, Australia, 1848-1908: Strangers in a Strange Land. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Bill Edwards 'A Grave Situation: the Moravian Church at Bethel in South Australia' inJournal of Friends of the Lutheran Archives, No. 20, October 2010:50-62.

3 Felicity Jensz, Moravian Missionaries in the British Colony of Victoria, Australia, 1848-1908: Strangers in a Strange Land. Leiden: Brill, 2010:167

4 Felicity Jensz, Moravian Missionaries in the British Colony of Victoria, Australia, 1848-1908: Strangers in a Strange Land. Leiden: Brill, 2010:173.

5 The Weiss index has him as a member of the Immanuel Synod until 1884. Johann Peter Weiss, 'A General and Statistical History of the Australian Lutheran Church', 1999/2007, LAA MS (finding aid).

6 The South Kilkerran Moravian congregation was first meeting in the home of Mr. G. Hilbig, and from 1876 in a Lutheran church. Bill Edwards 'A Grave Situation: the Moravian Church at Bethel in South Australia' in Journal of Friends of the Lutheran Archives, No. 20, October 2010:50-62, p. 58.

7 T. S. Archibald 'Yorke's Peninsula Aboriginal mission - A brief record of its history and operations' Adelaide, Hussey and Gillingham 1915.

8 Johann Peter Weiss, 'A General and Statistical History of the Australian Lutheran Church', 1999/2007, LAA MS (finding aid).