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In the 19th Century Christine Hein and her brother Julius migrated from Hamburg to settle in the town of Mount Gambier, South Australia. This site is one of the background of the Hein Family in Germany and the story of Christine, Julius and their descendants in Australia.

I have a personal web site here.

This site should not be used for commercial gain. It is open to anyone for information, particularly directed to help descendants of Georg Friedrich and Auguste Christine Louise Hein in Australia to understand some of their roots.

Acknowledgements

Information on this site for post immigration details is based on information collected by various descendants, including Don Hein AM, Sally McLean and Barbara Duckworth for JAL Hein descendants and Betty Taylor, Susan Newman and Peter Taylor for Christine Hein descendants. We want to add contributions which would make this site more complete, particularly for descendants of Lou Hein and Martha Manser, which are currently lighter on. I would very gratefully appreciate such contributions, which can be sent to Peter Taylor here.

Susan and I always knew via our mother Betty of the birth date and place of Christine Hein, and through our grandfather we were well aware through his many references to his beloved Uncle Julius, helped by the fact that Uncle Julius' son, Uncle Mick, became my woodwork teacher. But we were unaware of the other Hein family, that of Christine's brother. Our mother Betty had noticed in a newspaper, that there was a Hein reunion of some sort in Mount Gambier in 1990, and wrote to them. This led eventually to the discovery of the bigger picture.

For the filling in of this bigger picture, it might not have been possible but for the fact my daughter Stephanie, who was studying German at Canberra Girls Grammar School, wanted an exchange in Germany and this was arranged with Hamburg's Familie Grabs in 1997 (she became a fluent German speaker as a result). Annelies and Wieland Grabs took great interest in the fact that Stephanie had Hamburg ancestry and arranged connections for me that I didn't expect to be possible. As a result I have made many visits to Hamburg.

German churches kept meticulous records of all christenings, marriages and burials in duplicate, generally from the early 17th century and on. Fortunately both sets of records have survived for Hamburg, one set now residing in a State Archive in Wandsbek and the other in a Church Archive in central Hamburg. My wife Lois had similar ancestry from the city of Bremen but in the case of that city neither set of records survived the wars. Annelies helped me locate Christine's christening record in the State Archive during my visit to Hamburg in 2004. During this visit we also established the Luechow connection, and we visited Luechow and its archive, taking us a generation further back.

In 2009 the Mount Gambier Heins discovered my mother's 1990 letter and approached us. They did not know the details of JAL Hein's birth. As it happened I was to visit Hamburg later in that year. Annelies arranged for me to meet Gerhard Paasch, in charge of the Church Archive and he kindly gave me almost unlimited access to the christening records, by then on microfiche, for Hauptkirche Jacobi, while he was in another room (the archive was not otherwise open at the time). After some searching I had the eureka moment of finding JAL Hein's christening record, and that of two other siblings, proving the connection with Christine. As a result I was able attend the 2010 reunion in Mount Gambier and pass on the news of the broader Hein links.

As well as Annelies and Wieland, Gerhard became a family friend and in 2013 stayed with me in Canberra, during which time we climbed Mt Kosciuszko together.

Later in 2013 I was again in Hamburg, where Annelies and Wieland had arranged for me to visit the Uelzen archive, which opened up history of the Hein family back to the 16th century.

Since then Gerhard has introduced me to Ulf Bollmann, in charge of the State Archive, where the records of all the churches have now been merged into a single data base (although there is no intention of placing them on the internet). Ulf has shown a great interest in the Hein records and he, Gerhard and I had a productive meeting in Hamburg in July 2016. Ulf and Gerhard continue to have their own occasional meetings which continue to throw new light on the Hein family history.

In 2020, the difficult year in which COVID-19 stopped international travel, and after some discussion with Sally McLean, I realised there were no birth records we had for JAL Hein's children, the last of the Australian emigres to be born in Germany. Church records are only kept in the State Archive until 1865, when civil records started in Hamburg. By email Ulf was happy to find and send me the baptismal record for August, and then, later, the civil records, including addresses at the time of parents of the remaining 4 children who migrated with the family.

I should note that in 2020 the National Library of Australia has agreed that this site and three other historical sites I currently run under Google, are of sufficient national importance that all four have been preserved for posterity and can be searched under their Trove site, trove.nla.gov.au.

In conclusion I wish to thank Annelies, Wieland, Gerhard and Ulf for their interest and extraordinary help in helping us trace the history of the Hein family in Germany over many generations.

OB Flat

The region OB Flat, in Mount Gambier's south, is referred to frequently on this site and viewers can be curious about the name origin. The name OB Flat is believed to be derived from a herd of cattle bearing the brand "OB" (owned by O. Beswick) which once roamed in the area.

Bibliography

In the first instance I wish to acknowledge the various highly informative essays by Don Hein AM in his Hein Family Chronicles, which are circulated among family members. Don is a descendant of JHG (Lou) Hein, is an archaeologist living in Adelaide and has done extensive research particularly on JAL Hein and his descendants.

I can strongly recommend two books on Hein descendants which capture the life and times of the first Hein generations in Australia, and which I have at times referred. Sally McLean and KG Hein are both descendants of AGH (August) Hein, while SJ (Stuart) Hill is related to Kevin Hein and is a Colonel in the Australian Army based in Canberra.

Sally McLean, The Life, Loves and Lineage of Betty Hein, Photobooks Express, December 2016, Adelaide.

SJ Hill, Beyond Borders - The Life and Times of KG Hein, His Family and Their Ancestors, Openbook Howden, February 2017, Adelaide.

In my chapter on Uelzen I acknowledge the help of the following.

H. Grotkaß, Beiträge zur Geschichte der alten Uelzener Familien, Heidewanderer 1935, pp. 165/6. In German.

In addition to normal sources on the internet, such as Wikipedia, I found an opportunity to acquire the following rare book on the history of a German World War 1 Regiment in which two cousins, descendants of Friedrich Hein, died, useful for my discussion in the essay Relatives in Germany. The author was a captain who served with the regiment throughout the War. He gives detailed reports on all of the Regiment's engagements during the war, starting from entry through Belgium in 1914 to retreat to Germany in 1918, culminating with Armistice Day.

Dr Bernhard Studt, Infanterie-Regiment Graf Bose (1. Thüringisches) Nr. 31 im Weltkriege 1914-1918, Oldenberg i. D., Berlin, 1926. In German, 304 pages.