Notes by Peter Taylor
Anyone who travels to say the Barossa Valley will note that sometimes there are two Lutheran Churches adjacent to each other. Why did there happen to be apparently two churches when you would expect a need for just one? The answer is that the original Prussian immigrants to South Australia came in different batches for different reasons and were led by two pastors with fundamental doctrinal differences. These are well documented in Wikipedia here. Basically there was the Immanuel Synod, led by Pastor Kavel and the ELSA (Evanganical Lutheran Synod of Australia) led by Pastor Fritzsche. There were religious differences. Kavel believed in the millennial doctrine found in Revelation. Fritzsche followed the Lutheran Confessions, or the Concordia doctrine. This presumably explains also the existing of and rivalry between the two Lutheran schools in Adelaide, Immanuel and Concordia Colleges.
I notice in Kevin Hein's book that his father Albert, in Waikerie, was bemoaning to Kevin in 1966 that the two Lutheran Churches in Waikerie were about to merge after decades of Albert attending the ELSA church. In fact the two groups merged in 1966 throughout Australia. I presume other relatives of JAL Hein had attended ELSA churches.
I was interested in Christine Hein's position and checked her marriage record with Emil Boehm. In fact there is a German church record, and also a civil record, which states
Notice to courthouse 14 Sept 1855; entitlement to marry 8 October; banns Hope Valley 15th Sunday after Trinity; marriage 20 October; Stepney, private house of Mr Sickert; CEJ Bohm, mason, 3rd legitimate son of the late Ludwig Bohm, carpenter of Breslau; 32 years old; mason; current residence Stepney; duration of stay 9 weeks; spinster JCS Hein, 3rd legitimate daughter of Friedrich Hein, pastrycook of Hamburg, 22 years; current residence Stepney; length of stay 8 weeks; witnesses J Koppen, LJ Seedorf; date of register entry 20 October.
Interestingly the officiating Minister was Andreas Kappler, the Lutheran Pastor of Hope Valley, so I checked and found him on the internet. It turns out Andreas Kappler was independent of these factions, in what is otherwise described as a Wendish group, immigrants from other regions such as Upper Saxony. There is a very nice essay on him on the internet directly here or here (2Mb download of file to your computer). As it turns out Kappler spent the last 17 years of his life at Mount Gambier, founding the St Martin Church there (a nice history report here), and it would be of interest to know how he related to the Hein families there, if at all.