Friedrich Wilhelm ALBRECHT

ALBRECHT, FRIEDRICH WILHELM (b. Planawice, Poland, 15 Oct 1894; d. Adelaide, SA, 16 March 1984). Lutheran missionary to Central Australian Aborigines.

Friedrich Albrecht was born to German parents in a small rural village in Russian occupied Poland in 1894. Debarred through lameness from active sports, the boy turned to reading and in the missionary tracts of his Lutheran church discovered a world beyond the village. Early in his life he decided to become a missionary, and managed to achieve seminary training in Germany, despite formidable difficulties and devastating experiences in World War One. Called by the SA District of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Australia, Friedrich and his German-born wife Minna, came to the historic Hermannsburg mission in Central Australia in the mid-1920s.

It was a time when it was generally believed that Aborigines were a dying race. Aboriginal tribal lands were rapidly depopulating, through cultural disintegration, introduced diseases and sometimes frontier violence. Government and public indifference toward the fate of Aborigines was at its height. In 1926, Central Australia was in the early stages of a seven-year drought in which thousands of cattle died, Aboriginal bush food disappeared, and a scurvy epidemic swept the mission community.

Albrecht understood the urgent need for decisive action to save the remnants of the Central Australian tribes from extinction. From 1930, he made a series of camel treks to the west to make contact with Aboriginal people still living in tribal conditions—Walbiri, Loritjas, Pintubi, and Pitjantjatjara—and stationed Aboriginal evangelists in outlying areas to bring the gospel to bush Aborigines and help them remain in their tribal areas. He worked with doctor and author Charles Duguid and government patrol officer T. G. H. Strehlow to establish secure reserve lands and played a significant role in the establishing of the Haasts Bluff, Areyonga and Yuendemu settlements, and in the development of a different federal government Aboriginal policy from the 1940s.

Strongly supported by his wife, Minna, he also worked to create employment opportunities for Aboriginal people within their own communities, establishing a tannery, a pastoralists scheme, and arts and crafts. He played an important role in the life and career of Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira. A great believer in the importance of communication, he was a prolific writer of reports, articles and pamphlets, most of which were published in the Lutheran Herald andThe Lutheran.

Far from being narrowly religious in focus, Albrecht also worked towards the educational, social and employment advancement of Aborigines. He strongly supported leadership development within Aboriginal communities – e.g. on cattle stations - and was instrumental in the training of the first Aboriginal Lutheran ministers in Australia. He was fluent in Aranda, and supported Aboriginal traditional culture as far as he did not see as conflicting with Christian truth.

His approach to Aboriginal people was always individual and personal. While he received formal Australian and West German recognition in several notable awards for his life's work, his legacy is embodied most deeply in the memories and stories of Aboriginal people in Central Australia today. 'Still today, people never forget. In every place, in every outstation, every cattle station, on settlements, people still remember his kindness. He helped a lot of people while they were sick, with the pray, and with little bit medicine, and with God's message. People talking about ingkata inurra, because they said, old Albrechta went to every places, he had to visit them, he had to put all his life into them, never mind they were running away, still he had to chase them, still he had to brought them back, because he really loved them.' (Rev Nahasson Ungkwanaka, 1986)

B Henson, A Straightout Man: F W Albrecht and Central Australian Aborigines (Melbourne, 1992) and for ref.

BARBARA HENSON