August Ludwig Christian KAVEL

KAVEL, AUGUST LUDWIG CHRISTIAN (b. Berlin, Prussia, 3 Sept 1798; d. Tanunda, SA, 12 Feb 1860). Leader of the first German Lutherans to SA.

After training at Berlin University, in 1826 Kavel was appointed pastor in the (Lutheran) state church at Klemzig, a village in Brandenburg province. Here his powerful pietistic preaching led to a religious revival. At first Kavel accepted the new church worship book provided by the reforming Friedrich Wilhelm III to unite the Lutheran and Reformed Churches of Prussia, but gradually he became convinced by the growing Lutheran opposition that the orders of service were incompatible with Lutheran teaching. In 1835 he resigned, joining the breakaway Old Lutheran Church, thus losing official status and salary.

Because of government repression of the nonconforming Old Lutherans, Kavel and the congregation which supported him decided to seek emigration so that they could worship in freedom. After failing to find sponsorship to America or Russia, Kavel was directed from Hamburg to England, where he met the Baptist banker and philanthropist George Fife Angas (q.v.), chairman of the South Australian Company, who showed interest in settling German agricultural workers in SA. However, the Prussian government at first refused to allow the Lutherans to leave. In the meantime, Kavel learnt English, and conducted services and did mission work among Germans in London.

Eventually, 500 to 600 Prussians—mainly peasants and artisans, and also Kavel's parents, brothers, and sister—emigrated to SA with Angas's help, arriving in 1838-9. Under Kavel's leadership, they established villages at Klemzig near Adelaide, at Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills, and at Glen Osmond in the foothills. They also founded the Lutheran church in Australia, and swore allegiance to the British crown.

A strong, sometimes uncompromising leader in his own community, Kavel was also a respected figure in early SA society. He recognised the need for agricultural development as a sound economic basis for the colony. In 1840, he married the Englishwoman Anne Catherine Pennyfeather, despite initial qualms of conscience because of her different religious background. However, their happy marriage was cut short when she died on Christmas Day 1841 after giving birth to a stillborn son. Kavel remarried in 1851, but remained childless.

Further Lutherans arrived in 1841 under Pastor G D Fritzsche's leadership, they soon settled at Bethany in the Barossa Valley and at Lobethal, not far from Hahndorf. Kavel's Klemzig people also moved to the Barossa Valley, establishing the village of Langmeil (now part of Tanunda). At first the two pastors worked together, but doctrinal differences led to a split in the Lutheran church in 1846 that was to last 120 years. In the following years thousands more Lutheran Germans came to SA and also to the other Australian colonies.

Kavel favoured a strict pietistic exclusivity in religious life, a tradition which long restricted Lutheran participation in wider religious causes and accounts for their relative absence in crosschurch evangelical movements. He also stood by Luther's doctrine of the two swords, which re-inforced the separatism of his rural community. Moreover, Kavel had a leaning toward millennialism, interpreting literally the thousand years of Rev 20. Although keen to see mission work established, he disagreed with the two German Lutheran missionaries who had been sent out by Angas at Kavel's suggestion (q.v. Clamor Schurmann), and an attempt by members of his own congregation to evangelise Aborigines on the River Murray failed. His early vision of founding a mission institute as well as a Lutheran university and college in the Barossa Valley also did not come to fruition but supervising the active religious life of his growing congregations kept him fully occupied. In the decades after his death the Lutherans did establish successful missions to the Aborigines in more remote areas of Australia, but their fuller integration into Australian religious and social affairs took longer, as many of the traditions brought by Kavel gradually weakened.

ADB 2; A Brauer, Under the Southern Cross (Adelaide, 1956, 1985); T Hobart, The United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Australia (Adelaide, 1938, 1985); B Pech, 'Augustus Kavel 1798-1860' (Honours thesis Adelaide Univ, 1967); D Schubert, Kavel's People (Adelaide, 1985)

DAVID SCHUBERT