Johann Friedrich Wilhelm SPIESECKE

SPIESECKE, JOHANN FRIEDRICH WILHELM (b. Stucken, near Belzig, Prussia, 23 July 1820; d. Ebenezer, Vic, 24 June 1877). Moravian missionary to the Aborigines.

The son of August and Louise Spiesecke, he embarked on the Sibella at London on 12 Oct 1849 for Melbourne with the Rev Andrew Taeger, in response to the request from Christians in Victoria to the Moravian Brethren (q.v. Hagenauer) in Germany to send missionaries to establish work among the Aborigines. They arrived in Melbourne on 25 Feb 1850 and were welcomed by the Superintendent of the Port Phillip District, Charles La Trobe and Bp Charles Perry. They spent a few months in the Loddon district with a sympathetic pastoralist, Archibald Campbell, and studied the local dialect before opening a mission at Lake Boga near Swan Hill in Oct 1850. They found it difficult to encourage the Aborigines to settle on the station. Opposition from pastoralists, the effects of disease and the gold rush and uncertainty about land tenure led Taeger to close the mission in 1856 and they returned to Germany.

Spiesecke was ordained at the Moravian headquarters at Herrnhut in January 1856 and returned to Melbourne with the Rev F A Hagenauer (q.v.) on the 7 May 1868, in response to a further invitation to establish a mission. They travelled to the Wimmera, where a Presbyterian layman, Horatio Ellerman provided land from his Antwerp station for the establishment of Ebenezer Mission, which opened on 10 Jan 1859. He opened a school and on 12 Aug 1860, when a church building was dedicated, baptised a young man Nathanael Pepper (q.v.). Spiesecke's commitment to this work was expressed in these words on 6 Feb 1860, 'I desire nothing more sincerely than to carry on and to complete the task I was privileged to commence ten years ago'.

A Moravian Sister, Christina Johanna Fricke arrived in Melbourne in 1861 and m. Spiesecke in St Paul's church on 29 May 1861: a daughter was born on 10 March 1862. In July 1862 he travelled to Melbourne with Nathanael Pepper to discuss the extension of Moravian mission work with supporters. Hagenauer had left to establish a new mission in Gippsland in Jan 1862. Spiesecke continued with the development of the mission, overseeing the construction of houses, sheep and garden work schooling and the work of evangelism. By 1867, seventeen people had been baptised and Nathanael Pepper was sharing in the preaching and teaching. A new church was dedicated on 1 Jan 1875.

Failing health forced Spiesecke to seek medical aid in Melbourne in 1875 and he died at Ebenezer in the presence of his friend Hagenauer and Aboriginal residents of Ebenezer who mourned his passing and provided the coffin for his burial next to the church at Ebenezer. Ebenezer Mission was closed in 1904 following the decline and dispersion of the population.

J Harris, One Blood (Sutherland, 1990); A Massola, Aboriginal Mission Stations in Victoria (Melbourne, 1970)

BILL EDWARDS