Join us for Kaffee und Kuchen in March where guest speaker Dr Greg Lockwood will speak about The Schürmann Diary.

 Monday 30 March
 1pm to 3pm 

 Langmeil Centre, 5-7 Maria St, Tanunda

Dr Greg Lockwood, The Schürmann Diary 1838-1845, translated from the German
The Dresden Mission Society (DMS) instructed its missionaries to SA’s Aborigines to keep a diary and send them a copy every quarter.  Clamor Wilhelm Schuermann (1815-1893), together with his
colleague, Christian Gottlob Teichelmann, were the first missionaries to work among the Kaurna of
the Adelaide Plains.  Encouraged by Governor Gawler, who befriended them aboard ship, they
learned the language and published a grammar and vocabulary.  Late in 1840, when Gawler asked
Schuermann to become Sub-Protector of Aborigines in Port Lincoln, CWS again learned the Parnkalla
(Barngarla) language and published a guide to it.  As the two missionaries had arrived in SA on 12
October 1838 (a month before Pastor Kavel and his people), their records provide a first-hand
perspective on life in the infant colony.  Adelaide University linguists have revived the Kaurna and
Parnkalla languages on the basis of the missionaries’ work. Schuermann’s Diary, attractively
published by Wakefield Press, puts paid to the common view that all missionaries to the Aborigines
were guilty of ‘linguicide’, ‘genocide’, and cultural destruction.

Bio
  Dr Greg Lockwood is the great great grandson of Clamor Wilhelm Schuermann, a missionary from
Dresden to South Australia’s Aboriginal people.  Thanks to a tutorial with Dr Lois Zweck in the old
German script, he revised earlier drafts of Schurmann’s diary of his years in Adelaide and Port
Lincoln (1838-45).  Greg had majored in German and Greek at Adelaide University (1964) and gained
a B.Ed. at Melbourne University (1966).  Graduating from Luther Seminary in 1970, he was called to
serve in PNG:  Balob Teachers College in Lae (1971-73), Kitip Teacher Training School via Mt Hagen
(1974-76) and Highlands Lutheran Seminary on Mt Hagen’s outskirts (1977-1987).  ‘Kaffee and
Kuchen’ at HLS with German, sometimes American colleagues, was at 4pm.  Returning to Australia,
he served as pastor at Bridgewater, SA (1988-90), taught in the US through the ‘90s, took up parish
ministry again (Bendigo, 2000-2004), then taught at ALC (2005-2011).