This edited volume brings together English-translated letters, fieldnotes, reports and diaries from 17 German people living in 19th-century South Australia, offering their accounts of encounters with and observations of Aboriginal peoples and their lifeworlds—a body of material that, until now, was accessible only in German and dispersed across various locations. Truth-telling sits at the heart of this book. It begins with a foreword by Dennis O’Brien, a Kaurna and Narungga man. For O’Brien, the book’s significance lies in breaking the long-standing silences surrounding the early colonisation of Australia. O’Brien ‘writes back’ (p. x) to the translated texts, insisting that more must be written about these histories to illuminate their systemic and structural legacies. Confronting these silences matters: the public must face the history of Indigenous subjugation by understanding how it unfolded—precisely what the translated texts reveal. Such work, O’Brien argues, enables a clearer and more honest understanding of the nation’s past. Acknowledging that not everyone was ‘determined to destroy our lives, language and culture’ (p. x), O’Brien also highlights the German writer’s contributions, such as Lutheran missionaries Christian Gottlob Teichelmann and Clamour Wilhelm Schürmann. This recognition does not diminish the realities of dispossession but rather shows the complexity of the cross-cultural encounters and their documentation, where harms coexisted with efforts to record and understand Indigenous languages and cultural practices. The introduction (pp. 1–20), ‘Einheimisch: German (Mis)Understandings of Indigenous Australians’, by editors and historians Peter Monteath and Matthew Fitzpatrick, frames the book’s interpretive lens. ‘Einheimisch’ translates as ‘native’, ‘indigenous’ or ‘local’, while the parenthetical ‘Mis’ signals both understanding and misunderstanding, suggesting that German perspectives of Indigenous Australians combined genuine attempts at comprehension alongside misinterpretations and biases. The introduction discusses why these papers are presented: to unsettle what is known about South Australia’s history, contribute new understandings, and provide a resource for Aboriginal people and scholars. Throughout, Monteith and Fitzpatrick do not cast Aboriginal people as passive; rather, they underscore their active responses and agency. While the original documents are primary sources, translation—an inherently interpretive act—renders them secondary. Some reflection on the limits and challenges of translation could have enriched the introduction. The introduction sets up the forthcoming sections, which divide the translated texts into four categories: sojourners and immigrants; missionaries; geographers and naturalists; and anthropologists and ethnographers. Each section contains three to five translated papers. A foregrounding discussion of each group guides the reader and provides an overview of the heterogeneity within the German settler community in South Australia. The categories provide a useful heuristic for grouping authors by identity categories, though these boundaries do not always capture the fluidity of individual writing styles and perspectives. For instance, an ‘immigrant’ engages in ethnographic observation, and a ‘missionary’ reflects on human evolution. Many threads of similarity and difference intersect. A close reading of the papers shows complexity across individuals, frontier interactions, and engagements between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. Importantly, the texts are not presented as authoritative but as contestable representations. Each translated text is accompanied by historical and bibliographic information about its author, along with the location of the papers and the identity of the translator. This adds depth and specificity, situating the translations within intellectual, cultural and social traditions. Many sections include footnotes with ‘further reading’ suggestions for those interested in pursuing additional research. The translated texts are informative, descriptive and often confronting. They reproduce the racialised discourse of their time; language, ideas, beliefs and imagery now regarded as discriminatory and offensive. Objectification, subjugation and the codification of racial hierarchies permeate, alongside predictions of ‘Aboriginal extinction’. Scientific practices illuminate evolutionist intellectual origins. For instance, anthropologist Wilhelm Krause's (p. 241) papers refer to his examination of over 200 human skulls, comparing morphology across race, sex and species, exemplifying the logics of physical anthropology at the time. The translated papers expose the classificatory and normative frameworks through which German observers sought to render Aboriginal life legible within their own cultural paradigms. The papers offer detailed accounts of cross-cultural encounters. Missionary Clamour Wilhelm Schürmann (pp. 115–142) describes kangaroo hunts and the ways in which police and government authorities interacted with Aboriginal people. Some texts provide granular descriptions of Aboriginal cultural practices and social organisation. Many of these accounts will help fill significant gaps in specific Indigenous knowledges, either in their overt detail or subtle notations. For example, Erhard Eylmann (pp. 250–262), writing in the German ethnographic tradition, focuses on social structure, burial practices and material culture. Leonhard Adam documents genealogies alongside law and social organisation, naming systems, rites of passage and social hierarchies. Carl Strehlow, identified as a Missionary, (pp. 263–277) addresses religion, cannibalism, sexual relations and what he termed ‘the half-caste problem’. Christian Gottlob Teichelmann (p. 109) discusses acts of sharing based on self-interest and notes that failure to uphold obligations was met with strong condemnation. Sojourner and immigrant Emil Jung (pp. 76–88) documents the ‘Narrinjeri’ language noting interjections, farewell formulas, closed statements and verses of songs. For some people these texts may evoke discomfort and distress. Although the book acknowledges this risk, the reproduction of certain terms and events, without sustained commentary, leaves an unresolved tension between transparency and interpretation. More critical engagement could have strengthened the interpretive framework. For example, it might have incorporated more Aboriginal voices to sit alongside the German writers, perhaps as an afterword. Dhoombak Goobgoowana: A History of Indigenous Australia and the University of Melbourne (Jones et al., 2024, 2025) offers a contrasting example, pairing archival evidence with analysis and Indigenous voices to interrogate colonial narratives and their ongoing impact. However, such an endeavour does not appear to be the main purpose of this book. Its primary intention, I suspect, is to create space for interpretation and future use. The translated papers do deliver: they are a rich resource that offer access to experiences of cross-cultural encounters and observations of specific cultural practices, while also making visible the violence embedded in historical representation. An Indigenous South: German Writers on Colonial South Australia holds value not only for Aboriginal communities and Australian history more broadly, but also for researchers keen to engage with these previously hard-to-access sources. It invites critical conversations about translation, interpretation and the historical record. The book's significance will grow if researchers engage these translations dialogically—combining them with Indigenous voices, epistemologies and scholarship—because it offers fertile ground for inquiries that privilege multiplicity over singular narratives and intellectual partnerships across disciplines and communities. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
Catherine Massola (Fri,) studied this question.