Friedrich Adolf Hermann Kempe

Pastors H. Kempe, W.F. Schwarz and L.G. Schulze, first missionaries at Finke River Mission, c 1880 Friedrich Adolf Hermann Kempe, known as Hermann Kempe, (26 March 1844 – 8 March 1928) was a Lutheran missionary and pastor who co-founded the Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission, now Ntaria community, in Central Australia. He lived there from 1877 to 1893.

Early life Kempe was born in Deuben, Germany and, after completing his schooling, worked first at a coal mine before becoming apprenticed as a joiner. In this role he travelled significantly and converted to Christianity which led to him beginning study at the Hermannsburg Mission Seminary in December 1870; he was ordained on 6 May 1875.

This journey took them 20 months and they arrived on 4 June 1977 at their selected location and began building soon after.

On 10 April 1878 Kempe was joined by his fiancée, Marie Henriette Dorothea Queckenstedt (primarily recorded as Dorothee), who he married on her journey there at Dalhousie Springs around 1 March 1878. At their wedding ceremony they used water canteens for an altar and decorated a tent with greenery. Dorothee had travelled there alongside Johanne Wilhelmine Schulze who married Schwarz and they became the first European women to settle in Central Australia.

While at Hermannsburg Kempe became a plant collector (including mosses and algae) and a contributor to the Natural History Museum, via Ferdinand von Mueller. Currently the National Herbarium of Victoria holds more than 800 of his specimens.

He also learned to speak and read the Arrernte language and delivered sermons to the Arrernte people living at the mission in this language. Some of the earliest pieces that Kempe translated were Christmas carols and hymns which were first sung at the Christmas Eve service in 1880. While language learning took place Kempe also attempted to bridge the language gap using coloured drawings to illustrate the bible.

Kempe also published a guide to grammar and a dictionary of the language entitled 'A Grammar and Vocabulary of the Language Spoken by the Aborigines of the MacDonnell Ranges, South Australia' (1890) which contained approximately 2,000 Arrernte words. He also published the first book of Christian instruction in Arrernte in entitled 'Galtjintana-pepa : kristianirberaka mbontala(1891). This was later used by Carl Strehlow, who joined the mission after Kempe had departed, in his Arrernte service book Galtjindinjamea-pepa: Aranda-Wolambarinjaka' (1904).

The first baptism of people living at the mission took place on 30 May 1881 when seven teenagers chose to.