College of divinity in North Adelaide from Lutheran legacy of Gotthald Fritsche in education, theology

The Lutheran college of divinity on the corner of Ward and Jeffcott streets, North Adelaide. (The main building was originally for the 19th Century Whinham College.)

The Australian Lutheran College in North Adelaide was at the end of a meandering journey from Pastor Gotthard Fritsche’s small theological college at Lobethal in the Adelaide hills in early 1850s. Fritsche taught students as they walked or rode with him between parishes.

With the death of pioneer Lutheran pastors Kavel (1860) and Fritsche (1863) plus more German migration and renewed interest in bringing the gospel to Aboriginal peoples, Australians Lutherans in Australia looked to Hermannsburg, Basel and Neuendettelsau mission seminaries In Germany, from the 1860s, for pastors.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia briefly tried W.T. Boehm's Hahndorf Academy/College to train pastors and teachers in the 1870s.

This was followed by a switch in the 1880s to Lutheran Church Missouri Synod in the United States of America (USA) to supply pastors and train Australians for the ministry. A theological seminary for pastors and teachers started in Murtoa, Victoria, in 1892. Pastor J.F. Kunstmann of Concordia Seminary, St Louis, USA, was appointed its professor and next year it became Concordia College and Seminary.

In 1921, when five small Lutheran synods combined to form the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Australia, they took the advice of Dr F. Richter, president of the Iowa Synod, and formed Wartburg Seminary in Tanunda  in South Australia's Barossa Valley, with Pastor Johannes P. Löhe as director.

Wartburg (later Immanuel) Seminary and Immanuel College moved to North Adelaide in 1923 and continued until 1966 when the Lutheran Church of Australia came into being after the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia and United Evangelical Lutheran Church merged.

In 1968, Lutheran Teachers College started on the site of the former Concordia Seminary. Luther Seminary, to train pastors, started on the campus of the former Immanuel Seminary in North Adelaide.

The Lutheran School of Theology was started in 1994 with three three independent theological schools of Luther Seminary, Lutheran Teachers College, and the Lutheran School of Theology on the North Adelaide site and operated as Luther Campus. These schools were incorporated into a new Luther Seminary in 1998, with Dr John B Koch as the first principal.

In 2004, Luther Seminary was renamed the Australian Lutheran College, as part of Australian higher education.

In 2009, Australian Lutheran College became a college of the Melbourne College of Divinity, while keeping its theological, ecclesial and financial independence as the tertiary institution of the Lutheran Church of Australia.