Daniel Lemke, Johann Krüger bring Germanic tonality from Bach's time to earliest organs built in Barossa Valley
Teacher, farmer, mail contractor and church organ builder Daniel Lemke with wife Marie Lemke and their children. At left: The organ built around 1857 by Lemke for Immanuel Lutheran Church at Light Pass in South Australia's Barossa Valley.
Daniel Heinrich Lemke and Johann Carl August Krüger, early organ builders in South Australia’s Barossa Valley, brought clarity and tonal sparkle to their instruments, influenced by the great 18th century organ builder Gottfried Silbermann, prominent around J. S. Bach's time.
Lemke’s organ building only was done in the time spared from his energetic enterprises. Born in 1832 at Grabowo Hauland, Posen, he migrated from Germany to South Australia in 1855 and settled at Hoffnungsthal in the Barossa Valley. He soon became naturalised, allowing him to buy land and begin farming. After a few years, Lemke decided he wanted to be a teacher and started at Gruenberg, Moculta, school in 1861.That year he married Louise Caroline Saegenschnitter at Gnadenberg (near Moculta) and they had five children.
While teaching at Eden Valley and Gruenberg, Lemke is reputed to have built 13 organs but only four survived into the 20th Century. He used the same design – a single four-octave keyboard – but his organs displayed remarkable Germanic tonal variety. The oldest, built in 1874, was at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Gruenberg, and the second in 1875 at St John's Lutheran Church, Ebenezer. He built another organ for the Immanuel Lutheran Church at Light Pass. (Later sold to the Lutheran Church at Frankston, Victoria.) Lemke made his own wooden pipes for his organs, all blown with foot treadles by the organist. When Lemke was playing the organ, his son Gustav pumped the bellows.
While living at Sandleton, east of the Mount Lofty Ranges, Lemke was a teacher, farmer, postmaster and mail contractor. The Sandleton post office opened in 1881 in Lemke’s house and he became the mail contractor for the next three years for a total payment of £135. His daughter Berthe had the contract between 1889 and 1892.
During the 1880s Barossa Valley drought, Lemke bought four cereal strippers on credit and took them to the Riverina, New South Wales, to sell. With his son and three daughters walking the full distance and looking after the horses that pulled the machines, Lemke impressed the Riverina farmers who bought the four strippers. With the money left over, after paying Linke the manufacturer, Lemke put in his own crop and, in 1891, harvested 700 acres averaging 20 bushels. His son Gustav later became a farmer at Sandleton.
Also a farmer, the first organ builder to settle in the Barossa Valley was Johann Carl August Krüger. Born in 1814, he was employed aas an organist and organ builder in Priebus (later in Poland) before migrating to South Australia in 1848. Krüger set up a small farm at Hoffnungsthal (Valley of Hope) near Lyndoch in the Barossa Valley.
In 1850, he built a pipe organ for St Jacobi Lutheran Church. Its constrction was considered unique as the casework was also the frame,– with all the mortises, cornices and dovetailings finished to a high standard. The only surviving organ from his time in South Australia (before moving to Victoria) was at St Thomas Lutheran Church, Stockwell. Another Krüger pipe organ, for St. Michael’s Lutheran Church, Hochkirch, Victoria, from 1863 to 1928, eventually went to Tanunda Museum.
Krüger may have made both metal and wooden pipes for his organs, and the rough workmanship throughout the organ indicated being made under difficult conditions. His metal pipes were possibly the first metal pipes made in the South Australia colony.
The other prominent German organ builder in 19th South Australia was Johann Wilhelm Wolff who made more than 20 instruments for churches mainly in Adelaide city and suburbs.
