Friedrich Krichauff the first German South Australian member of parliament in 1857 for seats south of Adelaide

Friedrich Krichauff represented South Australian parliamentary seats south of Adelaide from 1857 to 1894.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia

Friedrich Krichauff was the first South Australian German elected to the colony’s parliament in 1857. The son of a supreme court judge in the German duchy of Schleswig, Krichauff had been apprenticed at botanic gardens linked to University of Keil where he passed first class in exams after matriculating at the University of Berlin.

When the 1848 social revolution blocked his career as gardener and botanist, he left for South Australia and settled in the Bugle Ranges between Mount Barker and Strathalbyn.

Krichauff  became one of the (mainly Prussian) Germans making up about 7% of the population and the largest “alien” group in the colony. Germans were granted the right to be naturalised (and legally buy land), with “all the rights and capabilities of British-born subjects”, from 1839. But this didn’t include being able to vote or stand for the Legislative Council. Others from the 1848-49 wave, notably Carl Muecke, Frederick (Martin) Basedow and Richard Schomburgk, pressed for this right that was granted as part of the enlarged franchise of the House of Assembly in 1857.

Krichauff, who also was chairman of Macclesfield and Strathalbyn district councils, was elected to the Mount Barker (1857), Onkaparinga (1870) and Victoria (1884) seats in the house and Southern District (1890) in the Legislative Council. He was also commissioner for public works briefly in 1870.

Krichauff was followed as South Australian German members of parliament by Emil Wentzel, Frederick (Martin) Basedow, Rudolph Henning, Robert Homburg, Johann Scherk, Johann Sudholz, Louis von Doussa and Hugo Muecke. By 1899, Friedrich Paech the first of the second-generation members had begun his term in the South Australian parliament.

All but Paech, plus Homburg and Muecke who’d arrived in the colony as children, would have spoken English with an accent. Their ability to communicate in their native tongue was an advantage among the large clusters of German speakers in their electorates.