George Fife Angas loans August Kavel's religious refugees cost of getting to South Australia; recoups outlay + 10%
Pastor August Kavel's German religious refugees group stayed on George Fife Angas's land at Klemzig (or Klemzic), north of Adelaide, before moving to the Barossa Valley. The Illustration of Klemzig life is by Angas's artist son George French Angas.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
George Fife Angas, a pious Protestant Dissenter, loaned £8000 to pastor August Kavel and 200 of his southern Prussian Lutheran followers, seeking religious freedom, for the charter of four ships – the Prince George, Bengalee, Zebra and Catharina – to bring them to South Australia.
Though he had a reputation for benevolence, Angas was always a shrewd businessman. He knew the German immigrants would ensure a good supply of workers for the gentry and keep labour prices down. The German settlers later rescued Angas financially by buying Barossa Valley land from him at 10 times the price he had paid for it, while at the same time paying 10% on their debt. Angas was often tagged with the phrase: “Philanthropy plus 10%”.
As chairman of the South Australian Company, leading the early development of the colony, Angas was anxious to recruit fellow pious Protestant Dissenters to the province. Pastor Kavel’s devout German families were the largest group that he persuaded to emigrate to the South Australia.
Kavel, the pastor in Klepsk (Klemzig) in Prussia, where a bitter church struggle rose from the King of Prussia's attempt in 1817 to unify Lutherans and Calvinists. Kavel, at first, followed the royal decree but found it against his conscience. In 1835, he resigned and was sent by his congregation to Hamburg, to seek aid to migrate to America to worship freely.
In Hamburg, Kavel heard of Angas and went to England. Angas sent his chief clerk Charles Flaxman to Prussia. He returned with a favourable report after meeting Kavel's group. When the South Australian Company refused to cover the cost of the transporting Kavel’s group to the colony, Angas made a loan to the emigrants for the cost of securing ships.
After long negotiations with the Prussian government over exit permits, Kavel’s group left on the Prince George in 1838. On arrival, many of them became tenants on Angas’s land at Klemzig, just north of the Adelaide city site.
Meanwhile, Flaxman was buying land in his own name, including the right to seven special surveys (each 4,000acres), on the Rhine and Gawler rivers in the Barossa Range for £28,000. On his recall to London, he was in dire financial straits; his biggest creditor was G. F. Angas & Co., so he offered the Barossa land to Angas, demanding 10% commission and the first pick of 4000 acres.
Angas refused at first, but on learning how good the land was, he made his own terms in 1840 and took it all. To meet this unexpected outlay, Angas sold his shares in the Newcastle business and the Union Bank, and the South Australian Company agreed to accommodate him in meeting calls on his 1300 shares.
Inspired by the German geologist Johannes Menge, Kavel negotiated with Flaxman for his group to take over a much larger area in the Barossa valley. Angas's Barossa Valley land deal put him into financial difficulties that relied on Kavel’s group later repaying their loan.
While still in England, Angas also provided financial assistance to Lutheran Mission Society of Dresden to send pastors to work among the Aboriginal people of South Australia. Angas believed Aboriginal people should have a place in the colony's society, even if it was as "the lowest class of industrial labour". In 1860, Angas had to admit that he knew of no subject in the whole history of South Australia that had been as shamefully shirked as the welfare of the Aboriginal population.