T. W. Boehm creates a successful Hahndorf Academy but battles finances, conservative Lutheran antagonism

T.W. Boehm and the Hahndorf College (formerly academy) that he'd originated in the Adelaide Hills town in 1857.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia

Schoolmaster T. W. (Traugott Wilhelm) Boehm founded the Adelaide Hills German School that became Hahndorf Adademy and then Hahndorf College. Boehm, with his parents and family, was among the group who arrived at Port Adelaide on the Zebra with Captain Dirk Hahn) in 1839.

He was educated at the local Old Lutheran Church school and from around 1849 had more training to become a teacher. This was firstly under Pastor Gothard Daniel Fritzsche at the Old Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lobethal and at Bethany and Tanunda under the Rev. Dr Carl Wilhelm Ludwig Muecke. 

Boehm began teaching at Hahndorf Lutheran church school in 1854. Three years later, he opened a private school in his home. Fundamentalist Lutherans criticised it for using secular textbooks as well as the traditional Bible and catechism. Dr Muecke experienced the same antagonism from conservative Lutherans, who considered him a dangerous liberal.

Boehm’s school was highly successful and called the Hahndorf Academy in 1870. Next year, a new building was started that grew to two floors with a tower. In 1874, the South Australian government annual grant of £70 to the school ended. In 1877, unable to meet expenses, Boehm sold the school at a loss to the Lutheran Church for £700. He was retained as principal, with the school renamed Hahndorf College in 1879 but the old name persisted.

Among the school's notable students at the school were Thomas Coombe, cricketer, businessman and philanthropist; Louis von Doussa, lawyer and parliamentarian; Alfred von Doussa, businessman, sportsman and politician; Henry Ernest Fuller, architect; Ebenezer Teichelmann, New Zealand surgeon, mountaineer, photographer and conservationist. 

After disputes with the church, Boehm in 1883 bought back the school but was forced by insolvency to close it in 1884. In 1886. he sold the building to D. J. Byard, an Oxford-educated Germanophile, who ran it in the same tradition until 1912 when it closed. Boehm moved to Murtoa in Victoria where he founded a private school in 1887. It also was taken over by the Lutheran Church about 1894 and became Concordia College that moved to Adelaide in 1904. Boehm, who’d remained as music teacher, retired with his daughter to Warracknabeal in Victoria.