BETHANY : HERBERGE CHRISTI

LUTHERAN

PAUL SCOTT

HISTORY
 

Year Built: 1883

Address: 184 Bethany Road, Bethany, South Australia 5352

 

The Village
Bethany is a small village about 2 km south-east of Tanunda in the Barossa Valley. It was originally named Bethanien or sometimes Neu Schlesien - New Silesia, but was changed during the First World War in an attempt to remove all German place names from Australia. Similarly, the German-language school was forced to close by the state government in 1917, with 60 students at the time. Bethany was the first settlement in the Barossa Valley area. It was settled in 1842, by Prussian immigrants who had leased land from George Fife Angas. The large portion of these initial settlers had arrived in 1841, with Pastor Gotthard Fritzsche on the Skjold.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethany,_South_Australia

 

The Church
The title means ‘Dwelling Place of Christ’. The first church in Bethany was built in 1845 by pioneer settlers under the direction of Pastor Gotthard Daniel Fritzsche. It had mud walls, a thatch roof, and was built on the site of the present Lutheran manse on the north side of Bethany Road. The present church was built in 1883 by J. Basedow of Tanunda, from stone quarried out of the eastern Barossa foothills. The adjacent school and teacher’s residence was added in 1888 by local builder F. Kassebaum & Co.

‘A Historical Walk of Bethany’