Heinrich and Dorothea Töpperwien departed from Hamburg, Germany, on 2 May 1849 on the Australia under Captain W H Sleebohm. They sailed first to Rio de Janiero, arriving on 23 July 1849, and then on to Australia, arriving at Port Adelaide in South Australia on Wednesday, 12 September 1849.

Heinrich Philipp Töpperwien was a carpenter. His father, a master charcoal maker, was the mayor of the small village of Lonau in the Harz Mountains, near Herzberg, in the State of Hanover, Germany. Nearly all of the Topperwiens in Australia are descended from Heinrich and his wife, Dorothea.

The 1840s in Germany was a period of social, political and religious disruption and turmoil. Towards the late 1840s a severe business depression halted industrial expansion and aggravated the existing high unemployment in the cities. In the countryside, serious crop failures caused disastrous famines throughout northern Europe. The lack of food resulted in hunger riots in a number of the German states. This social unrest was further inflamed by the news in 1848 that the French government had been overthrown by an insurrection in Paris in February of that year. This resulted in a series of sympathetic revolutions against the governments of the German states. However, by the middle of 1849 the uprisings had been put down and the hopes of the liberals for democracy were crushed. These political problems were compounded by religious problems in some of the German states. In Prussia and other states in the German Confederation, the government attempted to settle longstanding religious disputes by forcing dissenters to accept the discipline of an orthodox and state-sanctioned Lutheran church. Prussia endeavoured to compel the acceptance of a revised liturgy. This resulted in conscientious resistance and a grouping of dissenters into separate sects. As in England when the Stuarts sought to force uniformity on the Puritans, these German dissenters sought refuge and religious freedom overseas in a new land. Whereas the Puritans founded colonies in North America, the Germans established settlements in Australia, mainly in South Australia and Queensland.

Another factor in the emigration to Australia was the fall in the price of lead and silver. The Harz Mountains contained lead and silver mines which had been worked for hundreds of years. From 1825 onwards, the metals extracted from the mines in South America flooded the European markets and put many of the Harz miners out of work. The Hannoverian government assisted many of these people to emigrate to Brazil, Mexico, Texas and South Australia. In South Australia, these German miners were active at Glen Osmond, Kapunda and Burra.

Table of church records obtained from Dieter Töpperwein (in Holland) relating to Topperwien births and marriages in Germany in 17th and 18th Centuries.

© 2000 Bruce Topperwien