Australian Dictionary of Biography

Carl Friedrich Adolph Strempel (1831-1908), Lutheran pastor, was born on 10 September 1831 at Posen, Prussia, third son of Carl Ferdinand Strempel, government waterways inspector, and his wife Marie, née Crzikacrzinska. Educated at a private school and then at the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium in Posen, Strempel and a brother and sister migrated to South Australia with Pastor Phillipe Oster and his family, arriving in the Gellert on 21 December 1847. His parents and the rest of the family followed in 1851.

Strempel and his friend Philipp Jacob Oster enrolled at Lobethal College where, under the instruction and guidance of Pastor G. D. Fritzsche, they passed a preliminary examination in 1851 and matriculated in 1852. They studied theology, graduated from the college and on 29 August 1855 were ordained. Strempel became pastor of the Hahndorf parish on 21 October. Next year he was elected to the Church Council and was its secretary for forty years. On 5 May 1858 he married Marie Charlotte Friederike, daughter of Rev. H. Meyer of Bethany, South Australia. For the next forty-five years he continued to serve his parish as well as the congregations on Yorke Peninsula and at Mount Gambier; he also cared for Lutherans in Melbourne and Western Australia.

In 1864 Strempel was appointed chairman of a committee to look into the establishment of a teachers' training college. He became director of the boarding section of Hahndorf College after it opened in 1876 in the buildings of Hahndorf Academy, where he had been Latin and Greek master. After the college was sold in 1883 to meet its debts he continued to train teachers for Church schools. He was co-editor of the Lutherische Kirchenbote für Australien in 1874-80. Having been a leading member of most church boards and commissions, and naturalized by 1872, he was president of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia in 1897-1903. He was a faithful and loving pastor to his parishioners and often used his wide medical knowledge for their benefit. At his jubilee in 1905 they presented him with two addresses and a purse of sovereigns. An honest and dependable counsellor, he was an able theologian and a conscientious church official and leader. He died on 20 January 1908 survived by seven of his fifteen children. He was buried in the Hahndorf cemetery.