Summary

Album contains photos relating to a Lutheran mission at Finschhafen, in the then Mandated Territory of New Guinea. Inscription on adhesive label on cover: '196 (circled) Papua New Guinea. Photographer: J. F. W. Schulz. B/W Prints: 23'. Typed sheet inside front cover of the album states: 'Presented to His Excellency the Administrator General Wisdom On the occasion of his visit to the Lutheran Mission Finschhafen. Signed J.F.W. Schulz, Manager Lutheran Mission F/Hafen'.

Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Schulz was a schoolteacher and printer, born in 1883 in South Australia, to Prussian-born parents. He secured a number of teaching positions from 1901 until 1917, when a wartime closure of all Lutheran schools occurred. After working for several local businesses, Schulz spent eighteen months in 1921-22 as storekeeper at the Lutheran Mission, Finschhafen, in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea. This date of the photographs can be attributed based on the dates he lived at Finschhafen. A town and port at the tip of Huon Peninsula, it was discovered in 1884 by the German researcher Otto Finsch. In 1885 the German colony in New Guinea created a town on the site and named it after the Finsch. It would eventually be established as a large Lutheran mission station before World War II. During 1942-1943 it was a Japanese air base until it was retaken by Australian forces, and made an allied military base.

Physical Description

Small album brown with card cover and bound with black string. Containing brown window-mount pages. White adhesive label (top right corner of cover) with handwritten number and inscription. Typed dedication of album on a sheet is adhered to inside front cover.

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