Johann Flierl

Johann Flierl
April 1878.
Born	16 April 1858 Kingdom of Bavaria
Died	30 September 1947 (aged 89) Neuendettelsau Mission Station, Finschhafen Province, New Guinea
Education	Missionary Seminary of Neuendettelsau, Franconia
Spouse(s)	Beate Maria Louise Auricht
Children	Wilhelm, Johannes, Dora, Elise
Parent(s)	f: Johann Konrad Flierl m: Kunigunda, née Dannhauser
Church	Lutheran Neuendettelsau Mission Society, South Australian Synod
Ordained	21 April 1878
Writings	Forty Years in New Guinea (Chicago, 1927) See list of publications
Congregations served	Assistant, Bethesda Mission Station, Australia 1878–85 Founder, Elim Mission, North Queensland, Australia, 1885–86 Founder/Director, Simbang Mission Station, near Finschhafen, New Guinea (Kaiser-Wilhelmsland) 1886–1930 Founder/Director, Sattelberg Mission Station, Finschhafen District, New Guinea 1892–1900, Malahang Mission Station
Notes

f: Johann Konrad Flierl

Forty Years in New Guinea (Chicago, 1927)

Johann Flierl (16 April 1858 – 30 September 1947), was a pioneer Lutheran missionary in New Guinea. He established mission schools and organised the construction of roads and communication between otherwise remote interior locations. Under his leadership, Lutheran evangelicalism flourished in New Guinea. He founded the Evangelical Lutheran Mission in the Sattelberg, and a string of filial stations on the northeastern coast of New Guinea including the Malahang Mission Station.

He was educated at the mission seminary in Neuendettelsau, in Kingdom of Bavaria. Prior to finishing his education, the Neuendettelsau Missionary Society sent him to the Bethesda mission, near Hahndorf, in South Australia, where he joined an Old Lutheran community. While there, he felt called to serve in the newly established German protectorate, Kaiser-Wilhelmsland. On the journey to New Guinea, he founded the Hope Vale Mission Station in Cooktown, Queensland (Australia).

In Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, he established a lasting Lutheran presence at the missionary stations of Simbang, near Finschhafen, another on Tami, and a third, on the Sattelberg in the Huon Peninsula, plus several filial mission stations along the coast of the present-day Morobe province.

Johann Flierl was born in rural Germany, near Buchhof, a tiny farmstead (with three houses), near Fürried, in the vicinity of Sulzbach, in the Oberpfalz, Kingdom of Bavaria. He had at least two sisters. At age thirteen, when he finished his studies at the local primary school, his father apprenticed with a blacksmith, but changed his mind when he discovered that his son would have to work on Sundays. Since, from his early youth, Flierl had hoped to serve as a missionary to the North American Indians, his father tried to send him to the seminary in Neuendettelsau, but was told his son needed to be 17 years old before he could enroll in the program. For four years, Flierl worked on his father's farm and continued his education informally; he also learned to knit and reportedly he could knit a sock in a day. He finally enrolled in the seminary in 1875; when he was half through the program, he heard about an opportunity for mission work in a mission founded by Old Lutherans and, after his consecration in April 1878, he left for Australia.