Obituaries Australia

Johann Heussler, n.d.

State Library of Queensland, 127316

Full of years, and after a life of usefulness, the Hon. J. C. [Johann Christian] Heussler, M.L.C., has gone to his rest. He was born in June, 1820, and so had passed the allotted span of which the Psalmist wrote by over seventeen years. Mr. Heussler was born at Bokenheim, a suburb, of Frankfurt, Germany, and lived in his native land and in Holland until 1851, when he represented certain Dutch firms in England at the Great Exhibition in London. While in England his attention was drawn to Australia, and he sailed for this country in 1852. In 1854 he came to Queensland, and entered business, and for fifty-three years this was his home. Looking through the Courier files of the middle fifties, Mr. Heussler's name is frequently met, and in 1855 he had made a position here not only as a business man, but as a citizen devoted to the well-being of the territory then known as Moreton Bay, for Queensland had not then been constituted a separate colony. In 1860, he was called to the Legislative Council, but after a brief term of duty there his seat was declared vacant because of his absence from the country, but he was reappointed in 1870, and had a record of thirty years of unbroken service. In the Council he filled highly responsible positions, and his performance of his official duties, as well as his conduct as a member, was ever characterised by kindliness of disposition and courtesy of manner. Those qualities of heart and of mind secured for him many warm friendships, which stood the test of many years of political conflict. Mr. Heussler went to Germany in the days of the Herbert Administration as an immigration agent, and was very successful. Many of the older generation of Germans in the Rosewood, Logan, Albert, and other districts came to this land through his agency, and with them he maintained a close friendship. The older German colonists coming to the free life under the British flag and to the full enjoyment of our free institutions soon became British in sentiment as well as by the legal process of naturalisation. It was natural that those who had hewn their homes from our wilderness, who had struggled heroically and successfully against difficulties, who had made their independence, and whose children and grandchildren had been born here should have grown up in their hearts a deep attachment for the land; but there was given them an example and an inspiration of loyalty by the man who had induced them to come here. Mr. Heussler never forgot his Fatherland, but he never forgot his duties; he trained his family up as loyal British subjects, and though for years he was the German Consul, he was not only a Britisher by naturalisation; and he helped and encouraged his fellow colonists to a like spirit of loyalty. Queensland may gratefully remember him for his work as a pioneer business man and as a devoted servant of his State, but she will ever cherish his memory for the truth and loyalty of his nature and the teaching of duty which he ever gave to the German immigrant.