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Story: Nelson region

Johann Heine, Upper Moutere, 1880s

Johann Heine, Upper Moutere, 1880s

The retired Reverend Johann Heine sits reading in his rocking chair in the garden of the Lutheran parsonage at Upper Moutere in the 1880s. Heine had arrived in Nelson with the first German-speaking immigrants in March 1843. He moved to the Upper Moutere valley in the 1850s, and became the community pastor. The Heine family enlarged an existing house to 15 rooms, the largest of which served as a schoolroom and church until a small church was built in 1864. The German immigrants named the settlement Sarau after a beautiful village in northern Germany. Both names – Sarau and Upper Moutere – were used until the First World War, when German names were anglicised, and Sarau was dropped.

Using this item

Alexander Turnbull Library, Miss C. Heine Collection (PAColl-2232)

Reference: 1/2-032576-G

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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How to cite this page

Carl Walrond, Nelson region – European settlement, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/28825/johann-heine-upper-moutere-1880s (accessed 23 June 2026).

Story by Carl Walrond, published 3 September 2010, updated 1 August 2015.

Comments

Don Allen
07 September 2011
Heine was one of four Lutheran clergy who had arrived, at the young Wakefield settlement of Nelson, with the first German speaking migrants, aboard the ship St Pauli, on 14 March 1843. They came ashore on the 16th. Heine was one of two missioners who had accompanied two ordained pastors. He would be ordained as a pastor at Nelson, on 12 August 1849, by his former colleague at Nelson – Pastor JFH Wohlers, now of Ruapuke Island, in Foveaux Strait. Heine moved, with most of the remaining Nelson Germans to the upper Moutere valley in the early 1850s. His home (depicted) was built by a fellow settler – Cordt Heinrich Bensemann, my great-great-great grandfather. Its remains still stood in the early 2000s. Sarau/Upper Moutere's first Lutheran church was, following an 1863 community meeting, erected in 1864 and was consecrated on 18 Feb 1865. Due to the effects of the previously unknown borer beetle, the original kahikatea church was replaced in 1905 – by one built of rimu! Pastor Heine was survived by his widow – Anna, daughter of Cordt Bensemann. Anna (Bensemann) Heine would die on 8 January 1910. At least two similar photographs survive, within the Bensemann and Heine families, indicated as dating from about the same period - the late 1880s.