Johann Flierl, was a pioneer Lutheran missionary in New Guinea. He established mission schools and organized 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. 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 western 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. The war also wrought havoc on Flierl's family. The oldest boy, Wilhelm, was arrested in 1915, after two German officers (probably Detzner and another man) appropriated a vessel in an attempt to escape from New Guinea; their gear did not fit into the canoe, and they left behind a box, which caused the Australians to accuse Wilhelm of collaboration. He was incarcerated in Australia, and after the war he was repatriated to Germany. He eventually made his way back to New Guinea, via Texas, in 1927. Flierl's youngest son, Hans (or Johann), went to Germany in 1914 to attend the Neuendettelsau Seminary in Franconia, and instead was conscripted into the German army; after the war, Hans also went to Texas, and eventually returned to New Guinea. (Source: Wikipedia)