Hermannsburg, Northern Territory in the context of "Aboriginal Australians"

The Hermannsburg School, also known as the Hermannsburg School of Modern Art is an art movement, or art style, which began at the Hermannsburg Mission in the 1930s. The best known artist of the style is Albert Namatjira. The movement is characterised by watercolours of western-style landscapes that depict the often striking colours of the Australian outback.

Albert Namatjira (pronounced [namacɪra]; born Elea Namatjira; 28 July 1902 – 8 August 1959) was an Arrernte painter from the MacDonnell Ranges in Central Australia, widely considered one of the most notable Australian artists. As a pioneer of contemporary Indigenous Australian art, he was arguably one of the most famous Indigenous Australians of his generation. He was the first Aboriginal artist to receive popularity from a wide Australian audience.

A member of the Western Arrernte people, Namatjira was born and raised at the remote Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission, 126 km west-southwest from Alice Springs. He showed interest in art from an early age but it was not until 1934 (aged 32) and under the guidance of Rex Battarbee that he began to paint seriously. Namatjira's richly detailed, Western art-influenced watercolours of the outback departed significantly from the abstract designs and symbols of traditional Aboriginal art, and inspired the Hermannsburg School of painting. He became a household name in Australia and reproductions of his works hung in many homes throughout the nation.

Carl Friedrich Theodor Strehlow (23 December 1871 – 20 October 1922) was an anthropologist, linguist and genealogist who served on two Lutheran missions in remote parts of Australia from May 1892 to October 1922. He was at Killalpaninna Mission (also known as Bethesda) in northern South Australia, from 1892 to 1894, and then Hermannsburg, 80 miles (130 km) west of Alice Springs, from 1894 to 1922. Strehlow was assisted by his wife Friederike, who played a central role in reducing the high infant mortality which threatened Aboriginal communities all over Australia after the onset of white settlement.

As a polymath with an interest in natural history, and informed by the local Aranda people, Strehlow provided plant and animal specimens to museums in Germany and Australia. Strehlow also collaborated on the first complete translation of the New Testament into an Aboriginal language (Dieri), published by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1897. He later translated the New Testament into the Western Aranda language and also produced a reader and service book in this language. His son Theodor (Ted) Strehlow, who was 14 at the time of his father's death, built his career in part on the researches carried out by his father.