Rev Carl Strehlow studied at Neuendettelsau Mission Seminary which gave him a firm grounding in linguistics. His first posting was at Bethesda Lutheran mission at Killalpaninna on Lake Eyre in 1892. Within 6 months he had learned the Diyari language and with Rev JG Reuther translated the New Testament. In 1894 he was sent to Hermannsburg to re-established the mission which had been in abeyance for several years. He stayed there until his death in 1922. He was joined there by his fiancee Friedericke Keysser who worked with the Arrernte women as well as bearing 6 children between 1897 and 1908. A German amateur anthropologist Baron Moritz von Leonardi became an intellectual mentor and encourgaed Strehlow to research Arrernte culture and society which was published over several years as Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stamme in Zentral-Australien (1907-1920) by the Ethnological Museum of Frankfurt (it has never been published in English although there unpublished translations). Stehlow also undertook translations of religious texts into Arrernte.
Some of Strehlow's anthropological and evangelical work was criticised at the time in Australia and during WWI German Lutheran missionaries were regarded with suspicion by some Australians. Nevertheless his work has had lasting impact and his youngest son Theodore returned to central Australia as a linguist building on some of his father's work.