In November , fighting stopped and an Armistice was signed. The world would never be the same again. General View of Germanton, c. The town was originally called Ten Mile Creek in By the name had evolved in to the official name of Germanton. In the name Germanton was officially gazetted. On 24 August the town was renamed Holbrook in honour of Lt.
Norman Douglas Holbrook, a decorated wartime submarine captain and winner of the Victoria Cross. Holbrook commanded the submarine HMS B During the campaign for the Conscription Referendum the large German community in the Riverina were selected for special attention. To some it seemed that people of German origin were to blame for the lack of success of the first conscription referendum in After the failure of the second Conscription Referendum in the anti-German campaign was increased further.
People of German descent were stopped from joining the Army, holding civil positions such as local councillors or Justices of the Peace. The outbreak of war was greeted in Tasmania with enthusiastic expressions of loyalty to the British Empire. Enemy aliens were quickly identified usually by German or foreign heritage and speculation. An internment camp established at Claremont then moved to Bruny Island.
The town of Bismarck was renamed Collinsvale, and many Tasmanians of German descent, the largest non-British national group in the population, were persecuted. In one case Gustav Weindorfer was accused of being a German spy and using his chalet at Cradle Mountain as a radio station to contact German ships. He was expelled from the Ulverstone Club and his dog was poisoned. In Western Australia the German community were immediately placed under surveillance on the outbreak of war. Prominent members of the German Community were investigated.
Ulbrich was sent to Holsworthy where he remained until German business and individuals were under constant scrutiny. A Health Inspector in Geraldton, Western Australia claimed in a memo that there was a fleet of sea going yachts owned by Germans that appeared to be on fishing trips and often disappeared for weeks and were capable of carrying wireless equipment.
Reports by informers were never ending and suspicion was everywhere. Austrian, Croatian and Italian miners were sacked and run out of town in the Kalgoorlie Mines on demands from the mining trade unions. Business leaders had Communist Party members listed as unpatriotic enemy sympathisers and interned with the assistance of compliant State and Commonwealth Governments. The communists had opposed the war and nationalism maintaining that workers would kill other workers in the interest of capitalism, which largely proved to be correct.
For home front Australia the Great War became a blur of the many themes that had dominated nineteenth century Australian life- the working mans paradise vs. However for German Australia it meant sustained scrutiny, suspicion and persecution that eventually erased nearly all traces of the Australian- German community from the cultural landscape in a hysteric ethnic purge. It might seem strange to think that there is a noticeable German influence in Australia , but in fact, there has been a significant German presence in the island continent since the early days of European colonization in the nineteenth century.
Waves of German immigration to Australia have paralleled historical events in the German-speaking parts of Europe. German migrants to Australia have brought with them their language and many aspects of their culture, which over the years has become modified and merged into the broader Australian way of life. The largest German waves of immigration into Australia took place in the middle to the late nineteenth century and again before the middle of the twentieth.
Many came because of religious persecution at home or because of a thirst for exploration or a desire for economic improvement. Many of the first Germans in Australia settled in Melbourne and then expanded across Victoria and into South Australia, where they still remain as a significant cultural and linguistic presence in the Barossa Valley.
Before and after the Second World War German Jews fled their homeland, as they did to many other parts of the world, escaping persecution. Migration from Germany to Australia of course stopped during the first and second world wars, and many Australians of German origin were interned during the Second World War, but as soon as the war ended a new wave of migrants arrived, the numbers gradually dropping as Germany itself recovered and developed into an economic powerhouse of its own.
Australians of original German ancestry still possess a unique culture that is part of German origin and partly Australian, albeit much reduced compared to the past. Although many migrated to America, which involved a much shorter and cheaper trip, a substantial number settled in South Australia.
By the mid s there were enough Germans in South Australia to make it worthwhile to have their own newspaper. In some of the earlier German settlers formed the German Immigration Society to help newly arrived German migrants settle in South Australia. The Society's aims were to find work for them and protect them against 'the knavery of those who are ever ready to pray upon the unwary'. During the early s more than two thousand German miners migrated from the Harz Mountains where mining had become costly, outdated and had to compete with very low prices.
Many of these men found work in South Australia's copper mines and smelters. The Germans became strongly associated with the Barossa Valley , where they established the towns of Bethany , Langmeil, Ebenezer, Hoffnungsthal and several others. German immigrants, and later their descendants, helped with the opening up of agricultural lands in the mid north, as far north as Quorn and Bruce on the Willochra Plains and the Wirrabara area.
One of these was Claus Botherim, born in Schleswig Holstein. As a sailor he was involved in the German Danish war and while in the Southern Ocean decided to stay in Australia. He settled near Tothill Creek and married Margaret Murray. In he and his family moved to the Wirrabara forest where he found work at Norman's Gully. Claus Botherim changed his name to Bathern and bought his own bullock team and eventually bought land in the Hundred of Apilla.
In he used thirty bullocks to haul a steam engine into the forest to drive the circular saw. At times he acted as a saw sharpener, scribe, teacher and confidant. They were not interested in land speculation they rather worked their lands to sell the produce or their labour. At the same time they reproduced a pattern of self-contained village settlement previously tried and proven in Europe. Most of the early German immigrants were extremely poor and therefore migration to South Australia was an improvement in both economic and religious matters.
Although there were many exceptions, most Germans kept mainly to themselves and married their own kind, kept up their language, customs, such as the Liedertafel and skittle alley, religion and education system. Wherever they went they established their German schools. Within six months of arrival many of the Germans showed a willingness to sign the oath of allegiance and on 24 May , Queen Victoria's birthday, German men took the oath. Among these were members of the Kavel and Thiele families and Johannes Menge.
Four months later ten of these men were naturalised and were now able to buy Crown land. Only a small percentage of these hard working German immigrants settled in or around Adelaide. Those who did came mainly from the middle, professional or cultured classes of the German cities. They established many important industries such as silversmithing, winemaking and the weaving of woolen cloth.
Another was Theo Heuzenroeder. Born in Schwanewede, near Bremen where he was educated, he came to Adelaide in
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