Vikings to U-Boats: The German Experience in Newfoundland and Labrador 9780773577091

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vikings to u-boats

ii mcgill-queen’s studies in ethnic history series one: donald harman akenson, editor 1 Irish Migrants in the Canadas A New Approach Bruce S. Elliott 2 Critical Years in Immigration Canada and Australia Compared Freda Hawkins (Second edition, 1991) 3 Italians in Toronto Development of a National Identity, 1875–1935 John E. Zucchi 4 Linguistics and Poetics of Latvian Folk Songs Essays in Honour of the Sesquicentennial of the Birth of Kr. Barons Vaira Vikis-Freibergs 5 Johan Schrøder’s Travels in Canada, 1863 Orm Øverland 6 Class, Ethnicity, and Social Inequality Christopher McAll 7 The Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict The Maori, the British, and the New Zealand Wars James Belich 8 White Canada Forever Popular Attitudes and Public Policy toward Orientals in British Columbia W. Peter Ward (Second edition, 1990) 9 The People of Glengarry Highlanders in Transition, 1745–1820 Marianne McLean 10 Vancouver’s Chinatown Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875–1980 Kay J. Anderson

11 Best Left as Indians Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840–1973 Ken Coates 12 Such Hardworking People Italian Immigrants in Postwar Toronto Franca Iacovetta 13 The Little Slaves of the Harp Italian Child Street Musicians in Nineteenth-Century Paris, London, and New York John E. Zucchi 14 The Light of Nature and the Law of God Antislavery in Ontario, 1833–1877 Allen P. Stouffer 15 Drum Songs Glimpses of Dene History Kerry Abel 16 Louis Rosenberg Canada’s Jews Edited by Morton Weinfeld 17 A New Lease on Life Landlords, Tenants, and Immigrants in Ireland and Canada Catharine Anne Wilson 18 In Search of Paradise The Odyssey of an Italian Family Susan Gabori 19 Ethnicity in the Mainstream Three Studies of English Canadian Culture in Ontario Pauline Greenhill 20 Patriots and Proletarians The Politicization of Hungarian Immigrants in Canada, 1923–1939 Carmela Patrias 21 The Four Quarters of the Night The Life-Journey of an Emigrant Sikh Tara Singh Bains and Hugh Johnston

Introduction

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22 Cultural Power, Resistance and Pluralism Colonial Guyana, 1838–1900 Brian L. Moore

24 The Development of Elites in Acadian New Brunswick, 1861– 1881 Sheila M. Andrew

23 Search Out the Land The Jews and the Growth of Equality in British Colonial America, 1740–1867 Sheldon J. Godfrey and Judith C. Godfrey

25 Journey to Vaja Reconstructing the World of a Hungarian-Jewish Family Elaine Kalman Naves

mcgill-queen’s studies in ethnic history series two: john zucchi, editor 1 Inside Ethnic Families Three Generations of PortugueseCanadians Edite Noivo

9 Demography, State and Society Irish Migration to Britain, 1921–1971 Enda Delaney

2 A House of Words Jewish Writing, Identity, and Memory Norman Ravvin

10 The West Indians of Costa Rica Race, Class, and the Integration of an Ethnic Minority Ronald N. Harpelle

3 Oatmeal and the Catechism Scottish Gaelic Settlers in Quebec Margaret Bennett

11 Canada and the Ukrainian Question, 1939–1945 Bohdan S. Kordan

4 With Scarcely a Ripple Anglo-Canadian Migration into the United States and Western Canada, 1880–1920 Randy William Widdis

12 Tortillas and Tomatoes Transmigrant Mexican Harvesters in Canada Tanya Basok

5 Creating Societies Immigrant Lives in Canada Dirk Hoerder 6 Social Discredit Anti-Semitism, Social Credit, and the Jewish Response Janine Stingel 7 Coalescence of Styles The Ethnic Heritage of St John River Valley Regional Furniture, 1763–1851 Jane L. Cook 8 Brigh an Orain / A Story in Every Song The Songs and Tales of Lauchie MacLellan Translated and edited by John Shaw

13 Old and New World Highland Bagpiping John G. Gibson 14 Nationalism from the Margins The Negotiation of Nationalism and Ethnic Identities among Italian Immigrants in Alberta and British Columbia Patricia Wood 15 Colonization and Community The Vancouver Island Coalfield and the Making of the British Columbia Working Class John Douglas Belshaw 16 Enemy Aliens, Prisoners of War Internment in Canada during the Great War Bohdan S. Kordan

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17 Like Our Mountains A History of Armenians in Canada Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill 18 Exiles and Islanders The Irish Settlers of Prince Edward Island Brendan O’Grady 19 Ethnic Relations in Canada Institutional Dynamics Raymond Breton Edited by Jeffrey G. Reitz

20 A Kingdom of the Mind The Scots’ Impact on the Development of Canada Edited by Peter Rider and Heather McNabb 21 Vikings to U-boats The German Experience in Newfoundland and Labrador Gerhard Bassler

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Vikings to U-boats The German Experience in Newfoundland and Labrador

gerhard p. bassler

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston · London · Ithaca

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© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2006 isbn-13: 978-0-7735-3124-6 isbn-10: 0-7735-3124-6 Legal deposit third quarter 2006 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Office of Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Bassler, Gerhard P., 1937– Vikings to U-boats : the German experience in Newfoundland and Labrador / Gerhard P. Bassler. (McGill-Queen’s studies in ethnic history. Series 2) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-7735-3124-6 isbn-10: 0-7735-3124-6 1. Germans – Newfoundland and Labrador – History. 2. German Canadians – Newfoundland and Labrador – History. I. Title. II. Series. fc2200.g3b38 2006

971.8004′3

c2006–902026-4

Typeset in 10/13 Sabon by True to Type

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Contents

“Preface

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“Introduction 3 1 “I was born where wine and grapes are no rarity”: First Contacts 9 2 “The Esquimaux ... cannot be in better hands”: The Moravian Mission in Labrador 29 3 “From Hamburg Bread to Turbines: Expanding Contacts in the Nineteenth Century 62 4 “Venturesome sons of the fatherland”: Immigrants, Sojourners, and Visitors, 1870–1914 89 5 “Few of civilization’s blessings”: Images, Impressions, and Perceptions 121 6 “I have with great patience withstood many insults”: The Enemy Alien Experience, 1914–1919 139 7 “I can get another Hiscock anytime, but I cannot get a Weber”: Newcomers after the War, 1919–1939 165 8 “Backwoodsmen of the sea”: Germans Look at Newfoundland between the World Wars 189 9 “We should first look to British stock”: Germans Deemed Undesirable? 205

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10 “I had been loyal to the country”: Internment Operations and Experiences, 1939–1945 223 11 “Can the leopard change its spots?” The Nazi Fifth-Column Experience, 1939–1945 253 12 “The spy among us”: The U-boat Syndrome 285 “Conclusions 295 “Notes 305 “Bibliography 347 “Index 367

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Preface

This book would not have been written without my wife, Tonya. She encouraged me at the beginning of my academic career at Memorial University to apply my interest in German social history to the study of immigration in general and to the exploration of Newfoundland’s and Labrador’s German heritage and people of German-speaking background in particular. Soon after we arrived in St John’s in 1965, we were struck by the paradox that Newfoundlanders, who claimed to be British to the core, consumed a superb-tasting German-style lager beer brewed by a local socalled Bavarian Brewery, generated electricity with vintage German turbines installed in some of their oldest hydro-electric power plants, and had a German consulate tracing its origins to 1844. Yet no scholarly or other literature mentioned a German presence before 1950. In the local German community no one seemed to have any pre-war roots on the island or knew any German who had lived here before 1945, although many embellished stories about U-boat crews sneaking onto land during the war flourished. Here was the challenge. Thanks to the recollections of local old-timers, whom I began interviewing in the early 1980s and virtually all of whom are now deceased, the hidden story of Newfoundland’s and Labrador’s German experience began to unfold. Such prominent and knowledgeable Newfoundlanders as Joseph R. Smallwood, Robert Furlong, John O’ Dea, Tobias Macdonald, Gertrude Crosbie, Gerry Fagan, Pat Brownrigg, Ferd Hayward, Cyril Banikhin, Michael Harrington, and Frederick William Peacock gave me an invaluable

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start by freely and generously sharing their memories with me. The efficiency of the Memorial University of Newfoundland Library’s staff and interlibrary loan service enabled me to track down every identifiable German-language publication dealing with Newfoundland and Labrador. Melvin Baker commented on part of the manuscript. To him and to my colleague Hans Rollmann I owe numerous references and valuable insights, and to the late Bobbie Robertson, long-time secretary of the Newfoundland Historical Society, many useful hints. Thanks to Harold Pretty and Jeannie Howse for scanning old St John’s newspapers for me and to Elizabeth Hulse for conscientious and dedicated copy-editing. The research was undertaken without any external research grants. It has been a labour of love. Five chapters were drafted by 1990 and would have remained unpublished had Tonya not nagged and prodded me to finish the project. She insisted that no one else would rescue this German heritage from obscurity. No one else, she maintained, would have the firstperson sources, expertise, desire, and stamina to solve this puzzle of Newfoundland’s German experience and place it in its proper context. She discussed all the chapters with me and proofread and edited them. She deserves the main credit that the book ever came together. All translations from German are my own, unless indicated otherwise.

Introduction

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Introduction

This is the first comprehensive inquiry into the role of one major nonNative, non-English-speaking ethnic and cultural element in the history of Newfoundland and Labrador. It investigates the German experience in Newfoundland and Labrador to 1945. “German experience” is understood here in both meanings of the word, that is, as Germans’ experiences of Newfoundland-Labrador and as Newfoundlanders’ and Labradorians’ experiences of Germans. Therefore one aim of the book concerns identifying individuals of German-speaking background who entered, chose to live in, and played a role in this former British dominion. Whatever could be uncovered about their origins, entry, and residence, as well as their activities and social connections, is in this record. Of deeper interest, however, are some of the broader questions raised by migration and ethnic historians. For example, what kinds of Germans came to Newfoundland and Labrador? What were the historical contexts for their arrival? Did they come as immigrants, sojourners, or visitors? How did they adapt to and interact with the host society? Did they compete for jobs, occupations, and business with locals? Did they contribute anything of significance? A related set of questions pertains to the nature of social and institutional connections between Newfoundland and German-speaking countries, especially Germany, such as trade, business, churches, consulates, and scientific fieldwork . How pervasive were these connections, and how did the world wars affect them? Did they influence migrations?

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Of interest, finally, are questions concerning images and perceptions. How did the immigrants and their countrymen perceive the host society, and how did that society perceive the immigrants and their countries of origin? Simply put, what did Germans and Newfoundlanders-Labradorians know and think of each other? Were residents of German-speaking background judged by the public image of Germany or by their degree of acculturation and social integration in Newfoundland? The inquiry into the nature and impact of mutual perceptions is particularly relevant with regard to the world war experiences, which form the content of four chapters. Insights into contemporary images and perceptions were extracted from the entire available German-language literature on Newfoundland and Labrador, especially published contemporary travel reports and impressions of encounters, as well as from local media reports on Newfoundlanders’ visits to Germany. Generally speaking, therefore, this exploration of “experience” involves a historical analysis of migrants’ footprints, international and intercultural connections, and mutual perceptions. It highlights a variety of linkages between Newfoundland and Labrador, on the one hand, and Germany – or rather, German-speaking Europeans, German Americans, and German Canadians – on the other. The evidence is derived from a variety of sources, such as government and institutional records, census data, personal papers, interviews, contemporary newspapers, and a wide range of published firsthand accounts. For the purposes of this study, the term “German” does not refer solely to a national of Germany but to any person of German-speaking background. Thus, in addition to natives of Germany, this wider definition includes Austrians, German Swiss, Alsatians, German Americans, German Canadians, and ethnic German citizens of any other country. It also includes partly assimilated first-generation descendants of German immigrants, who may no longer be fluent in German. Ethnic identity is always dynamic – no fixed or “true” German identity exists. Indeed, analysts have defined identity as consisting of changing external and internal components. That is, it can be observed in patterns of behaviour, such as language, traditions, and personal networks, and it can also be internalized in images of ethnic heritage and feelings of obligation and attachment. Depending on the social and historical context, identity can include some or all of these components.1 Ethnic identity, furthermore, is a two-sided coin: it is both self-chosen and imposed by outsiders.2 In other words, the host society’s perception of an immigrant’s identity does not necessarily agree with the perception of

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fellow immigrants or with that immigrant’s own concept of his or her identity. In Newfoundland, for example, immigrants of German-speaking background may be perceived as Germans, Nazis, enemy aliens, foreigners, or Newfoundlanders, depending on the situation. Also, non-German immigrants have at times been perceived as Germans. Throughout Newfoundland and Labrador history, Germans, like all residents of non-native English-speaking background, have usually been perceived as “foreigners.” “Foreigners,” as discussed elsewhere, were part of an entrenched nomenclature according to which locals categorized various types of non-native newcomers.3 A foreign-sounding name or accent in St John’s has invariably elicited, then and now, the prompt statement masquerading as an implied question: “That’s not a Newfoundland name.” Or the even blunter question from native-born residents “Where do you belong?” which means “Where are you from?” In St John’s even the descendants of “foreign” immigrants have tended to be labelled “foreigners,” often into the second and third generation. Only immigrants from the British Isles, as well as Americans and Canadians of English-speaking background, might expect to be perceived and accepted as Newfoundlanders within their lifetimes. Newfoundland’s population has traditionally manifested such a high degree of ethnic and linguistic homogeneity that few researchers have bothered to inquire into the identities and roles of Newfoundland’s minute “foreign” – that is, non-British – minorities. (It is, of course, arguable whether the island’s mix of English, Irish, and Scottish ethnic descent constitutes homogeneity; but from a non-British perspective and by comparison with other North American states and provinces, it certainly does.) Nonetheless, these minorities form an integral part of Newfoundland’s identity and history. Their perceptions and experiences, as this study shows, not only inform about their own identities but also open up revealing perspectives on Newfoundland society and history. Little or nothing has been published to date about many of the social and institutional connections that have been reconstructed in this book with the help of interviews, archival records, and other primary sources. These connections range from the Hamburg provisions trade, the Moravians’ German culture, and the identities and activities of German consuls to the impact of German brewmasters on the St John’s brewing industry, as well as business and scientific links between Germany and Newfoundland. Although the world wars are a favourite topic of research in Newfoundland history, no Newfoundland historian has commented on the enemy alien experience during either world war. This book fills that void by pro-

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viding the first systematic inquiry into Newfoundland’s perception and treatment of its residents classified as and associated with enemy aliens and these residents’ wartime experience. The non-Newfoundland reader may wonder about the detailed attention given to the immigrants’ and visitors’ identities. The reason for this is Newfoundland’s distinctive social structure and low population density, which have implications for the study of social history. Of its population of 290,000 in 1935 (202,000 in 1891 and 124,000 in 1857), scattered in small fishing outports over an area almost the exact size of present-day Germany (population 60 million in 1935), no more than one-seventh lived in the capital city of St John’s. Pre–World War ii Newfoundland society was characterized not only by relative ethnic homogeneity and virtually no in-migration for over a century but also by the absences of a sizable middle class and occupational diversity. In contrast with the open, dynamic, multicultural societies of Canada and the United States, Newfoundland society appeared closed, rural, and culturally homogeneous. The outsider experienced it as a community, or a web of communities, where, so to speak, everybody knew everybody, or at least the interconnected networks of family relationships, and where hiding in urban anonymity was impossible. In such an environment the personal lives of immigrants and details of their activities and relationships are a curiosity, and hence they tend to assume an unusual degree of public interest and importance. Not surprisingly, Newfoundland has no immigration history comparable to that of Canada. Its fishery-oriented socio-economic life, so vividly depicted in the German tourists’ accounts relayed in this book, offered no attractions to immigrants drawn by the pull of the North American frontier. The immigrants’ quest for integration, upward mobility, and prosperity, as portrayed for example in the Canadian life stories of Dirk Hoerder’s Creating Societies, appeared unfulfillable in a society characterized by sharp polarization between the masses of poor fishermen and a few wealthy St John’s merchants. The merchants regarded Newfoundland as “a private trading reserve to be governed in their own interests,”4 and were determined to defend their monopoly of virtually unlimited power by opposing federation with Canada and democratization at home. Immigrants ended up on the island by chance, many as transients or experts deliberately recruited. This situation makes the applicability of models and approaches developed for the study of Canada’s migration history problematic, especially in view of the kind of evidence and methodology employed in this study. Nonetheless, the materials assembled in this book document that from

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its beginnings the history of Newfoundland and Labrador, like that of Canada, has been “many-cultured.”5 I argue that the world wars have purged the memory of this multicultural identity, that is, its German contributions along with its German population, and replaced it with the stereotype of local Germans as enemy aliens and spies. The evidence unearthed will, it is hoped, contribute to dispelling the myth of Newfoundland-Labrador’s purely British heritage, a myth as resilient as Nova Scotia’s myth of the folk, dissected by Ian McKay in his brilliant study The Quest of the Folk. Research and interviews for this project began some twenty years ago. The original plan called for a study that would continue to the present. However, as research progressed, it became clear that the available evidence on a variety of relevant pre-1945 aspects constituted a book in its own right. Especially the hitherto unexplored but extensively documented enemy alien experience and the published German perceptions of Newfoundland and Labrador, it was felt, deserved adequate attention. It also became clear that the year 1945 appeared as a logical terminating point since virtually no local Germans and no pre-war German connections survived beyond that point. Newfoundland’s post–World War ii German community and German connections, which appeared after Confederation, form an entirely new story and merit a separate study. Some of my earlier publications deal with aspects discussed in this book. The refusal to admit refugees from the Third Reich is the subject of Sanctuary Denied, a book-length study examining this episode within the context of Newfoundland’s immigration policy from 1906 to 1949. This topic has also been the subject of several of my articles and essays in national and international books and scholarly journals.6 My first analysis, “The Enemy Alien Experience in Newfoundland 1914–1918,” appeared in the 1988 special “Atlantic Canada” issue of Canadian Ethnic Studies, and the article “Wartime Tragedies in St. John’s: Were They the Work of Enemy Agents?” in the Evening Telegram (St John’s) on 24 December 1992. A 1990 Newfoundland Historical Society lecture, “Germans and German Connections in Newfoundland to 1914,” was published in the spring 1991 issue of Newfoundland Quarterly.7 An article titled “German Culture and the Inuit,” published in the Yearbook of German-American Studies 38 (2003), formed the basis for chapter 2. Several of my entries in the Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador touch on topics covered in this book; for example, “Immigration,” “Oppelt, Otto,” “Refugees,” “Stein, Robert Carl von,” “U-boats,” “Victoria Camp,” and “Von Ellershausen, Francis.” To my knowledge, no

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other published research exists on Germans in Newfoundland and Labrador for the period covered in this book. The book is divided into two parts and twelve chapters. The first part covers the period to 1914, and the second from 1914 to 1945. Chapter 1 sketches the earliest associations, from the Vikings to the beginning of the nineteenth century, and highlights Germans as discoverers, colonists, fishermen, and soldiers. The second chapter reviews relevant aspects of the Moravian mission and the work of its German missionaries in Labrador. The beginnings of a German community in St John’s in the nineteenth century as part of the so-called Hamburg provisions trade and subsequent expanding connections is the subject of chapter 3. Chapter 4 examines Newfoundland’s pre–World War i German population with emphasis on its occupational profile and role in the local community. The pre-war images, impressions, and perceptions of Newfoundland and Labrador published by visitors from Germany are reviewed in chapter 5. Chapter 6 analyses the enemy alien experience in Newfoundland between 1914 and 1918 from the perspective of the victims as well as of the host society. In chapter 7 Newfoundland’s gradual readmission and eventual recruiting of Germans in the interwar period is viewed against the background of the revival of trade, consular relations, and tourism with Germany under Nazi rule. In chapter 8 attention shifts to how German observers and the media perceived Newfoundland between the world wars. Chapter 9 examines Newfoundland’s refusal to admit refugees from the Third Reich and Newfoundlanders’ dichotomous image of Germans in the 1930s. The following chapter explains Newfoundland’s internment plans and operations with regard to German and non-German nationals perceived to be tainted with Nazism and relates the experiences of some of the internees. Chapter 11 examines the fifth-column syndrome during World War ii. On the one hand, how did the Newfoundland government cope with it, and how did the public react to it? On the other, how did diverse groups of alleged pro-German suspects experience the syndrome? Chapter 12 discusses reality and myth of the World War ii U-boat phenomenon. The book’s findings are summarized in the Conclusions.

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1 “I was born where wine and grapes are no rarity”

First Contacts There was now much talk about voyages of discovery. Leif, son of Eirik the Red of Brattahild, went to see Bjarni Herjolfsson, bought his ship from him, and found her a crew, so that they were thirty-five in all ... There was also a German on the expedition named Tyrkir.

Greenlanders’ Saga

the earliest associations Every student of Newfoundland history knows that the reason for the island’s settlement was the fishery and that economic, political, and military circumstances gave Britain ultimate control over that fishery. Similarly well known is the fact that by the nineteenth century virtually all (more than 99 per cent) of Newfoundland’s population was of British origin. This frequently noted extraordinary degree of ethnic homogeneity for a North American society has, however, obscured the multinational origins and multicultural aspects of the island’s modern history. Indeed, Newfoundland’s change from an international fishery to a largely British fishery was a very slow process. In addition, visitors by far outnumbered permanent settlers during the period when the British fishery was primarily a migratory one organized by merchants from England, that is, up to the eighteenth century. In fact, Newfoundland’s first English colonists found thousands of French, Portuguese, Spaniards, and Basques already fishing in the waters around the island and claiming the right to use land for drying fish. France’s claims to the island and French efforts to colonize it, though officially terminated by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, were still an issue as late as 1762, when the French briefly occupied St John’s. Until the 1720s, English settlers were confined more or less to the so-called English Shore,

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which extended along the island’s east coast from Trepassey to Cape Bonavista. The British settlement of the St Mary’s, Placentia, and Fortune bays in the south and Bonavista Bay in the north did not begin until the mid-eighteenth century. Most of the remaining coastal districts were not settled until the nineteenth century. In addition, much of Newfoundland’s population was transient and seasonal until the eighteenth century. In 1676, for example, the residential English population was 1,490 (including 1,280 servants), 80 per cent of whom were reported to have returned to England by the winter of 1684. This migration left a true permanent English population of only 384 in 1684. A French census of 1687 found 663 people of French origin (520 in 1705). In 1730, 2,702 residents (including 1,500 transient servants) were counted, and it is estimated that 70–80 per cent of those enumerated in 1676 had disappeared. By 1766 the proportion of visiting fishermen was still one-half of the total summer population of 23,000. Only by 1790 had the proportion of visitors declined to one-third of Newfoundland’s summer population of 25,000.1 When we consider the role of Germans in the early history of the Old and New Worlds, it seems unlikely that some of them were not involved in the island’s fortunes. Throughout the Middle Ages until the Thirty Years’ War, Germany consisted of a number of loosely connected states with constantly changing boundaries within a supranational political structure known as the Holy Roman Empire. During that time German-speaking people constituted Europe’s most numerous ethnic group, and parts of Germany experienced sufficient population pressure to encourage Germans to become colonizers of Europe’s eastern frontiers in both the Baltic and Transylvania, as well as overseas in North America. For example, in 1683 organized German group migrations began to New England. Germans are known to have resided in Quebec as early as 1664. Because the empire’s ruling dynasty, the Germanic Habsburgs, also ruled over the Netherlands (after 1648 only the areas that later became Belgium) and ascended the throne of Spain in 1616, they enabled Germans to play a role in these seafaring countries’ affairs too.2 As well, the empire’s pre-eminence in the cultural and diplomatic affairs of Europe stimulated German interest and involvement in the exploration, cartography, and study of the New World. The German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller broke cosmographic precedent in 1507 by placing two new continents between Europe and Asia and introducing the name “America” for the southern continent. In addition, the heart-shaped world map drawn by the German cartographer Gerhard Mercator in 1538 is the

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1.1 German woodcut, printed at Nuremberg, depicting Labrador Inuit woman with child exhibited in Antwerp 1566. Permission the British Library, 1750.c.2 pg.4.

first map known to show the physical separation of Newfoundland from Labrador. Whether this marking indicated possible German contacts with Newfoundland in the early sixteenth century is difficult to say. Interestingly, Mercator’s map predates Deslien de Dieppe’s of 1541, which represents Newfoundland as an archipelago, even though the latter map is generally assumed to be the first cartographic reflection of Jacques Cartier’s circumnavigation of Newfoundland in 1536.3 Artists joined cartographers in exploring the New World. The earliest depiction in Europe of Canadian Inuit is three versions of a German woodcut showing an Inuit woman and her child from “Terra Nova.” The two Inuit were apparently on public display in Antwerp in 1566 (see illus. 1.1).4 Simultaneous contacts are also traceable in the fishery. From the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries the Hanseatic League of German mer-

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1.2 Replica of Viking buildings in L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland. Constructed of sod over a timber frame ca. ad 1000, they form the only authenticated Viking settlement in North America. G. Bassler photo, 1985.

chants controlled the trade in northern Europe from Britain and Scandinavia to Russia. Although the Arctic fishing exploits of Germany’s North Sea ports and their Hanseatic merchants usually ventured no further than the shores of Greenland,5 after 1610, Hamburg ships are known to have sailed to Newfoundland for cargoes of cod at the end of the fishing season.6 A search for the beginning of German associations with Newfoundland quickly leads into the mists of history. The Vikings’ explorations of the New World are the earliest known contacts. The Icelandic sagas mention a south German by the name of Tyrkir as a member of Leif Eirikson’s Norse expedition that led to the legendary discovery of Vinland. Helge Ingstad’s persuasive findings in the 1960s7 suggest that this expedition may have landed at L’Anse au Meadows in northern Newfoundland around ad 1001 (see illus. 1.2). The Greenlanders’ Saga records that “Tyrkir held forth a long while in German, rolling his eyes all ways, and pulling faces. They had no notion what he was talking about. Then after a while he spoke in Norse ... ‘I have a real novelty to report. I have found wines and grapes.’ ‘Is that the truth, foster-father?’ Leif asked. ‘Of course it’s the truth,’ he replied. ‘I was born where wine and grapes are no rarity.’” The sagas credit Tyrkir

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with discovering wild grapevines there and hence suggesting the name of Vinland for the newly discovered land. The much discussed question of whether Eirikson’s Norsemen actually found grapes in northern Newfoundland seems to hinge on the credibility of Tyrkir’s evidence, for as he is alleged to have assured the puzzled Leif, grapevines were being cultivated in his homeland. Grapevines did not grow in Scandinavian lands, and it is highly unlikely that they ever grew in Newfoundland. Either Tyrkir was a liar intent upon fooling his Norse companions and their friends back home,8 or he was, like so many a twentieth-century German visitor to Newfoundland, simply baffled by the abundance of berries as sweet and large as grapes. Several accounts suggest that two allegedly German skippers in Danish service may have rediscovered Newfoundland on a mysterious expedition from Iceland to the land of the baccalos more than two decades before John Cabot made his landfall at the terra prima vista, which is presumed to be Newfoundland.9 Unfortunately, neither the background nor the associates nor the exact destination of these two skippers is verifiable. Didrik Pining and Hans Pothorst are usually identified as natives of Lower Saxony, but sometimes as outlawed northern pirates or Norwegian noblemen or associates of the Danish or Polish pilot John Scolvus sent on a mission of discovery by the Portuguese. Whether Pining and Pothorst visited Greenland, Labrador, or Newfoundland in 1472–73, 1476, or 1494, or not at all, remains a matter of speculation.10 Even in 1940, when the Third Reich desired to attribute every possible accomplishment in the world to Germans, German historians played down the likelihood that Pining and Pothorst discovered the New World before Cabot and Columbus.11

discoverers, colonists, fishermen, and soldiers The first Germans known to have visited the island after its rediscovery in the fifteenth century did not come from Germany but from England. The records of one of the first English voyages to Newfoundland – sent out in 1527 as a royal expedition to find the Northwest Passage to India, but returning instead with a cargo of fish from Newfoundland – mention two ships of a Master Grube from Plymouth. Grube’s ships were apparently not fishing ships but sack ships trading in cargoes of fish, oil, furs, and produce. Whether the German name of this skipper is indicative of his ethnic or national origin can unfortunately not be ascertained.12 But it is

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possible that he was one of the many Germans who was serving the English crown, had migrated to England, or was descended from Germans who had settled earlier. From earliest times, Germans had been in England serving the country and its royal house in a variety of capacities, especially as mercenaries. By the sixteenth century the privileges that the German merchants of the Hanseatic League had enjoyed for centuries in the English export trade were in the process of being extinguished by native merchant adventurers. Most former Hanseatic representatives stayed as independent merchants in London. At the same time, England sought to overcome its relative technological and industrial backwardness with skills, expertise, and enterprise borrowed from Germany in areas such as mining and metallurgy where Germany was more advanced. Since the fifteenth century, German miners and mechanics had been acknowledged as the discoverers and disseminators of new methods in the exploration and processing of ores containing silver, copper, zinc, and mercury and in the manufacture of brass. The English tradition of importing German arms makers has been traced back to Henry viii’s settlement of “Almain” armourers in Greenwich. The Hounslow arms factory near London, for example, was established in the seventeenth century with German experts imported from Solingen.13 As late as the beginning of the seventeenth century, an English traveller articulated English admiration for German technology in these words: “In no place of the world shall thou finde more witty engins and excellent peeces of workemanship than in Germany.”14 Contemporaries confirm the existence of a large community of foreigners at the court and in the service of Henry viii. Scores of German workmen, experts, and entrepreneurs took up the challenge and settled in England, forming entire communities of their own with breweries, cultural activities, German Christmas mumming, and all. An enumeration of alien residents under Queen Elizabeth found 3,838 Germans in London.15 Welldocumented, for example, are the circumstances under which in the 1560s the Mines Royal and its smelters near Keswick in Cumberland came under the management of Germans from Augsburg. We know the identities and places of origin of the 136 German workers brought to Keswick at the time. They introduced new smelting technologies that would utilize the byproducts as a dye for textiles. Some of the German miners were included in a party of a hundred settlers who sailed in 1685 from Plymouth to North Carolina. Their assignment was to test iron ores and copper for a smelter that would make the new colony viable. After they had spent a year on Roanoke Island, hostile Natives forced them to return.16

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The first German whose presence in Newfoundland is documented was a miner and ore expert known as Master Daniel the Saxon. He took part in Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s expedition that took possession of Newfoundland for England in 1583. The records also mention other “mineral men” and refiners under his command. Some of these were probably German as well, possibly even from Keswick, because of the dominant role this enterprise played in the English mining industry at the time. The narrative recorded by Richard Hakluyt informs us that the Generall was most anxious in the search of mettals, commanding the minerall man and refiner, especially to be diligent. The same was a Saxon borne, honest and religious, named Daniel. Who after search brought at first some sort of Ore, seeming rather to be yron than other mettall. The next time he found Ore, which with no small show of contentment he delivered unto the General, using protestation, that if silver were the thing which might satisfie the Generall and his followers, there it was, advising him to seek no further: the perill whereof he undertooke his life (as deare unto him as the Crowne of England unto her Majestie, that I may use his owne words) if it fell not out accordingly.

Daniel, in other words, swore to stake his life that the second ore sample he found was silver. Gilbert warned one of his lieutenants not to celebrate yet for fear of alerting the Portugese, Biscayan, and French fishers who were also anchored in St John’s harbour. Gilbert would have liked to stay in Newfoundland to collect more of the silver, but he was planning to sail south for more prospecting and to start a colony on the mainland before his patent expired. Unfortunately both Daniel and his ore samples were lost on the way home in a shipwreck off Sable Island. Gilbert was reported to have been “out of measure grieved, the same doutless being some matter of more importance than his bookes,” namely, “ye Ore which Daniel the Saxon had brought unto him in the New found land.”17 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Germans were likely among the first British parties of explorers and colonists. Newfoundland’s first planned English colony, started by John Guy in Cupids (Conception Bay) in 1610, included a trapper named “Frederick the Duchman [sic],” who may well have been a German. “Deutsch” was frequently mistranslated as “Dutch” in English; in fact, in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America, German immigrants were generally labelled “Dutch,” for example, the Pennsylvania Dutch. The diary entries of a Cupids colonist characterize Frederick as an expert trapper of muskrat, otter, fox, and sable, an expertise he seems unlikely to have acquired in the heavily populated and

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relatively deforested Netherlands.18 German surnames such as Koch are also present among the earliest residents of Bonavista, as a letter written by one William Koch in 1698 attests.19 The person now recognized as Newfoundland’s first landscape painter is identified variously as Gerard Edema, a native Hollander who emigrated to England at the age of eighteen, or, according to a Quebec art historian, as the German artist Gerard Edamer.20 Unknown until recently in North America, his work has been rated “of the first rank” in England. In 1690, at the suggestion of a Devon merchant patron, he sailed from England to the Grand Banks. He spent the summer in Newfoundland sketching fishing stations and cod-drying flakes, and upon his return to England, he produced full-sized paintings, which he sold to merchants interested in the Newfoundland fishery.21 French settlement around Placentia Bay and along the so-called French Shore of Newfoundland after 1650 also seems to have included people of German origin.22 These may have come from France as well as from New France in North America.23 The list of French planters resident at Plaisance during d’Iberville’s campaigns of 1696–97 includes such likely German names as Thomas Merschein, resident since 1658, his wife Marie Largestau (Largetrau or Largeteau), and Le Sieur Charles Mayer (or Mahier), storekeeper and colonel of the militia.24 Other French enumerations of the population of Terreneuve mention possibly German names such as Seicille Gresse; Jean Trotel; Nicolas Blondel; Daniel Roque, married to Anne Hecuemarre; children born in 1669 and 1670 to Laurent La Grue and Marie Vrignaud and named Joachim and Marthe; and Francois Ruau; married to Marie Bobert.25 Jean Decker, a German baptized in Montreal in 1706 and married to Sarah with the German maiden name of Teckel, reported that he was a fisherman born in Terreneuve in 1694. He claimed that he was captured by “Indians” and purchased back by a French officer.26 The Decker family name can still be found along the French Shore today, especially on the Northern Peninsula. The Deckers there have preserved an oral history of German descent, but have never systematically traced their roots.27 Calvin and Sam Decker in L’Anse aux Meadows believe that their great-great-grandfather Bill Decker came with his brother John from Germany via Conception Bay. Grandfather Decker is remembered as the biggest fisherman in L’Anse aux Meadows, a man whose sons still spoke French fluently. The Deckers maintain that their forebears were in this area long before there were any English settlers and that they had always fished and traded with the French (see illus. 1.3).28

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1.3 Calvin Decker in L’Anse aux Meadows holding a French padlock dating to pre-1904 French fishing rights along the coast. The Deckers of the area claim German descent from generations ago. G. Bassler photo, 1985.

As many as 500 Germans waiting in London for a passage to America in 1710 may, instead, have ended up as fishermen in Newfoundland. The punitive raids into Germany by Louis xiv’s armies after the devastations of war, famine, and religious persecution in the wake of the Thirty Years’ War, contrasting with the news of peace, prosperity, and religious toleration in the New World, triggered a mass exodus of 13,000 so-called Palatines to London in 1709. These refugees fled from the Palatinate and the adjoining areas along each side of the Upper Rhine to London, from where they

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expected to be taken to America. The government of Queen Anne, however, was unwilling and unable to ship more than 650 to North Carolina and 3,000 to New York as border guards against Natives and the French. More than 2,000 were returned to Holland from London, and the rest were to be settled in England and Ireland. The fate of 5,000 of them is unaccounted for. From Narcissus Luttrell’s diary we learn that the merchants of Bedford and Barnstaple, who were engaged in the Newfoundland fisheries, offered to employ 500 of these Germans in their service. S.H. Cobb believes that in this way many of the refugees were provided for. Of the 3,000 Germans who are known to have been dispersed as settlers in England and Ireland,29 some may have found their way to Newfoundland as well, perhaps as Methodist preachers. One Richard Knight of German descent, who had adopted the English translation of his German name Ritter, was a Methodist minister at Pouch Cove sometime in the nineteenth century.30 With the development of trade between New England and Newfoundland in the mid-seventeenth century, European emigrants were able to use the island as a way station to the North American mainland. Sack ships (freighters) of New England traders are reported to have come regularly for barter and passenger traffic, including the illegal recruitment and theft of fishermen. We do not know how many, if any, German migrants availed themselves of this opportunity, but it is known that from the eighteenth century on, emigrants from Germany seized every opportunity to reach the New World. In 1752 Moravian missionaries from Germany made their first exploratory trip to Labrador to establish a mission station there (see chapter 2). The attempt failed; their leader, Johann Christian Erhardt, and six missionaries were killed by Inuit, and the remaining members of the expedition returned to England via St John’s. When they arrived in St. John’s on 1 October, the survivors were surprised to meet two fellow countrymen: the surgeon (or doctor) of the artillery, named Pose and another German identified as Smith. Whether that was his surname or his occupation is not clear. The Moravians, according to the entries in their diary, met the two Germans almost daily during their ten-day stay in St John’s, went sightseeing, attended church together, and were invited to tea and dinner at the surgeon’s house.31 Other German names surface among Newfoundland’s population of 6,000 by the mid-eighteenth century. One of them appears in connection with the installation of Newfoundland’s first justices of the peace in a number of districts by Admiral Henry Osborn, who was appointed governor of Newfoundland in 1729. Three years later he designated as justice of

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the peace for Ferryland a person named Jno Ludwig.32 In Trinity the name Rhine (from “Rein”?) recurs in the registers of St Paul’s Anglican Church: for example, in 1664, when Thomas and Francis Rhine baptized a daughter named Elizabeth, and in 1770, when an Ulridge (Ulrich?) Rhine was buried. In the same parish Thomas and Mary Hundel baptized a son named John in 1809. In the Twillingate Anglican baptismal register the family name Lidrow appears seven times (all planters) in 1821, with first names such as Charlotte, Marianne, and Louisa. Between 1797 and 1843 Anglican baptisms were registered in Carbonear under such names as Raff, Wurdail, Luther, and Carlow, and in the Bonavista Anglican parish marriages under such names as Etsell (1788), Akerman (1795 and 1798), and Minchinner (Thomas, 1832).33 Systematic genealogical research would undoubtedly reveal German origin behind these and other names.34 On the Burin Peninsula, the Mosher and Spawn families claim to be descended from Prussian seamen,35 and Joseph and Ann Short, planters at Lamaline around 1800, are believed to be of German descent.36 The origin of the place name Garnish, a fishing community on the Burin Peninsula, has been traced to the German words gar nichts (nothing at all).37 The name for nearby Dantzic Point and Dantzic Cove has been linked to the former German city of Danzig (now Gdansk) in the Baltic Sea (see chapter 3).38 In the mid-nineteenth century Moravian missionaries in Labrador met seamen who were “descended in the second or third generation from Schleswig, Hesse, and Switzerland and who had forgotten their German a long time ago.”39 The development of German-speaking immigrant communities in North America – the first ones were Germantown (Pennsylvania), founded in 1683, and Halifax with Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, founded in 1750–53 – opened the possibility of migrations of German Americans and German Canadians to Newfoundland in connection with fishing, trade and economic development. However, because of Newfoundland’s ties with the fortunes of America in the second half of the eighteenth century, German Americans’ first encounter with the island was a military one. In 1762 the Royal Americans, a regiment composed mostly of German and Swiss immigrants, landed at Torbay and, under the command of Colonel William Amherst, reconquered St John’s from the French. In the final assault on Signal Hill, Lieutenant Schuyler and thirty of his German American soldiers lost their lives. In 1895, when empire-building and the glorification of war were in vogue, Newfoundland historian D.W. Prowse characterized this taking of St John’s in 1762 as “one of the best conducted, most splendid, and most important of all the successes of the glorious war.”40

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Even in the Newfoundland fishery a connection with Nova Scotians of German descent has been suggested by dory expert Otto P. Kelland. In Lunenburg, Germans who had arrived as farmers and labourers from the landlocked southwest of German-speaking Europe began very shortly after their arrival to add fishing and boat building to their skills. Their early contacts with Newfoundland were not as immigrants but as model boat builders and fishermen. Lunenburgers were at the forefront of developing new technologies in boat building and fishing methods in the Maritimes.41 After thirty-five years as settlers, they built vessels as heavy as 35 tons to sail as far as the coast of Labrador. They successfully popularized both the hook mackerel fishery and trawling or longlining, which made offshore fishing profitable. In conjunction with this and following the invention of the dory in late eighteenth-century Massachusetts, Kelland credits Lunenburg Germans with developing one of seven types of dories that helped to change inshore fishing and make possible bank fishing in the nineteenth century. The “Dutch dory,” as it was named in mid-nineteenth-century Newfoundland, was a distinctive Lunenburg design and, according to Kelland, “definitely not copied from the lines of any craft that has been produced by other builders.” As an excellent carrier and a sturdy and reliable rough-water boat, the “Dutch dory” gained great favour among Newfoundland’s south coast fishermen before they began to build their own dories in the 1880s. The “Monk-type” Newfoundland dory built in Monkstown, Placentia Bay, appears to have been fashioned from the Dutch dory.42 Records indicate the presence of several Germans in Newfoundland in the 1760s following the expulsion of the French. In June 1764 the Moravian missionary Jens Haven appeared in St John’s on his way to attempt contact with the Inuit of Labrador. There his planned trip to Labrador was decried as crazy, and he received several favourable offers to stay in town. According to Haven’s diary, St John’s was possessed by the most exaggerated fears of the Inuit’s alleged bloodthirstiness, which he interpreted as the reflex of a bad conscience. He found locals to be totally ignorant of Labrador and assuming the entire country to be covered with precious furs. Political tensions permeated all personal relations in St John’s, he observed, and made life unpleasant. Although he arrived with a letter issued by Newfoundland governor Hugh Palliser in London directing the local authorities to provide free room and board for Haven, he preferred to retain his independence. Despite his poor knowledge of English, Haven worked as a carpenter for a merchant by name of Gaden while awaiting the arrival of Palliser. Among his contacts in St. John’s was a German soldier by the name

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of Johan Demster, who, as Haven wrote a friend in 1765, helped him address a letter in English to Palliser. After Palliser returned to St John’s, he issued Haven a letter of protection, copies of which were posted in every harbour of the island, declaring Haven to be a missionary and peaceful mediator between Inuit and white people. Haven left St John’s in September and had his first encounter with Inuit shortly thereafter in Quirpon, on the northern tip of Newfoundland. No local Newfoundland escort dared to accompany him further north.43 His subsequent experiences are related in chapter 2. It may be no accident that the first printed German-language map of Newfoundland appeared at about the same time. The map, which is undated, lists about half the island’s place names in German and the rest in French. It is clearly based on Jacques-Nicolas Bellin’s 1752 French map of the Gulf of St Lawrence, still showing considerable inaccuracies in the shape, the bays, and the coastline of the island.44 The large title in the blank centre reads “Insel Neu-Land od. Terre-Neuve olim Avalon” (island New-Land or Terre Neuve formerly known as Avalon), followed by the smaller-sized German statement that “the interior of this island and the course of its rivers are not well-known.” The south coast of Labrador along the Strait of Belle Isle is titled “Land der Esquimaux.” A bilingual German and French text at the bottom of the map informs the reader that “Terre-neuve oder Neu Foundland” belongs to the English and is separated only by a narrow strait from Terra Labrador, and that its capital “S. Jean” was conquered on 28 June 1762 by the two French ships with 1,300 men. “Che. Ternay commanded the fleet and caused all the caught fish he found to spoil. The island used to supply 200,000 centhner [quintals] of dried cod fish and bring in one million pound sterling. But it was reconquered on 13 September of the same year by the English colonel Amherst” (see illus. 1.4).45 In Trinity, which was briefly taken by the French in 1761, the presence of at least two German surgeons is documented in the following decades. The first one was Godlove Porsh (Gottlieb Porsch). Little is known about him except that he was a German, that he began practising in Trinity in 1768, and that he was involved in a scuffle with the local parson, the Reverend James Balfour. The latter reported the incident to his superiors at the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (spg) in London. One evening, while walking through Trinity, Porsh and a friend encountered the parson and an argument ensued. Then, as Gordon Handcock has reconstructed the event, “Stone cuffed Balfour on the cheek, while Porsh laid hold of the Parson’s nose.” In his letter to the spg, Balfour claimed that he had been

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1.4 First German-language map of Newfoundland, 1760s. Origin unknown. Courtesy Hans Rollmann.

attacked on his way home and that he had received the blows with Christian meekness. Porsh and his friend were summoned to appear before the governor’s surrogate, Lieutenant John Cartwright, and ordered to pay a

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fine each and seek the parson’s pardon. Eight months later, Balfour reported to the spg that “that unhappy foreigner” had recently drowned. A gust of wind had upset Porsh’s sailboat and entangled him in the ropes of a sail, so that he “sank gradually boat and all together, in the sight of a hundred spectators.”46 Porsh’s successor was D’wes Coke, who practised from 1769 to 1783. He in turn was succeeded by John Clinch. During Clinch’s entire term from 1783 to 1819, according to politician-historian A.B. Morine, another German by the name of Dr Gott served as a surgeon in Trinity. Unfortunately, no further details about his background and long service in Trinity are known. With a resident population of at least five hundred in the 1760s and a seasonal influx of an estimated two thousand migratory fishermen, Trinity was the hub of fishing and trade for the north side of Trinity Bay and the south side of Bonavista Bay. It was also the centre of medical service for the entire area and a popular resort for retired naval surgeons. Wondering about the saturation of Trinity with medical practitioners at a time when there were few doctors anywhere else in Newfoundland, Morine speculates that “probably some were retired naval surgeons, working to supplement their pensions, and regarding Trinity as a pleasant place of residence.”47 It may have been for any or all of these reasons that Porsh and Gott ended up in Trinity. The wars of the American and French revolutions made Newfoundland a way station for numerous German Loyalists and German nationals. In 1779–80 the Hessian Infantry of Knyphausen’s Regiment was allegedly stationed in St John’s as a deterrent against French designs and American privateers.48 Service in the British army earned John Christopher Reiffenstein (of the princely German family of Thun und Taxis) a brief stint as quartermaster of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment from 1808 to 1811. Before his Newfoundland appointment Reiffenstein had served in Bermuda and Nova Scotia; thereafter he lived in Canada, England, France, and Germany.49 Johann Gottfried Seume, pressed into service for the British Crown, recalled how his English troopship, filled with “Hessians” on the way to Canada in the 1780s, replenished its supplies on the Grand Banks with an incredibly rich catch of eleven tons of cod on one afternoon. “No liver from any animal in the sea or on land appeared more luscious and tastier to me than the liver of cod, just as the entire fish itself, freshly prepared and eaten, is one of the most delicious. It is equal to sterlet and tuna and preferable to salmon.”50 By the beginning of the nineteenth century, nonetheless, Newfoundland was still no more than an exotic name on the New World map of Germanspeaking Europe, despite increasing knowledge of America’s immigrant

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opportunities. In fact, the name “Newfoundland” appeared so imaginary and devoid of specific content to an anonymous German writer in 1821 that he used it as an alias for a German region or state whose identity he did not want to reveal. In a 32–page “address regarding the approaching election of magistrates and authorized representatives of a community in Newfoundland,” the writer advocated responsible implementation of the newly created municipal self-government51 in the face of reactionary policies following the Congress of Vienna (1815). The idea of Newfoundland as some kind of imagined terra nova or fantasy land, incidentally, also inspired subsequent writers. In 1897, for example, it resurfaced in German playwright Frank Wedekind’s pantomime The Empress of Newfoundland.52

ludwig amadeus anspac h The American and French revolutions, with their dislocations of international trade, brought unprecedented social changes and a new influx of foreigners to St John’s. Revolutionary America’s ban on all its trade with Newfoundland challenged merchants and artisans to establish themselves on the island and develop their own trade with Canada and the West Indies. During the Napoleonic Wars, furthermore, many English business houses transferred operations to St John’s. The foundations were thus laid for a class of local entrepreneurs who gradually transformed life in St. John’s from that of a fishing station to one appropriate for the commercial, social, administrative, and cultural centre of a colony aspiring to responsible government. The resulting quest for cultural improvement enticed the first trickle of foreign skills and expertise to Newfoundland. A prominent case in point came from the desire of twenty-five of the leading merchants and inhabitants of St John’s in 1789 to see their children obtain an education superior to that available anywhere else on the island. Responding to their call was Lewis Amadeus Anspach, Newfoundland’s first prominent resident of German descent. The existing literature on Anspach treats him as an Englishman, although his native cultures were German and French and he had been exposed to English culture for only seven years before coming to Newfoundland. His grandfather was a German religious writer who had migrated to Geneva, a bilingual German- and French-speaking city in southern Switzerland, from a small place called Sauerschwabenheim in the Palatinate. Born in Geneva and educated in the city’s Calvinist Académie, Anspach moved at age twenty-two to London where he worked as a private tutor and an Anglican curate. When he assumed his position in

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Newfoundland seven years later in 1796, his non-English background was still noticeable enough to cause a St John’s clergyman to observe that Anspach had not yet lost his foreign accent.53 In the published English account of his role in St John’s, Anspach refers to himself typically as a “stranger.”54 (The 1822 German edition of Anspach’s History of Newfoundland gives his name as Ludwig Amadeus Anspach.)55 Anspach has left an impressive record of accomplishments as educator, missionary, judge, magistrate, author and, above all, pioneer historian. During his thirteen-year sojourn in Newfoundland, he launched and taught Newfoundland’s first secondary school in St. John’s, was instrumental in the establishment and operation of schools in Harbour Grace, Bay de Verde, Brigus, Portugal Cove, and Bay Roberts, and organized the erection of many school and church buildings. Anspach’s successful promotion of spiritual unity, civilized modes of behaviour, and basic education among his parishioners while he was missionary in Harbour Grace is documented in his correspondence with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (spg) committee in London. In December 1803 he justified the need for a Sunday school in Harbour Grace in these words: “In no place can such an institution be more wanted, the District being the most populous of the whole Island, more than 3,000 children in it, most of them accustomed from their infancy to cursing and swearing, a total disregard for their parents, neglect of the Lord’s Day and vice of every kind.”56 Five years later he had the pleasure of informing the spg of “great changes ... in the manner of observing the Lord’s Day and the habit and manners of parents and children.”57 Anspach’s main literary legacy, besides two books reviewing the laws relating to Newfoundland’s navigation, trade, and fishery, is his History of the Island of Newfoundland: Containing a Description of the Islands, the Banks, the Fisheries and Trade of Newfoundland, and the Coast of Labrador (1819). Although drawing largely on printed sources, it is a remarkable scholarly document for its time. Written before the advent of modern critical (Rankean) historiography, it provides from a continental European perspective the first comprehensive and analytical account of the historical development and national character of Newfoundland, its cultural uniqueness, and its general significance in the context of world history. Posterity has been as impressed with Anspach’s sober assessment of Newfoundland’s economic prospects as by the honesty and integrity of his social and geographic observations.58 In the preface he notes that Newfoundland has hitherto been little known, because it has not forced itself upon the historiographer by deeds of cruelty, or by intense divisions or external attempts

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which endangered the safety of the peace of its neighbours, but, on the contrary, like the source of the Nile, unobserved and unknown, silently distributed subsistence to a considerable proportion of its inhabitants, and particularly of the poor of both hemispheres; and while the other settlements with which the Europeans have covered the new world, have generally been the destruction of the first colonists, whom they have received, and of a great number of their successors; the climate of Newfoundland has even restored strength to those whose health had been affected by less wholesome climates, even to whole regiments, as well as to merchants and others coming from the West Indies.

Based on his knowledge of the island’s topography and the Icelandic sagas, Anspach argues forcefully that “Newfoundland is the only land” to which the Norse story of the legendary discovery of Vinland in ad 1001 can be applied. British geographer Patrick Gordon is quoted in support of the contention that grapevines used to grow “in abundance” on the French Shore. Significance is attributed to the testimony of the German grapevine expert Tyrkir and that of the “honest and religious” ore and mining expert Daniel of Saxony. Sections of Anspach’s History reveal him to be a shrewd and keen observer who views life and social conditions on the island and Labrador around 1800 very much through central European eyes.59 Topographically and climatically, Newfoundland strikes Anspach as presenting “features of the most eccentric character.” Its peculiarities and prospects are determined by the stark contrasts between “a rocky and barren soil, steep hills covered with bad wood, some narrow and sandy valleys and extensive plains” without trees or shrubs, known as “barrens.” The boggy and marshy ground makes riding and travelling dangerous. Similarly, the extreme contrasts between heat and cold (which are compared to Switzerland and Siberia) and the short growing season make this island unsuitable for production of “anything sufficient for the support of its inhabitants.” While locally grown lumber is of inferior quality and only good for “lungers, posts and other parts of ... fishing stages,” the best cultivated grounds “scarcely bring even oats to perfect maturity.” Potatoes and cabbages are the most valuable produce of the island. Although such European staple vegetables as beans, common salads, lettuces, and cucumbers were reported to succeed well in gardens, they are considered to be luxuries in Newfoundland, very much like the tropical fruit brought by merchants from the West Indies, and available for “but a very short time.” Newfoundland, concludes Anspach, “can never be truly valuable but as a fishery.”60 On the other hand, he shows awareness of the unexplored and barely known potential of Newfoundland’s mineral treasures. For example, he

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gives the first unambiguous information about an iron-ore mine at Back Cove on Bell Island and refers to the discovery of labradorite by Germanspeaking Moravian missionaries in 1778.61 Anspach’s examination of the character and lifestyle of Newfoundland’s inhabitants may be considered the most original and intriguing part of his work. His observations of amusement and gaiety in St John’s, the prevailing Irish mode of planting potatoes, the “precarious and uncertain” nature of the inshore fishery, the construction of houses, the funeral ceremonies of waking the dead, the Christmas customs of Yule and mummering, the eating habits, the pursuits of women, and so on – all these observations are essentially those of a continental European. With the curiosity of an educated and open-minded outsider, Anspach registered practices and habits strange, interesting, or significant to him, but which native-born English and Irish observers took for granted. Newfoundland, he implied, had been little known and written about in Europe, despite its obvious strategic and economic significance and its wholesome climate.62 Anspach’s reasons for returning to Europe after thirteen years of dedicated service to Newfoundland were purely personal and reflect the immigrant’s inability to reconcile the aspirations of his inherited continental European lifestyle with the exigencies of Newfoundland. In the letter of 9 July 1812 announcing to the spg his resignation from his post in Harbour Grace, he singles out concern for the education of his own children, his meagre emoluments, and the diet as the main factors. He recommended to the spg that, in typically Swiss fashion, ten to twelve acres of fenced land attached to the mission for “the facility of keeping a cow, some poultry and a few sheep would be of signal advantage in a place where salt fish and salt pork are almost the only food to be obtained.”63 Despite his unpleasant experiences as a teacher in St John’s from 1799 to 1802, well described in chapter 9 of his History, Anspach left Newfoundland with a strong sense of attachment to the island and an admiration for its people. “Nowhere can a race be found,” he summed up his general impressions, “more remarkable for indefatigable industry, for contempt of danger, for steadiness of temper and of conduct, sincerity, and constancy of attachment, and a strong sense of religious duty.”64 The appearance in 1822 of an abridged German edition of Anspach’s History, three years after the publication of the original English edition, attests as much to the appeal of its author as to German-speaking Europe’s newly awakened interest in Newfoundland. Today St John’s remembers him with Anspach Street. Anspach is the best known among the considerable number of persons of German-speaking background whose presence in Newfoundland can be

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identified during the period from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. Like him, most Germans appear to have come to Newfoundland by way of England. Like English newcomers, they came as settlers as well as sojourners: some were on their way to America, some came with British military or naval forces, and some were recruited on contract by local British agents because their skills as metallurgists, surgeons, justices, and clergymen were in demand. These recruits are more easily identifiable because their roles or services tended to be recorded. When we consider the broader context of German migratory patterns in Europe and North America and the ubiquity of migrants of German-speaking descent in the New World, it should come as no surprise that Newfoundland had its share of Germans and German connections from its first discovery.

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2 “The Esquimaux ... cannot be in better hands”

The Moravian Mission in Labrador The missionaries are all well-educated, earnest men; considering the dreary field of their labour, the isolation, privations, and hardships they necessarily undergo in carrying out their laborious work, even the prejudiced observer must acknowledge that only the highest Christian motive of self-devotion ... could induce these men to labour so abundantly ... in arctic Labrador. The most rabid opponents of Christian missions are unanimous in their praises of the Moravians. D.W. Prowse, A History of Newfoundland (1895), 595 The work of the mission is a real labour of love ... There is not a little that is loveable in the Esquimaux, but were it otherwise that would only increase the devotion, the unselfishness, the long-continued self-abnegation and sacrifice of their faithful missionaries ... [The Esquimaux race] cannot be in better hands than those of the Moravian Mission, to which it undoubtedly owes its survival to the present day. Newfoundland governor Sir William MacGregor, 19091

religious origins When the German edition of Lewis Amadeus Anspach’s History was first published in 1822, German-speaking Moravian missionaries were already harvesting the fruit of half a century of continuous presence in northern Labrador. They had pacified the seemingly unpacifiable region, created a written form of their language for the Inuit to facilitate their literacy, and introduced educational and other strategies to enable the Inuit and their cultural identity to survive in a rapidly changing modern world. The Newfoundland government did more than just tolerate with benevolent indifference Moravian cultural dominance in northern Labrador. It also

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specifically invited Moravian responsibility for educational, judicial, economic, medical, social, and other services in that remote region because it lacked both the interest and the resources to establish its presence there until the twentieth century. Who were the Moravians and what was their interest in Labrador? The Moravian brand of Christianity originated as an integral part of the popular Protestant revival movement of Pietism, which spread within the Lutheran Church beginning in the 1680s and peaked in eighteenth-century Germany. Rebelling against orthodox, authoritarian, institutionalized Protestantism, Pietism demanded a completely personalized religion gained by prayer and introspection and derived solely from Bible study. Pietists’ strong sense of the equality of all in the eyes of God coupled with a belief in good works as an expression of true faith, earned them a reputation as social radicals eager to reform society through education. Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Pietism was a potent force in German religious, cultural, and political life.2 The present-day Moravian Church was founded in 1722 by Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–60) as a Pietist association of likeminded brethren within the Lutheran Church. He named it Herrnhuter Brüdergemeinde (Herrnhut community of brethren), as it is still known in Germany today. Himself the descendant of an Austrian Protestant family that had accepted religious-political refuge in Saxony, Zinzendorf wanted to gather under his protective wing the few remaining German-speaking members of a group of Protestants known as Moravians or Unitas Fratrum (unity of brethren), who were being persecuted in re-Catholicized Bohemia and Moravia (roughly the area of the present Czech Republic). These Protestants traced their denominational roots to the Czech reformer John Hus, who was burned at the stake in 1415, and even beyond him to the pre-Reformation sect of the Waldensians. Under the patronage of Zinzendorf, who adopted the names Moravian and Unitas Fratrum for his association, the few surviving Moravian refugees experienced a spiritual renewal. Essentially indifferent to denominational particularities, he offered not only Moravians but also Calvinists, Pietists, and other Christian dissenters a haven on his estate in Saxony, where he built the community of Herrnhut (literally, the Lord’s protection) for them – hence their German name Herrnhuter. Out of mystical foundations common to Moravians, Reformed, and Lutherans, he forged a bond of fraternity among dedicated followers. Calling themselves brothers and sisters, they pledged to overcome the divisions of Christianity under his spiritual leadership. With beliefs rooted in the tradition of European mys-

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ticism, they were convinced that such ethical principles of the Scriptures as love, rather than dogmatic formulation of creed, must govern Christian conduct as evidence of saving faith. Zinzendorf inspired his Unitas Fratrum with a dual vision. He did not want to found a separate church. Rather, he wanted his followers to form an invisible church, that is, a union of spiritually like-minded brethren who would function as a revivalist leaven within existing Protestant churches. (In reality, this did not happen, and they remained a cohesive group.) He also directed them to pioneer Protestant foreign missions. They should dedicate their lives to taking the gospel to the oppressed and hitherto neglected native peoples.3 The missionaries, in the words of one historian, “had to be willing to serve without pay, to work for their living, to be content with bare necessities, and to suffer, die and be forgotten, content that such was the will of God.”4 From the outset, the Moravians’ General Synod and its executive, the Unity’s Conference of Elders, had their permanent headquarters in Germany and invariably consisted almost exclusively of Germans. Although the Moravians established provincial synods in England, Ireland, Holland, and America, Germany was the hub for the mission’s decisionmaking about objectives and operations. There the missionaries were trained, and from there they were sent into the world. In 1732 the first Moravian missionaries set forth. These went to the black slaves of the West Indies. In the following year Moravians went to the Inuit (Eskimos) of Greenland and in 1735 to the other Natives (Indians) of North America. Within a few decades, the Mission Board at Herrnhut administered a global community of Moravian synods, mission stations, and congregations with a presence in England, Sweden, Russia, the Americas, and Africa.

mission stations and settlements The idea of extending the Moravian ministry to the Labrador Inuit, who had a reputation (in the words of Newfoundland governor Palliser) as “the most treacherous, cruel and barbarous of all savages ever known,”5 was initiated by Moravian missionaries in Greenland, who were convinced that the same transformation of the lives of the Inuit could be wrought in Labrador as in Greenland. The Labrador Inuit’s bad reputation resulted from conflicts arising from their trade with European (before 1763 mostly French) fishing, trading, and naval parties in the south. The great difficulties of establishing a mission in Labrador, however, became clear in 1752

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when local Inuit murdered seven members of the first Moravian exploratory party, including its leader, the Mecklenburg seaman Johann Christian Erhardt.6 Labelled “the Dutchman” by Anglo-Saxon chroniclers because he had been employed on a Dutch ship, Erhardt had planned a combined missionary and trade exploration funded by Moravian businessmen in England. In Ford’s Harbour, close to today’s Makkovik, he selected a spot for the first mission station he named Hopedale (not identical to present-day Hopedale). A house built at this site in 1752 was soon destroyed by Inuit. The ruins of this first attempt to start a Labrador mission were found by Moravian search parties in 1753 and 1775 but were subsequently abandoned and not rediscovered and excavated until 2001.7 A second – this time successful – attempt to establish a permanent foothold in Labrador was made by the Danish-born Moravian Jens Haven. He, like Erhardt, had ministered to the Inuit in Greenland. Unlike Erhardt, though, Haven was fluent in Greenland Inuktitut, a language very similar to the Labrador Inuit idiom. Haven’s plans were brought to fruition with the help of the English branch of the Unitas Fratrum and Newfoundland governor Hugh Palliser. After Newfoundland acquired Labrador from France in 1763, Palliser needed a truce with the Inuit so that an English trade and fishery might develop along the Labrador coast. After three voyages of inquiry by Haven in the 1760s and the British government’s approval of a land grant of 100,000 acres in 1769, the first permanent mission station was built at Nain in 1771. The Moravians explained to Palliser that they needed the large tract of land to keep at bay “the vicious and debasing influence” of fishermen and traders frequenting the coast.8 From the outset, the behaviour of fishermen-traders loomed as the most formidable obstacle to Moravian endeavours and seemed to explain the Inuit’s mistrust of white men. On his first trip to the Labrador coast in a Newfoundland fishing boat in summer 1764, an appalled Haven had to watch helplessly as the crew on his boat randomly shot at Inuit they spotted in kayaks. He was ridiculed by the fishermen, Haven reported, when he despaired over their apparent resolve “to murder all the Eskimos.”9 In order to be safe from these and other “wandering pirates who then abounded,” the Moravians chose a site for their mission premises in Labrador to which navigation would be extremely dangerous for those unfamiliar with the locality. In addition, Palliser decided to have the newly chosen Nain mission site fortified with cannon and muskets, not for defence against the Inuit but against pirate-fishermen.10 The Moravians’ role in protecting the Inuit of northern Labrador from the extinction that was the fate of the southern Inuit bands has been widely recognized.11

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2.1 Contemporary drawing of first Moravian mission building in Nain, Labrador, 1770s. uah (ts Mp.117.11).

Nain started out as a station in the wilderness consisting of a mission house, church, trading post, and outbuildings inhabited by fourteen missionary personnel – three married couples and eight single men (see illus. 2.1). A school was added in 1791. Although the headquarters of the Labrador mission until 1957, Nain developed only slowly into a larger settlement. Initially, the nomadic Inuit visited Nain merely to trade and to participate in the religious festivals of Easter and Christmas. Meanwhile, they retained or relapsed into their indigenous religious beliefs.12 By 1850 the mission counted some three hundred, mostly seasonally visiting Inuit communicants. Only thereafter did Nain acquire a more permanently resident Inuit and white settler population. The ongoing warfare between Inuit and fishermen-traders as well as Inuit blood feuds, however, the Moravians had been able to stop almost immediately.13 From the 1770s to 1800 murders were reported only in the regions to the north and south of the mission stations, indicating the missionaries’ effective mediation in disputes.14 The excellent progress made by the missionaries in their relations with the Inuit caused the British government to approve a second mission settlement, Okak, to the north of Nain in 1775 and a third one to the south of Nain in 1782. The latter was named Hoffenthal (Hopedale) in memory

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2.2 View of Okak mission buildings, as drawn by Jens Haven, 1781. uah (ts Mp.114.9).

of the first abandoned station (see illus. 2.2 and 2.3). Like Nain, each was in an area occupied by a large gathering of Inuit during the winter, with an excellent harbour, good fishing, and an ample supply of wood and fresh water. Each of these settlements was started on a grant of 100,000 acres of surrounding land. Hopedale, with its stately mission house, church, and store, is, besides Hebron, the only Moravian mission complex that has survived from the mid-nineteenth century. Okak, which included an orphanage and a hospital, was closed in 1919 after the Spanish influenza had wiped out three-quarters of its Inuit community of 266. Its buildings were dismantled and their materials used to rebuild Nain, where the original church, school, stores, and stately three-storey mission house with archive and library were consumed by a fire in 1921. In order to be effective, the missionaries realized that they must go where the Natives gathered. Five more settlements, most of which no longer exist, were therefore launched along the northern Labrador coast during the nineteenth century. These are Hebron (1830–1959), Zoar (1865–94), Rama (1871–1908), Makkovik (1896–present), and Killinek (1904–24).

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2.3 Hopedale mission site, as drawn by a Moravian in 1787. uah (ts Mp.116.2).

Hebron, sixty miles north of Okak, was a rugged mountainous spot surrounded by steep cliffs thirty miles north of the treeline. It was established near a large Inuit camp at Saglek Bay to take the place of Okak as the spiritual centre for reaching out to the Inuit in the north. The materials for the mission house had to be brought on 105 dogsled trips from Okak. The onestorey mission building with the attached church was constructed in the form of a German longhouse with a central hallway and rooms leading off it. It served as a comprehensive community centre, housing the missionaries’ residence, school, village smithy, and other communal activity. The Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918 reduced Hebron’s Inuit population from 220 to 70, but it recovered. When in 1959 the Moravian Church decided to close the station, citing isolation, lack of services, and supply problems as reasons, the government resettled the remaining 247 Hebron Inuit to Moravian communities further south. The Hebron mission building was preserved to become a National Historic Site in 1976. Zoar, located between Hopedale and Nain, was the first Moravian settlement designed to gather not only Inuit but also settlers and Newfoundland fishermen of this area for trade and evangelization. The store, however, did not prove economically viable and became the cause of Inuit violence. When the Moravians closed it, the Inuit left Zoar. Consequently, the settlement had to be abandoned. The decisions to build stations at Rama and Killinek on the far northern coast signified the last, equally short-lived Moravian efforts to establish contact with the remaining Inuit on Labrador’s most northern coastal strip. Rama was situated a hundred

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2.4 “First and only room for a missionary couple and a single missionary in Rama from 1872–1883.” Drawing by missionary Samuel Weiz. uah (ts Mp.112.11).

miles above the treeline in an inhospitable environment of rock, ice, and sea (see illus. 2.4). It serviced 45 souls when the Moravians had to abandon it for financial reasons. Killinek station hugged the coastal cliffs of a barren, rocky island at the northernmost tip of Labrador. Surrounded by frozen sea most of the year, it was almost completely cut off from the other stations, even in good weather (see illus. 2.5). Two factors sealed its fate: its Inuit population declined despite an auspicious beginning, and territorial disputes with Canada increased because of import duties imposed on supplies. Makkovik was the first settlement started south of Hopedale. It was also the first one to serve primarily settlers and fishers and the only one of the five started in the nineteenth century still surviving. Its large two-storey mission house and church, prefabricated by Moravians in Germany, burnt to the ground in 1948. They were replaced by much smaller bungalow-type buildings. The only additional Labrador congregations Moravians formed in the twentieth century were in Happy Valley (1943) and North West River (1960).15 In 1967 the five Labrador congregations constituted themselves as the autonomous Moravian Church in Newfoundland and Labrador, which became an affiliated province of the worldwide Moravian Church.16 The 250th anniversary of the Moravian Church in Labrador in

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2.5 Killinek mission site, icebound most of the year, ca. 1913. Courtesy Martin Filschke.

2002 attested to the fact that the Moravians had come to stay. Over 2,000 of northern Labrador’s population of about 2,500 claim a Moravian heritage today.17

l i f e at t h e m i s s i o n s tat i o n s The centre of each Moravian settlement was the original mission station. It generally consisted of a large mission house with living quarters, offices, workshops, and communal rooms for the missionaries; a church (sometimes attached to the mission house); a trading store; outbuildings for curing such items as fish, meat, and skins; a garden; and a graveyard. The stately external appearance of the original two- and three-storey Labrador mission houses and the churches with belfries reflect German Baroque designs typical of most buildings in Herrnhut and Moravian mission stations everywhere from the mid-eighteenth to the early twentieth century. In Labrador the missionaries erected these structures themselves and made most of their own furniture from local materials according to German plans. Only the Makkovik mission house and church were shipped in pieces from Germany. On a trip home in 1891, missionary Hermann Jannasch had arranged to get a newly developed German-type prefabricated church and mission house complete with four German tiled heating stoves.

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They were to be manufactured for the new Makkovik station for later assembly there. The buildings were temporarily assembled by the manufacturer in Niesky, Germany, where Jannasch marked their parts so he could reassemble them in Makkovik in 1896.18 Inuit gathered around this station complex, at first infrequently and then seasonally (usually from the onset of winter to shortly after Easter), in tents, sod huts, or small wooden houses. During the summer months the missionaries were thus alone in the settlement and could devote themselves to such activities as fishing and hunting, gardening, carpentry, scientific experiments, writing, and coastal travel. Six missionaries on average, including one or two married couples and a trading brother, occupied the mission stations, especially the larger ones. In 1900, at the peak of its operations, the Labrador mission counted a total missionary staff of thirtyseven (including wives) and a congregation of about 1,000 Inuit communicants (from an estimated population of about 1,500 Inuit along the entire Labrador coast), plus two to three hundred so-called settlers, that is, whites or half-Inuit. Until the 1920s, most of the Moravian missionaries in Labrador were of German background and had been trained in Germany. The home office in Herrnhut arranged for the missionary’s marriage by selecting a suitable Moravian bride. It also required that the missionaries’ children be sent for education to Moravian boarding schools in Germany when they reached eight years of age. Some of these children returned from Germany to their places of birth in Labrador to become missionaries themselves. After serving in Labrador an average of fifteen to twenty years – a few stayed for as long as forty years – the German-born missionaries preferred to retire in Germany. There they looked forward to devoting their remaining years publicizing their experiences as missionaries, promoting the mission’s objectives in Labrador, and helping to solicit charitable donations for its operation. The missionaries born in Germany and their Labrador-born children therefore preferred to retain their German nationality, even when serving in Labrador for as long as forty years. The absence of a German official of any kind in Labrador prompted the German ambassador in London to successfully request the establishment of a consulate there. In 1880 a German consulate was opened in Nain so that the forty German missionary staff could “obtain legally valid papers” (see chapter 3).19 Visitors frequently noted the “very German” living quarters and lifestyle of the missionaries. The big mission houses, indeed, were a microcosm of Moravian life in Germany. All the mission stations were heated with wood and coal in German-type, tall ceramic tile stoves (Kachelofen). Even the

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remote Killinek station prided itself on a large blue-tiled stove of this type. Its efficiency and long retention of heat impressed rcmp constable Kenneth C. Butler, who visited the station in 1921 and had never seen this kind of stove before.20 Each station operated a bakery, a smithy, and a carpentry shop. In addition, Nain, Hopedale, and Okak brewed beer, and Nain set up a printing press. Jessie Luther, a New England visitor to the Hopedale mission house in 1910, took note of cross-stitch embroidery on the tablecloths, pots of red geraniums on the windowsills, white window curtains, German texts on the walls, and beds with two layers of feather beds on them. Although content with Spartan diets for themselves, Moravians brought out their best food from storage for their guests. Missionary Berthold Lenz and his wife served Jessie Luther Sunday breakfast with whole wheat bread, oatmeal porridge, coffee, and marmalade. Dinner consisted of “delicious soup, partridge (canned by Frau Lenz), potato, creamed cauliflower (from the garden) and stewed dried raspberries for dessert.” Supper included smoked salmon, homemade German sausage, bread and butter, tea, and marmalade, “all placed on the table at once.” Sunday noon dinner was followed by coffee at two o’clock. Luther “found the table spread as for a formal meal with lively white, green and gold china and a silver coffee service ... In the center of the table were two large kuchen [cakes], one with apple and almonds, the other with rhubarb. It is remarkable how one could eat such a meal so soon after a twelve o’clock dinner with the prospect of supper at five-thirty and a nightcap at nine, but we seemed to manage five meals a day without difficulty.”21 The organization of social and cultural life at the mission stations, including the common housekeeping arrangement, which was abandoned in 1907,22 was as Moravian German as the physical layout and architectural style. In order to make the mission house a self-contained and self-sufficient family group, the missionaries maintained a strict division of labour. The upbringing of the missionaries’ small children to the age of seven (thereafter they were sent to Germany), the kitchen, and the laundry were the preserve of the female missionaries, while bread baking, carpentry, repairs, and hunting, and fishing, were male chores. Among the male missionaries, those who knew the Native language engaged in preaching, teaching, and translating, whereas others were assigned practical work, such as construction or food gathering, and one was always responsible for the station’s store. As a part of schooling, Inuit girls were assigned the washing and mending of all the children’s clothes, while the Inuit boys had to split wood and haul water for the

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kitchen.23 Inuit girls who spoke German used to help the missionaries’ wives in their households.

gardening Moravians came to Labrador with great hopes for gardening as a way to remain as self-sufficient as possible. But even after they realized that at best they might be able to supplement no more than a fraction of their subsistence from nature, they did not give up. Inspired by the gardening skills and experience they had acquired in Germany, they experimented until they had discovered ways to adapt to the short growing season and harsh climate of Labrador. Visitors were invariably amazed at the ingeniously cultivated and prolifically yielding Moravian gardens in Hopedale and Nain. Even in Hebron and Rama, far north of the treeline, Moravians had gardens. A Moravian drawing of Nain in the 1770s (see illus. 2.2 and 2.3) already showed two gardens, a large one on the left and a small one on the right side of the mission house. In Hopedale, too, the Moravians recognized the potential for gardening immediately. In less than a year after their arrival, they had marked off a piece of land 70 by 60 feet, surrounded it with palisades, and created a fertile mulch by mixing many wheelbarrows of mossy soil with seaweed.24 Later visitors to Hopedale recorded their astonishment at the missionaries’ success in growing vegetables and flowers. In his Visitation Report of July 1876, Bishop Levin Theodor Reichel commented that the Hopedale gardens “took us by surprise, as vegetation in them was more advanced than we had anticipated: during our stay they improved very perceptibly with warm weather and very heavy rain. Salad [i.e., lettuce] and cucumbers in the forcing frames require great care and trouble, which are, however, well repaid.”25 Gardens were a standard feature at all mission stations where something could be grown. Some stations had attractively landscaped backyards equipped with walkways, benches, picnic tables, and even tea houses. Despite the harsh climate, the missionaries managed to successfully grow flowers, shrubs, and trees and such vegetables as rhubarb, potatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, kohlrabi, lettuce, beets, and radishes. The plants were usually started indoors behind stoves in cans and boxes and then nursed along sunny windows until the end of May, when they could be moved into cold frames outdoors. In June and July they were then planted into outdoor beds fertilized with kelp that had washed ashore. To plant the Hopedale garden in May or June, the snow of the preceding eight months had to be dug out and carried away.26

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2.6 Potato and turnip gardening at Nain, ca. 1900. Courtesy Martin Filschke.

Jessie Luther, who visited Hopedale in 1910, was taken aback at the beauty of the Moravians’ “dear little formal flower garden with three flower beds” holding pansies, poppies, and pink English daisies along paths of gravel, with pointed shingles bordering the small flower beds. There was also a greenhouse sheltering flowers and vegetables. Mrs Lenz, the missionary’s wife, led the visitor “along a walk bordered by trees, through a kitchen garden where lettuce, potatoes, rhubarb, turnips, and even cauliflower were flourishing, then through a gate in the picket fence to another lovely spot with trees, shrubs, and walks leading to seats beside them. There was even a little tea house, and in one place, a seat and table were raised by rock and sand to a height overlooking the sea and hills. Mrs Lenz said she and Mr Lenz had made this themselves, and it was their favorite retreat.”27 Nain had a more prolific vegetable garden than Hopedale because the soil had been lovingly collected all around the mission station wherever small pockets of it could be found.28 In the outdoor garden beds, elaborate devices protected plants from the cold. Visitors marvelled at how Inuit women trooped out on chilly evenings to cover up the potatoes. “Every row of potatoes is covered with arched sticks and long strips of canvas along them. A huge role of sacking is kept near each row and the whole is drawn over and the potatoes are tucked in bed for the night.” (see illus. 2.6)29 At Nain, missionary Jannasch built a hothouse

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sunken into the ground and warmed with heat sent through pipes from the tiled stove in the mission house.30 Professor Edward C. Moore of Harvard University, who toured the mission stations in 1905, echoed the Grenfell teacher’s sentiments at the sight of the missionaries’ gardens and their greenhouse there. He was amazed that at Nain “pansies and petunias grow in the open air in August though icebergs are everywhere in sight. I have a picture of a doctor at this station sitting in his room with a gloxinia in a pot beside him in full bloom in mid-winter in a climate where the thermometer often reaches 25 degrees below zero ... So small a thing as this love of flowers is typical of the refinement of these faithful men and women, and the simple godliness and quiet devotion which they manifest betrays the secret of all that these missions have achieved.”31

inuit language and culture For almost two centuries, the Moravian cultural record in Labrador had been largely a German experience. The predominant language at the mission stations was German, and the bulk of the mission stations’ diaries (until 1929) were written in German. When baptizing Inuit, the missionaries used only German first names.32 For their interactions with local and British authorities, settlers, fishermen, and the spg, however, the German missionaries serving in Labrador also acquired some fluency in English.33 But it is symptomatic for the pervasiveness of the Moravian stations’ German environment that the few English-born missionaries serving in Labrador all learned German in order to function adequately. In virtually every aspect of Moravian-Inuit relations, German attitudes and customs were transparent. Moravian cultural endeavours, ranging from their linguistic work, music, science, and educational methods to their work ethic, were mostly based on models and approaches originating in Germany. Observing Inuit culture and preserving what they saw as essential to it reflected the Moravians’ distinctive concept of culture and Bildung (education), rooted in their Moravian and German traditions. Zinzendorf had studied and admired John Amos Comenius (1592–1670), renowned as the “father of modern education” and one of the last bishops of the original Moravian Brethren. Comenius’s interest in natural science and his ideas for making learning interesting and relevant for life34 were further developed by Germany’s foremost Pietist theologian, August Hermann Francke (1663–1727).35 As director of the Halle Pedagogium, he was Zinzendorf’s chief teacher and mentor. Francke’s pedagogical approaches

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were highly innovative. They were aimed at the physical and social improvement of orphaned, sick, impoverished, and lower-class children, as well as at the needs of the upper classes. He advocated schooling children in accordance with their natural talents in academic and practical subjects, with natural history and the natural sciences occupying a prominent place in the curriculum.36 Herrnhut’s first Latin school, from its beginning in 1738, taught geography, anatomy, medicine, and a trade. This curriculum was further developed at the Moravian school and seminary of Wetterau (near Frankfurt am Main). One of the first directors of the Wetterau school, Bishop Polykarp Müller, was a devout advocate of “the study of science in the service of the mission to the heathen.” He believed that an effective mission required the most versatile teachers with expertise in a number of disciplines of the arts and sciences, especially the study of languages, nature, cultures, and geography. Müller’s ideas were implemented by Paul Eugen Layritz, Friedrich Adam Scholler, and David Cranz, three prominent Moravian educators who trained the first generation of Moravian missionaries. Two of these, Layritz and Cranz, were associated with the Labrador mission. Layritz visited Nain in 1773 as a representative of the Conference of Elders in order to help define internal procedures as well as missionary approaches and objectives in Labrador.37 The Moravians’ most vital cultural objectives, as well as their most significant and enduring ones, were their linguistic endeavours. The primary challenge, in keeping with their Moravian religious philosophy, was bringing literacy to the Inuit in their native language, facilitating the spread of the gospel among them. Linguistically, the Moravians faced three formidable tasks: they needed to create a written form for Inuktitut, in order to produce reading materials in that language, which were essential for bringing about Inuit literacy. To accomplish this goal, the Moravians first created a written form for the Inuit based on the Labrador oral dialect. Then, to provide reading materials for the Inuit, the Moravians translated the Bible and other reading materials into Inuktitut. These tasks were accomplished during the difficult formative years of the mission. Although the missionaries had been prepared for practical trades and often lacked any specific phonetic and linguistic training, they were helped by two advantages – they were able to avail themselves of previous Moravian linguistic work done for the Greenland Inuit, and the first Labrador missionaries included several who had lived in Greenland and knew Inuktitut. Five of the first missionaries were fluent in Greenlandic Inuktitut upon arrival in Nain. During his term in Nain from 1773 to 1797, Johann

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Ludwig Beck is known to have used a copy of his father’s Greenland dictionary. As early as 1780, Hopedale missionary David Kriegelstein was reported preparing a book of readings for Labrador Inuit.38 The first part of the Bible in Labrador Inuktitut – the Passion story – was available in 1800, to be followed by the Gospels in 1813. By 1826 the missionaries had translated into Labrador Inuktitut the entire New Testament, and by 1834 parts of the Old Testament. The translation of the complete Bible by 1869 was the work of missionary Friedrich Erdmann, who served in Okak, Nain, and Hebron from 1834 to 1872.39 In addition, comprehensive dictionaries, catechisms, prayer books, Bible stories, and hymnals – the 1950 edition of the Inuit hymnal still contains German subtitles – are the fruit of the German missionaries’ linguistic labours. Erdmann also prepared the first comprehensive printed InuktitutGerman dictionary (1864), based on numerous older, handwritten, and incomplete dictionaries copied and revised by missionaries in the course of their service in Labrador.40 The first detailed grammar (in German) of Labrador Inuktitut was the work of missionary Theodor Bourquin in 1891. Although modelled on Samuel Kleinschmidt’s grammar of Greenlandic Inuktitut of 1851, it relied heavily on local Native informants to do justice to the grammatical and orthographic peculiarities of the Labrador dialect. Missionary Hermann Jannasch, who assisted in this task, was overawed by the dedication with which Bourquin shouldered these labours over a fifteen-year period. Bourquin, recalled Jannasch in his memoirs of 1929, “carried a notepad with him on all his walks and travels in Labrador; he kept asking the Eskimo to explain every new expression and scribbled down everything most conscientiously.” Bourquin’s work revealed such an exceptional grasp of the peculiarities of Labrador Inuktitut and was so thorough, F.W. Peacock noted almost a century later, that revisions of this work “have failed to add any significant facts.”41 It has been observed that certain Inuktitut guttural sounds with a harsh and unpleasant ring to the English ear resemble German sounds. These sounds appear in such German words as ach and doch and facilitated the linguistic labours of the German missionaries. When compiling their dictionaries, the German missionaries wrote down the sounds they heard as they would have reproduced them in their own language. German phonetics thus is the basis for spelling Inuit words to this day, a system that often causes confusion and irritation for English speakers. Lacking Inuit equivalents for many of the spiritual concepts and everyday items necessary to teach the Bible, the German missionaries had to create a large body of new Inuit vocabulary. Their pioneer creation of a written form of Inuktitut and

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their translations into the Inuit language consequently contain substitutions of German words for concepts missing in the Native language. For example, such German words as Gott (God), heilig (holy), Löwe (lion), Taube (pigeon), Harfe (harp), and Kartoffel (potato), the German names for the days and the months, and German numerals from one to ten have entered the Native language. For plants such as the fig tree or grapevine, the Moravian linguists combined the Inuit word for pine (nappartok) with the German for fig (Feige) or wine (Wein) into nappartok faigeliksak and nappartok vaineliksak (i.e., the pine supposed to bear wine).42 From the 1940s on, a growing number of English words have broadened the Labrador Inuit dialect. The transformation of the Inuit’s spoken language into the means of communication now known as Inuktitut has, for good or ill, exposed their culture to incalculable new influences.

education One of the Moravian mandates in Labrador was to assume complete responsibility for the education of the Labrador Inuit. Until 1946, when the Newfoundland government finally took over supervision of the Moravian schools, the missionaries discharged their responsibility with sensitivity and dedication. Newly arriving Moravian missionaries were not allowed to preach or speak to Inuit until they had learned Inuktitut. Guided by the twin principles of imparting a sound knowledge of the Christian religion while leaving the Native way of life as undisturbed as possible, the Moravians’ educational approach was geared to all-out literacy for the Inuit, females as well as males. Moravian educational efforts were rewarded by Inuit love of learning. Inuit eagerness to learn had a ripple effect – children repeated at home what they had learned and thus also educated their parents. Indeed, recent linguistic research has emphasized that Inuit viewed Moravian literacy training as a life skill that was both taught and supported by family members and elders.43 Reports indicate that by 1843 most of the Inuit in districts where Moravian schooling was available were literate in their own language. Inuit literacy remained high for more than a century (see illus. 2.7). On the eve of World War i, Wilfred Grenfell considered them the besteducated people along the entire coast, and Governor MacGregor believed that they would be able to exercise the franchise as intelligently as any whites. Their reputation for literacy was so widespread among illiterate fishermen visiting Labrador in schooners that Inuit are reported to have been asked to write letters for them home to Newfoundland.44 Not until

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2.7 Bishop Albert Martin, German consul at Nain, with Inuit school class, Nain, ca. 1890. uah (mbs 01955).

1950 did Inuit literacy rates began to drop drastically when instruction in Inuktitut was discontinued in favour of universal English schooling.45 The first formal Moravian school in Labrador opened in 1791. The essential Moravian curriculum taught subjects that appeared to be of practical value – reading, writing, basic math and geography, elementary bookkeeping, and, of course, Bible study. Bible stories, however, formed the basic and most common instructional materials available to Inuit for more than a century and a half. The core academic objective was the acquisition by the Inuit of both basic literacy skills in Inuktitut and mathematical skills equivalent to grade four or five by today’s standards. In 1815 the Moravian school curriculum in Labrador added history and political and social studies. Although the language of instruction was Inuktitut, the more advanced students were also taught English and German by 1900. In Nain and Hebron many Inuit spoke three languages. In 1909 eleven Inuit helpers from the different stations sent salutations written in fluent English to King Edward vii beseeching him to protect their hunting and fishing grounds from outsiders’ encroachments.46 Education for baptized Inuit was virtually compulsory since they had to sign a pledge following their confirmation that their offspring would go to school. Because of the semi-nomadic lifestyle of the Inuit, the school year lasted only about twelve to sixteen weeks, although Okak had a Moravian orphanage from 1865. To meet the needs of the children of settlers living

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in dispersion, Moravians in 1900 opened in Makkovik the first Labrador boarding school in English. In 1922 this school introduced a nine-month curriculum. The school had thirty-seven students in 1930. At the same time, settlers’ demands and changing Inuit migrating patterns led to the transformation of the Nain Inuit school into another nine-month Moravian boarding school. It opened in 1929 for some fifty children of Inuit and settlers, offering English-language instruction to settlers’ children and Inuktitut schooling to Inuit. For settlers’ children it operated as a boarding school, while Inuit children attended whenever their parents returned from their winter fur-hunting expeditions, which were induced by the sale of the Moravian trading franchise to the Hudson’s Bay Company.47 The missionaries’ diverse expertise enabled a multi-faceted education. The amateur scientists and skilled artisans among them taught the Inuit a variety of scientific subjects, arts, crafts, and skills, including the use of nets for catching seals. Missionary Hermann Jannasch introduced his Inuit students to the secrets of optics, photography, electromagnetism, and gases.48 From the 1860s the missionaries’ wives were reported to be offering sewing and knitting lessons.49 In the nineteenth century the Nain mission taught carpentry to Inuit in a well-outfitted workshop. By 1900, Governor MacGregor reported, the course was dropped from the curriculum because the Inuit had become highly skilled at teaching one another without the help of the missionaries. Inuit had been serving as teachers’ aides since the midnineteenth century.50

music Moravian music is deeply rooted in the rich hymnal and choral tradition of German Protestantism and has always been a vital expression of the Moravians’ religion of the heart. As a contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederick Handel, Count Zinzendorf was immersed in the profusion of Baroque music that was composed and performed all around Herrnhut. Himself the author of numerous hymns, Zinzendorf valued singing and instrumental music as manifestations of one’s Christian joy and as a means to generate and revitalize communal bonds. From the beginning, therefore, singing and the teaching of hymns was an integral part of Moravian church services and school curricula in Labrador. The first formal teaching of Moravian hymns in Labrador schools is documented in the winter of 1780–81 in Nain.51 The Inuit were fond of demonstrating great talent for music and singing. As early as 1792 they were reported singing German hymns in Inuktitut. In

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2.8 Inuit church choir, Nain, 1880s. uah (mbs 02015).

1803 a Hopedale missionary reported back home that the Inuit children easily comprehended what was taught them and most knew the hymns in their hymn book by heart. Among the Moravians’ publications were songs for Inuit “freely translated and copied from German folksongs” (1872) by missionaries such as Friedrich Erdmann. Anthropologists such as Maija M. Lutz have also pointed to the Inuit quest to fulfill old needs in new forms.52 German scientist K.R. Koch, who visited the Labrador mission stations in 1882, was amazed how many German folk songs had been translated for the Inuit. He was “peculiarly touched by the homely melodies,” when he heard Inuit girls sing “Freut Euch des Lebens” or “Steh ich in finsterer Mitternacht,” although with a different text.53 At their well-attended lessons, Inuit learned quickly to sight-read any tune. German carols (in Inuktitut) were a favourite when they enthusiastically celebrated Christmas and Easter. At the mission stations their choirs practised songs for several voices.54 Initially, instruments served to accompany singing. Their earliest recorded use is at Nain in 1821, with missionaries playing the violoncello and harpsichord and two Inuit playing the violin in support of congregational singing (see illus. 2.8). Soon, however, brass instruments were added, and every mission station acquired its separate Inuit brass band composed of different brass instruments. The typical Moravian church services remained largely choral singing, accompanied on

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2.9 “German band”: Nain Inuit brass band, 1890s. uah (mbs 07529).

the organ and stringed instruments by Inuit musicians. On special occasions, such as Christmas, Inuit brass ensembles were added and the whole orchestration was known as the “German Band” (see illus. 2.9).55 The Moravian churches at the larger mission stations had pipe organs imported from Germany. These were usually played by self-taught Inuit. The first organ arrived in Nain in 1828 as a gift from the church at Herrnhut, where it had been in use since 1728. This organ was moved to Hopedale in 1845 when Nain received a new organ from the Kleinwelke congregation. Hopedale became quite famous for its musical culture. Inuit from that mission even played a harmonium in a chapel they had erected on Uviluktok Island, their summer worship place. To the Inuit’s delight, even the most northern stations of Rama and Killinek embellished their church services with a harmonium. The highest wish of an Inuk, visiting German scientist Koch noted, was to own a small harmonium. The missionaries brought with them not only the German Baroque traditions of the brass band and choirs with instrumental accompaniments, but also the collegium musicum, an informal gathering of musicians. In 1822 Inuit had been introduced to various European musical instruments and showed such skill and enthusiasm that, according to the Reverend F.W. Peacock, it was not uncommon to meet an Inuk able to play two or three brass instruments, as well as the organ and stringed instruments.56 On Sunday mornings, visiting missionary Levin T. Reichel observed, Inuit

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awakened the mission station with clarinet and brass bands, and in the afternoon groups of Natives used to visit the missionaries in their rooms for music and entertainment. It is therefore not surprising that the Moravians were able to impart to the Inuit their love even for string quartets and classical music performances. Nain in the 1880s had a children’s choir, a string quartet, and clarinet, flute, and oboe players. According to missionary Hermann Jannasch, their skills were often extraordinary. On Christian holidays, Moravian church services in Labrador were no less musically embellished than the church services in Germany.57

german customs and traditions Besides their love for music, the Moravians passed on to the Inuit such German customs and traditions as the celebration of Advent with Advent wreath and hanging stars, Christmas with the decorated tree and the Christmas Eve gift exchange, and the inauguration of the New Year with an Inuit brass ensemble playing the German hymn “Now Thank We All Our God.” Missionary Hermann Jannasch’s son, who grew up in Nain in the 1880s, remembered the eagerness with which Inuit liked to show off their own Christmas trees decorated with pieces of paper, stars cut out of tin cans, pictures taken from catalogues and labels, and small dangling gifts.58 The Moravians also endeavoured, though with greater difficulty, to impart to the Inuit a German sense of efficiency, order, and economy.59 Moravian Inuit communities increasingly reflected the world the missionaries had left behind in Germany. Geographical isolation coupled with Moravian assumption of responsibility for every spiritual and material problem of the Inuit, F.W. Peacock noted, resulted in what some perceived as benevolent paternalistic control over the lives of the Native converts. “The atmosphere created was almost feudal and a fertile ground for the developing of autocrats. That some of the missionaries became autocrats cannot be denied but on the whole their humility and sense of mission prevented this ... That they did not organize the life of the whole community with such [German] efficiency was simply due to the fact that the Inuit, as independent people, although willing to serve, did not intend to be servants, and, as time passed, began to look upon the work of the Mission as a partnership.”60 Looking back at the charges of paternalism and repression exercised by the missionaries, spokespersons of today’s Moravian Church in Labrador admit that “some existed, perhaps a great deal.” But the missionaries had practical ulterior motives. Their objective in all this

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endeavour was “to assist the Inuit in adapting to the changes which all saw as inevitable.”61

scientific pursuits The Moravians’ training in Germany and the distinctive concept of education imbued in them prompted them from the outset to attach great significance not only to the study of Native cultures but also to the observation of natural phenomena and the pursuit of all kinds of scientific objectives. The missionaries often undertook these studies in close cooperation with scientists and scholars from German-speaking Europe. They also willingly accommodated scientists who wished to use the mission stations as observation posts for scientific fieldwork (see chapters 3 and 5). Today students can reconstruct pre-Moravian Inuit culture in Labrador because the missionaries meticulously recorded such pre-Christian Inuit customs as shamanism.62 The Moravians’ amazingly wide range of cultural, educational, and scientific activities is to a large degree a legacy of the strong devotion of German Pietistic culture to the indigenous life of Germany, that is, a revolt against the blind acceptance of foreign models. It is also an outgrowth of the rejection of religious and philosophical dogmatism in education in favour of a pragmatic exploration of life and nature. Although hostile towards rationalism, this concept of education and culture embodied the spirit of several aspects of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, such as the romantic urge to return to nature and admiration for the “noble savage.” Moravian preoccupation with nature has been traced to the pantheistic mysticism common to Hussite and Pietist traditions. It was a yearning for participation in the harmony of the universe, for overcoming the divisions between humankind, nature, and God.63 Some of these approaches were further developed by Germany’s foremost Pietist theologian, August Hermann Francke. His precepts inspired a whole generation of HerrnhutMoravian pedagogues and educational theorists to promote state-of-theart education in state-controlled and Moravian schools. Many prominent German writers, poets, administrators, and scientists received their early education at the boarding school in Herrnhut and at Moravian colleges in such places as Niesky and Barby. True to the spirit of the times, Moravian pedagogues demanded a thorough natural science education with emphasis on the acquisition of a keen sense of observation and understanding as a prerequisite for missionary and school service.

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What was taught by Paul Eugen Layritz, a student of Francke and an instructor in various Lutheran and Moravian schools in Germany, was so devoted to experimental physics, geography, botany, and modelling with cardboard, wood, and glass that it appeared to have little in common with the idea of a Pietist education. His proposal for the reorganization of the Moravian theological academy at Barby (near Magdeburg) stressed the significance of a broad general education over narrow specialization in theology, law, and medicine. As a result, more courses in natural science subjects than in theology were taught at Barby by the 1760s,64 and the variety and thoroughness of its natural history collection had few equals in Germany.65 Barby professor Friedrich Adam Scholler is hailed as the Unitas Fratrum’s foremost botanist and “true father of the natural sciences.” For him the systematic study of botany, ornithology, and entomology became virtually an end in itself. His comprehensive Flora Barbiensis (1775), widely praised among the leading botanists of its time, justified devotion to the natural sciences as admiration of and propaganda for the beautiful works of the Creator. The value of an inductive knowledge of the physical environment, natural history, geography, and cultures of the areas destined for missionary activity was demonstrated by David Cranz in his pioneering history of the Moravian mission of Greenland, published in 1765. Intended as a model for a history of Moravian missions in other lands, the book opens with a comprehensive geography of Greenland, including data on the weather and ice movements, as well as on the geology, flora, and biology. His examination of the culture and lifestyle of the Greenland Inuit compares these with whatever data were available about Labrador. Cranz’s History of Greenland thus became far more than a record of the mission’s work in Greenland. Its valuable collection of data was a guide and a reference for the subsequent launching of the Labrador mission.66 The Labrador missionaries were thus conditioned from the outset to observe nature and to send data and samples for scientific analysis to Germany. As a result of their training, wide range of interests, and educational approach, these missionaries contributed much to our knowledge of the Inuit, their culture, and their physical environment. Moravians pioneered the study of the geography, climate, flora, fauna, and other natural phenomena of Labrador. The Labrador missionaries systematically observed and collected all manner of plants, birds’ eggs, butterflies, moths, and insects and communicated their findings for evaluation and publication to scholars in Germany. Based on these reports, the renowned Moravian entomologist Heinrich Benno Möschler between 1848 and 1870 pub-

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lished probably the first and today still one of the most comprehensive classifications of Labrador butterflies.67 Geological curiosity led missionaries to discover the semi-precious blue stone called labradorite. As early as 1773 they sent a quantity of it to England in the “hope that this might contribute to [a reduction of] the mission expenses.”68 Moravian meteorological and cartographic observations proved to be of outstanding scientific and practical value. The Moravians collected instrumental weather readings at Nain, Hopedale, and Okak from the beginning. The Nain station kept continuous weather records from as early as 1772. These were sent on to London and, from 1882 to 1939, to the Deutsche Seewarte (German marine observatory) in Hamburg.69 In 1809, 1836, and 1857 Moravians were the first to measure and record earthquakes in Newfoundland and Labrador that were related to earthquakes offshore.70 In February 1903 they took note of even such seemingly minor phenomena as a precipitation of ashes or similar deposits on the white snow far and wide around Makkovik. In July that year they reported huge clouds of smoke or dust high up in the atmosphere darkening the daylight for two days.71 At each of their mission stations the Moravians meticulously recorded the formation of shore ice each year. A by-product of the mission’s expansion in Labrador was the mapping of the largely unmapped coastline by the missionaries. Their collective drawings and cartographic skills yielded the first accurate maps of the coastline of northern Labrador, published in 1860 by Bishop Levin T. Reichel (see illus. 2.10 and 2.11). The Reichel map, which charted the sea route from Hopedale to Hebron, was in use until 1957.72 It was kept in Nain, where year after year, ships’ captains would borrow it on their northward journey and return it to Nain on the way back.73 The first map of Eskimo Bay, based on data collected by missionary Ferdinand Elsner, who had explored the Hamilton Inlet area in 1857, was published in 1861 in Harper’s Magazine.74 After his exploration of the area in 1870, missionary James O’Hara produced in 1872 a more comprehensive map of the entire coast from Davis Inlet to the Strait of Belle Isle. This map showed with much more detail and accuracy the same area inland from Hopedale to North West River.75 The mapping of the northern tip of Labrador was first undertaken in 1868 by missionary Samuel Weiz76 and completed as a collaborative effort in 1896 by Captain Linklater and missionaries Linder, Weiz, and Jannasch.77 The geographic and linguistic expertise of missionary Johann August Miertsching, stationed in Okak from 1844 to 1850, led to his inclusion as the only German in the British search for the Sir John Franklin expedition

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2.10 German-language map of Labrador, by L.T. Reichel, “according to the hand drawings of our missionaries, since no authentic charts exist of this coast.” Reproduced in L.T. Reichel, Missions-Atlas (1860), no. 2.

of 1850–52. As an Inuit interpreter, he endured four gruelling winters with this expedition in the Arctic, warding off threats from hostile Inuit and befriending them in their own language. During this ordeal, Miertsching found the time and patience to record in a diary geographic, ethnographic, and meteorological data that provided invaluable information to researchers about the topography, weather, and life in this region. The lifethreatening tribulations in the unchartered Arctic challenged Miertsching, the missionary, linguist, scientist, and jack-of-all-trades to rise to the occasion and leave his mark on the entire odyssey.78 Miertsching had joined the Moravians as a shoemaker in 1836 at the age of nineteen. The Moravian education in Germany, his grandson HansWindekilde Jannasch later related, exposed him to the thoroughly inventoried local flora and fauna, to the study of ethnographic items and natural

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2.11 Coast of Labrador, as drawn by Jens Haven at St John’s in 1765. uah (ts Mp. 111.10).

scientific data collected in all parts of the world, and to scholarly books of every kind. “Moravians were no otherwordly dreamers,” Jannasch insisted. The real world and nature as the manifestation of divinity was their field of action. Music and gardening were favourite preoccupations, besides training in every trade needed in the wilderness. In Labrador, apart from perfecting his skills as an interpreter in Inuktitut, Miertsching kept a diary in which he entered daily meteorological, geographical, and other

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natural scientific observations. His herbarium contained 3,785 plants. In every respect he had the makings of a scholar and scientist. Scientists still speak highly of the data he collected.79 The well-documented record of contributions to science of HansWindekilde’s father, Adolf Hermann Jannasch (1849–1931), who served in Labrador from 1879 to 1903, gives another indication of the range of scientific endeavours Labrador missionaries pursued. Besides pioneering photography in the region, he prepared a herbarium, mounted butterflies and insects, collected rock samples, and stuffed birds as his German teacher Möschler had taught him. In order to observe the northern lights and related phenomena, he acquired a telescope and sent regular reports of his observations to the director of the German marine observatory in Hamburg. After his retirement in Germany in 1904, Jannasch assisted Count Karl von Linden of Stuttgart as an expert adviser with the acquisition of Labrador Inuit cultural objects for his Arctic collection. Linden was the founder of Stuttgart’s famous Linden Museum, one of the largest ethnological collections in Germany.80

moravian trade The Unitas Fratrum was a poor church relying on voluntary contributions for the maintenance of its foreign missions. Nonetheless, the launching and survival of its Labrador mission required an additional source of revenue to pay for a supply ship, an annual voyage, and the provisioning of the isolated mission stations. The task of procuring the economic lifeblood of the Labrador mission was assumed by the English branch of the Unitas Fratrum, known as the Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel (sfg), since 1741. In 1769 the sfg decided to purchase a ship through the sale of shares to proprietors who formed a so-called ship’s company. Trade with the Inuit was to keep the company viable and enable the sfg to pay for the operation of the mission. From the outset, this trade was not designed as, and it never became, an end in itself. The establishment of permanent mission stations with stores and the extension of credit to the Inuit enabled the sfg to acquire a monopoly on trade with the Inuit. The goods received from the Inuit – seal oil, cod-liver oil, cod, sealskin, fox skin, and carved ivory – brought high prices in the London market. In return, the Inuit acquired English-made knives, forks, guns, and various hunting and fishing articles. For their own personal use, the missionaries imported coal, canned meat, canned fruit, tea, coffee, sugar, bacon, potatoes, and medicines. No cash changed hands. Barter was

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on a debit-credit basis, also known in other parts of the Canadian North as the truck system. Until 1906 even the missionaries received an annual credit of $90 at the mission store for their daily food and personal necessities, instead of a cash salary. The missionaries’ lifeline to Europe was an sfg-owned ship. Once every summer it sailed from London to each of the mission stations, where it delivered trading goods, provisions, mail, and sometimes a few passengers. Until 1926, when the last Moravian ship was sold to the Hudson’s Bay Company, the mission successively owned thirteen ships, six of them named the Harmony. For the missionaries, the ship’s arrival provided the only regular contact with the outside world, and the whole life of their community was organized around the so-called ship’s year. Each mission station had a two-year supply of provisions in case the ship did not arrive after one year. Yet not once in its 156–year history did the ship fail to deliver its cargo to at least one station, despite stormy seas, icebergs, ill-charted coastlines, and wars. The Moravian ship was fortunate to be granted safe conduct by the Thirteen Colonies and France during the American Revolution, and by Germany during World War i (see chapter 6).81 The maintenance of a trading post at each mission station had two immediate consequences. First, it drew the Inuit to the mission stations and away from the orbit of private traders in the south. And secondly, it developed increasing Inuit dependence on European goods. The desire to satisfy new needs generated by this dependence induced Inuit to procure barter goods marketable in England. Prominent among these were cod and furs, both of which had hitherto been neglected by the Inuit. Moravians helped Inuit to procure these goods in marketable quantities by introducing sealing and fish nets to them as early as 1806. Eager to discourage idleness and dependence on the mission’s charity among the Inuit, the missionaries taught them cod fishing and fur trapping, as well as budgeting, saving, and rationing. Despite the mission’s frequently declared intention “to keep the Eskimo an Eskimo,”82 the desire to ensure the Inuit’s self-sufficiency thus unwittingly altered their lifestyle. Nevertheless, Moravians always maintained that they had never intended to disturb the Inuit way of living any more than necessary, in contrast to the traders in the South who, they alleged, were ruining the Inuit with the sale of alcohol, rifles, unnecessary luxuries, and harmful foodstuffs. For over a century, the Moravian trade offset most of the expenses of the Labrador mission. In the late nineteenth century, however, market prices for primary products except furs began to fall steadily. Simultaneously,

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commercial competition associated with the influx of fishermen, settlers, and Hudson’s Bay Company traders eroded the Moravian trade monopoly. Private traders moved closer to the mission stations, while the Inuit moved closer to these trading posts. Further, the cost of the mission skyrocketed with the expansion of educational, health, and religious services for settlers and the building of new mission stations. Although the mission adopted a policy of retrenchment in 1909, the sfg became unable to recover its expenses in Labrador, and the Mission Board had to make up the escalating deficit. The Moravians’ real problem, Governor MacGregor noted in 1907, was their “kindness” which made them depart from strict business principles. The missionaries had a reputation not only for offering very fair prices for native products and liberal credit. They also, as one observer summarized it, “supported the aged and the needy out of their limited funds, frequently paid the Eskimos higher prices for their products than was strictly prudent, allowed undue credit to improvident hunters, and in 1901 even cancelled all unpaid debts so that their clients might start afresh with clean slates.”83 Moravian food relief to the poor was an entrenched feature of the mission from the beginning until Confederation in 1949. In short, the challenge of promoting the spiritual and material welfare of the Inuit always took precedence over the practices of sound business. Initially, trade with the Inuit was to be kept strictly separate from the operations of the missionaries, and the missionaries were to earn their livelihood solely through the work of their hands. Trade was a necessary evil. In connection with the 1752 Erhardt expedition, Count Zinzendorf had ruled that the gospel should not be mixed with trade. Two special agents were therefore put in charge of the company’s barter trade in Labrador. However, disputes between the missionaries and the agents and the failure to break even ended this arrangement in 1785. Thereafter, one trade brother at each settlement was to take responsibility for all Moravian trading under the inspection of the House Conference. Three-fifths of the profits from the trade were to cover expenses for the mission’s provisions, freight, and fares, and one-tenth for the missionaries’ personal needs.84 Moravians used to justify their involvement in trade with the additional arguments that supervision would help raise the Inuit to a more orderly level of existence, teach them thrift and budgeting, and protect them from exploitation by unscrupulous traders.85 In reality, however, the extension of credit seemed to make the Inuit less self-sufficient and more demanding. On several occasions, they expressed confusion over the contradictions between the missionaries’ attempts to balance the books and the Moravian

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message of love and charity. At the newly opened Zoar station (1864) and thereafter at Hebron, Inuit even staged open rebellions. They refused to pay their debts and argued that the goods brought by the Harmony should belong to them. When the Moravian trade was suspended at Zoar, the Inuit left the area, and the station had to be closed in 1894.86 The problem was that, as the mission’s historian J.E. Hutton observed in 1912, “if a layman took charge, the trade was mismanaged; and if a missionary took charge, the Eskimos ceased to love him.”87 Since each system was fraught with defects, the mission alternated back and forth between the two. In 1861 trade was again removed from the missionaries and placed under a general manager with a layman running each store. In 1876 the missionaries resumed full control, and they retained partial control under a general manager from 1898 to 1906. As the settler population increased and intermarried with Inuit, the Moravians between 1860 and 1900 opened trading outposts for them in Voisey’s Bay, Saglek Bay, Ford’s Harbour, Makkovik, and Mugford Tickle.88 After 1906 trade was once again completely separated from the mission until 1925, when the British Moravian Church leased all Moravian trading rights and stores to the Hudson’s Bay Company.

inuit and moravians The work of the Moravians in northern Labrador has long remained relatively unknown, despite their dominant cultural role. Unlike Wilfred Grenfell, they were not interested in promoting their record as he did so successfully with his own mission, which started administering medical and social welfare services in southern Labrador in 1893.89 Moreover, the Moravians’ presence was suspect after 1914 because of their German connection. Consequently, their role and agenda in Labrador have often been misunderstood and misrepresented, even in scholarly literature. A group of mostly Anglo-Canadian social scientists, in particular, appear to have been swayed by the tendency to question the benefit of all European colonizing and missionary endeavours among the Native peoples of the New World.90 Their studies have charged that Moravians suppressed indigenous Inuit culture. Viewing the Inuit’s pre-Christian culture and their nomadic lifestyle as a viable response to northern conditions,91 they allege that Moravians encouraged a settled pattern of life alien to the Inuit.92 They accuse Moravians of destroying the traditional Inuit subsistence economy,93 of seeking to establish a so-called moral serfdom,94 and of introducing a mechanism of bondage through the extension of credit.95

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Moravians have also been blamed for disastrous Inuit population decline, for allegedly destroying the traditional Inuit health-care system, and for teaching that suffering and death were desirable.96 Growing out of anthropological fieldwork in the 1970s and 1980s, these inquiries focused on the Inuit. They were not interested in the Moravian missionary impulse. Lacking knowledge of the mission’s German operating language and its voluminous German-language records, they were unaware of the cultural roots that nurtured the Moravians’ agenda. Hence they ignored Moravian linguistic and educational approaches that ensured the preservation of essential elements of Inuit culture in the modern world. Moravian schooling did not train the Inuit for any environment except the one around them. The missionaries anticipated that the Inuit would remain in that environment and, as one insightful study pointed out, support themselves “as before on its resources, but more prosperous than in earlier years and, being better informed about the outside world, more able to hold their own whenever it intruded into their homes.”97 The missionaries’ appeal to the Inuit derived from the Moravians’ enlightened faith. That faith demanded respect for the Inuit way of life as God-wanted. Moravians, in other words, offered a form of acculturation which the Inuit considered compatible with the maintenance of their culture and which sheltered it from more destructive forces. This is why, unlike other Native peoples exposed to European Christian missions, the Labrador Inuit have never seriously questioned their Moravian “colonizing” experience.98 The Moravians were satisfied to confine contacts with the Inuit to the winter months, when the Natives were willing to camp around the mission stations. These contacts, nevertheless, became pervasive after the Moravians assumed a twofold role as religious teachers and the purveyors of the Inuit’s external comfort. To be effective, the missionaries had to act as employers, judges, mediators, doctors,and suppliers of basic necessities, as well as traders. Natives were always reimbursed for services rendered. Trade, organized strictly on a contractual basis, was to teach Natives how to manage their resources as well as to finance missionary operations in Labrador. No Inuk in missionary care, however, was allowed to starve. For more than a century the missionaries provided the only qualified medical care against the infections and diseases contracted from contacts with Europeans and Newfoundlanders in southern Labrador. In order to devote their lives entirely to the Inuit, the Moravians developed a colony-like microcosm of German life in northern Labrador that survived unchallenged for more than a century and a half. This enclave of German culture was designed as a kind of cordon sanitaire for the

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Labrador Inuit, facilitating their physical survival and adaptation to a rapidly changing modern world within a Christian framework. But it also entailed Inuit acculturation to German cultural aspects, ranging from German words in Inuktitut to the brass band, which Labrador Inuit have come to consider part of their own indigenous tradition. Evidence abounds that the Moravians had an excellent rapport with the Inuit. Visitors noted that “the bond that bound these humble folk to their pastor was genuine and sincere.”99 Inuit were reported to reject temptations from crews of visiting Newfoundland fishing schooners to bad-mouth the Moravians.100 The Moravians were shrewd analysts of human psychology – both European and Native – and open-minded, tolerant students of Native cultures. Realizing that the resilience of the indigenous Inuit culture and the corrupting impact of external factors were jeopardizing full and long-term conversion, they resigned themselves to maintaining a ministry in Labrador that would serve spiritual as well as material needs for a long time to come. Their unselfish devotion to the spiritual, cultural, and material welfare of the Inuit has enabled these Native people to survive and earned the Moravians local and international recognition as a significant cultural force in northern Labrador. In the absence of any other acculturating force until the mid-twentieth century, one might sum up the Moravian experience in the words of one of its last missionaries, “the history of the northern Labrador has been the history of the Moravian missions on the Coast.”101

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3 From Hamburg Bread to Turbines

Expanding Contacts in the Nineteenth Century Landing from Hamburgh, and for sale by John Cusack: 1400 bags 1st, 2nd, and 3rd quality Bread, 400 fkns and kegs Holstein and Rander’s Butter, 65 bls prime Pork, 50 hlf bls prime Pork, 90bls and half-bls Grits, 50 Coils assorted Cordage, 20 Cwt. Oakum, 3 puncheons assorted Shoes and Boots. Fish and Oil taken in payment. Public Ledger, 25 September 1840

the hamburg provisions trade The nineteenth century not only entrenched the Moravians as the dominant civilizing force in northern Labrador; it also brought to the island of Newfoundland for the first time a steady flow of goods, ideas, and people from Germany. Responsible for this influx was a new type of contact – the provisions trade with Hamburg. Little known today, this regular and, at times, rather voluminous trade was made possible by two developments: the first was the gradual repeal beginning in 1806 of the English Navigation Acts of 1640–60, and the second was the liberalization of Britain’s colonial trade in the wake of the American and Napoleonic wars. Newfoundland’s direct trade with Germany began in 1823, although the first commercial contacts can be traced to 1819. There were 2 departures from Hamburg for Newfoundland in 1823. In the next four years the departures soared from 7 to 20, 49, and 62 respectively. In 1834, 81 ships coming from Germany (including 11 from Hamburg), all of them Britishowned, were counted in Newfoundland ports out of a total number of 888 (241 from Britain) vessels entering island ports.1 In other words, nearly 10 per cent of ships in Newfoundland ports that year arrived from Germany.

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Table 3.1 Departures from Hamburg, 1826–62 (average per year)

1826–28 1829–32 1833–36 1837–39 1840–52 1853–57 1858–62

to Newfoundland

to remaining British colonies

49.3 27.7 58.0 72.7 29.4 28.8 21.2

5.6 4.4 6.2 24.0 22.1 64.4 51.6

source: Krawehl, Hamburg’s Schiff- und Warenverkehr, 425.

The records of the consulate general of Hamburg in London (available only for 1832–38) indicate as many as 99 departures for Newfoundland in 1838.2 The most reliable counts, based on the various incomplete sources available, show the traffic from Hamburg to peak with 76 arrivals in 1837 and 1838 and to decline to between 20 and 28 by 1848–50.3 According to the Hamburg ship lists and customs returns, two-thirds to three-quarters of Hamburg’s trade with the British colonial empire in the 1830s went to Newfoundland.4 These sources list the average number of annual departures from Hamburg (excluding Altona) during the period 1826 to 1862 (shown in table 3.1). Other German ports of origin for direct trade with Newfoundland after 1826 were (in order of vessel numbers) Danzig, Altona (near Hamburg), Bremen, and Memel. Ships from Danzig, Prussia, (today Gdansk, Poland) arrived as early as 1827 and numbered at least 6 annually by 1830. An incident related to this connection may have inspired the naming of Little Dantzic (extinct now), Dantzic Cove, and Dantzic Point on the Burin Peninsula in Fortune Bay.5 The existence of German settlers such as Robert Cruse in the nearby Lamaline area as early as 1823 is confirmed.6 In legalizing the initiation of the Hamburg trade in 1822, the British government was motivated as much by the fear of American economic dominance in British North America as by the prospective benefits of a freer trade with Germany. The German Hanse towns, having been excluded from direct commercial contacts with British North America since the seventeenth century, were only too eager to seize the opportunity to acquire a respectable slice of the island’s hitherto closed import market for fishing and shipping equipment as well as food. The British legislation of 1822 (3 Geo iv, c. 45) permitted Hamburg to export essential provisions, restricted to bread, flour, wheat, peas, and so on, but by subsequent colonial trade

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acts and reciprocity treaties with Russia and Hamburg in 1927, trade was opened to all kinds of goods.7 In April 1830 Downing Street informed the Newfoundland governor of an order-in-council opening British possessions to free trade with the Austrian Empire, “to be carried on any foreign ships whatever.”8 The noticeable decline of the German traffic after 1857 appears to have been more a function of British imperial policies and colonial trade with the United States than of Hamburg’s interests. The introduction of reciprocity with the United States in 1855 exempted American imports of provisions to Newfoundland from duty. Newfoundland’s newly established responsible government simultaneously increased the duty on most articles imported from Germany over the strong protests of Hamburg and the concurring objections of the British government. In 1857 the governor of Newfoundland was convinced that Hamburg would not yield its lucrative Newfoundland market to the United States without a struggle and that the competition between Hamburg and American provisions would benefit the Newfoundland consumer. The merchant-dominated Newfoundland legislature justified its refusal to extend free trade privileges to Hamburg with the current state of the revenue of Newfoundland and the more vital and voluminous reciprocal American trade, especially the United States’ consumption of fish and oil.9 Newfoundland’s imports from Hamburg and Danzig were not balanced by any exports of equivalent value to Germany. St John’s shipping news does not list a ship clearing for Hamburg until June 1833 (with a cargo of seal oil, salmon, and cod). Prior to 1860, direct exports to Hamburg worth noticing were mentioned only for 1839–41 (oil, fish, and lumber) and for 1850 (oil and sealskins). In 1849 Hamburg imported wine valued at £10,360 via Newfoundland. Hamburg’s Newfoundland trade, instead, was the first leg of a triangular trade and, until the 1850s, mostly on British vessels.10 The trade pattern saw vessels from Hamburg, after having disposed of their merchandise in Newfoundland, take on a load of oil and fish to markets in southern Europe, British North America, and Latin America (Brazil, Barbados, Cuba, and Guyana).11 Until the 1850s, the vessels’ most frequent destinations were southern Europe (154), followed by North America (111), the British Isles (95), and Latin America (60).12 The Hamburg merchants contended (in 1857) that their chief incentive for the Newfoundland trade was their desire to obtain Caribbean and South American produce. They claimed that they were able to achieve this objective “to advantage in conse-

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quence of being enabled, in the first instance, to fill at Hamburg with provisions for Newfoundland.”13 The goods imported from Germany were either sold by St John’s merchants or auctioned off at the wharf of the English or local shipowner, who then publicly offered the empty ship space for charter or lease, often specifying destinations in Europe or America. The Newfoundland newspaper the Public Ledger provides the first evidence available of German merchandise for sale at the stores of Newman & Company, Samuel Codner and Whiteway, and Mudges & Company in St John’s. Advertisements of 13 March and 8 May 1826 offer 1000 bags of “Hamburgh Bread – fine and common,” as well as “Hamburgh Flour, Oatmeal, Pease, Hamburgh (and Irish) Beef, Pork and Butter.” On 11 and 15 May 1826, two English brigs were reported arriving with cargoes from Hamburg of 300 firknis of butter, 60 pounds of oatmeal, 6 hundredweight oakum, 10 thousand bricks, 2 casks Geneva, 650 pounds of pork, 3,700 bags of bread, 600 pounds of flour, and 20 pounds of pitch and tar, ointment, and sundries. In 1827 the Hamburg cargoes included the following additional food items : Westphalia hams, beef, cheese, currants, vinegar, refined sugar, potatoes, oats, and honey; the following liquors: brandy, champagne, and gin; and the following assortment of materials and manufactures: bricks, oakum, cordage and hides, canvas, candles, silk hats, sole leather, sea boots, and one piano. By 1857 German imports, according to the Public Ledger and the Newfoundlander, had expanded to include bacon, lard, rice, barley, plums and fruits, candy, refined and unrefined sugar, bottled (German) wines and spirits, seeds, cigars, tobacco, woollens, silks, cottons and slops, hosiery, frocks and caps, small-tooth combs, soap, varnish, room papering, cordage and cables, coals, wood wares, cabinet wares, glasswares, leather and earthenwares, yarn, hoes, furniture, musical instruments (especially pianos), looking glasses, and books. There was a steady demand for German foods, materials, and clothes needed for fishing, construction materials (bricks), household articles, and furniture. The small quantities of coffee, cigars, German wines, musical instruments, and furniture imported irregularly from Hamburg after 1827 reflect as much the changing tastes of Newfoundland’s small merchant elite as the conspicuous pattern of consumption of the small “foreign” community which Newfoundland acquired as one of the spinoffs of that trade. In 1853 and 1857 the recorded value of German imports (£52,222 and £118,335 respectively) amounted to one-sixth and one-fifth of British

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Table 3.2 German imports to Newfoundland, 1832–59 (in pounds sterling) 1832

1837–39

1847–49

1857–59

foods bread and biscuit butter wheatflower beef and pork peas and beans oatmeal bacon and ham spirits

20,826 10,803 68 1,506 841 634 209 92

46,794 31,017 29,396 36,112 1,182 2,633 636 805

21,737 11,221 787 987 450 629 520 84

54,237 15,914 ? ? ? ? ? ?

Total

34,979

148,302

36,415

?

hardware, clothing (in £) cordage etc. pitch and tar leatherwares glasswares furniture woollens, linens, etc.

1,051 ? 396 128 31 40

1,370 355 7,058 416 184 532

1,458 167 1,363 356 128 653

? ? 10,800 ? ? 3,870

Total

1,646

9,915

4,125

?

36,625

158,217

40,540

84,821

Totals imported

source: Krawehl, Hamburg’s Schiff- und Warenverkehr, 431ff.

imports out of a total recorded value of £772,878 (1853) and £1,143,432 (1857) worth of goods imported to Newfoundland. For the period 1832 to 1859 the volume of German imports to Newfoundland was officially valued as at the amounts shown in table 3.2. For half a century German bread (also called ship’s bread, biscuit, hard bread or Zwieback) and butter (Rander’s, Holstein, and Mecklenburgh varieties) remained Hamburg’s staple imports to Newfoundland, followed by meats and legumes. The bread imports were valued at £27,500 in 1853 and at £67,500 in 1875, and the butter imports at £11,830 (1853) and £19,590 (1857) and amounted to nearly four-fifths and two-thirds of total German imports respectively. “The biscuit comes cheaper from the Elbe than from the United States,” according to one of London’s main Newfoundland trading firms. London agents involved in the Brazil trade maintained (in 1841) that Newfoundland merchants “take out whole cargoes of flour and biscuit, making that their final object.” The lowest-quality flour was used to make zwieback and produced four

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3.1 Schiffszwieback (ship’s bread, also known as German bread, biscuit, or hard bread). Labrador staple food preserved by missionary Theodor Bourquin. Acquired in 1879 by the Inuit collection of Völkermuseum Herrnhut, Germany. G. Bassler photo, 1990.

grades – very ordinary, ordinary, good common, and superfine or captain’s biscuit. They were distinguishable by their admixture of bran and hence their odour. Captain’s biscuit was almost white. Four-fifths of the Newfoundland bread imports consisted of the two lowest grades. Hamburg’s flour mills and bakeries enjoyed a near-monopoly in the European zwieback business (with only two firms from Copenhagen and Danzig competing) and could charge a price that bore no just relation to the value of flour.14 “Hamburg bread” and “Dantzic bread” was very hard and lasted for years without spoiling. Known as “hardtack,” it was in high demand among fishermen and sailors (see illus. 3.1). In 1857 an American immigrant, Robert N. Vail, opened a small bakery on Water Street and introduced his own recipe for hardtack. Local lore has it that Vail’s cheaper imitation conquered the market and enabled him to return to the United States in 1867 with a fortune.15 However, promoters of local industries in 1930 recalled that Hamburg bread had not vanished overnight. When the local bakeries started, the merchants apparently refused to handle their product, preferring to import Hamburg bread,16 which was last advertised in May 1878. Though not as tasty as the German zwieback, the local product was

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much cheaper and eventually replaced the imported one. German butter, by contrast, continued to be sold until the end of the nineteenth century. “Butter from Hamburgh, although inferior in quality to American,” wrote the governor of Newfoundland to the Colonial Office in London in 1857, “is still suited for consumption in Newfoundland, and can be sold, duty paid, at a lower rate than American butter, duty free.”17

the first german community in st john’s, 1827–1870 Hamburg merchants appear to have set up shop in St John’s from the day that German merchandise became available. From the fall of 1827 until the summer of 1830, Oehlschlager and Company advertised every kind of German import, ranging from Westphalia hams and gin to mahagony furniture and grand pianos. The firm held sales by auction and lottery to dispose of its inventory. The appearance of a German merchant was a novelty in St John’s. His business operations caused a considerable stir in the local business community and prompted an inquiry in 1828 by George Robinson, mp for Worchester, in London as to the legality of an “alien from Hamburgh” establishing himself in the town of St John’s. Governor John Cochrane also wanted the law offices of the Crown to be consulted on the question of “whether an alien merchant may settle in the town of St. John’s, Newfoundland, and engage in the trade of the place, especially the fisheries.” The secretary of state for the colonies replied to Cochrane that there was “no law prohibiting an alien from engaging in this trade, and as it appears our ships and fishermen are employed in this case with foreign capital, advantage instead of any detriment must result from it.”18 James Christian Oehlschlager was a mentor of the St John’s Charity School Society, and on 11 July 1838 he was married in the Anglican parish to Catherine Matilda, fourth daughter of William Armstrong of St John’s. Earlier, in November 1828, Oehlschlager had declared bankruptcy, and his property, including seven clocks and one hundred dozen “Jews’ harps,” was sold by auction in June 1830. Two other Germans, Christian Schweiger and G.H. Feldtmann, were appointed trustees of his estate. Oehlschlager left for Boston in September 1860.19 A second well-known Hamburg merchant in St John’s was Gustav Ehlers, son of Ernst Ehlers of Hamburg. His name, Ehlers, represented prominent Hamburg entrepreneurs involved from the beginning in the Newfoundland trade. Already in July and August 1842 newspaper adver-

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tisements had praised the “splendid” bread from “Ehlers & Feuerheerd’s New Bakery, Hamburg.” Gustav appears first in the news in January 1857 on the occasion of his marriage to Elisabeth, second daughter of Thomas Bennett esq., stipendiary magistrate of St John’s. The marriage was performed at the Cathedral Church by the lord bishop of Newfoundland. Between 1857 and 1864 Ehlers, a shareholder of the firm McBride and Kerr, owned fourteen ships, most of them schooners and brigs.20 Ehlers appears as one of the four founding directors of the Commercial Bank of Newfoundland, together with John Bowring, Stephen Rendell, and Francis C.K. Hepburn, and a founding member of the committee to form the General St John’s Water Company. Re-elected as a member of the Chamber of Commerce, Ehlers also occupied the positions of a captain of the Second Company of Rifle Volunteers, a director of the St John’s Branch Board of the Life Association of Scotland, and a committee member of the St John’s Floral and Horticultural Society. He was the superintendent of the soup kitchens in April 1862 and in August that year was awarded a prize by the St John’s Floral and Horticultural Society for his floral arrangement with pansies.21 In 1864 he wrote from Greenoch, Scotland, publicly renouncing his business interests in Newfoundland. Between 1896 and 1918 merchant Robert Ehlers of Bristol, England, a relative of Gustav and owner of four ships, retained strong connections with the Newfoundland trade.22 Various sources indicate the existence in mid-nineteenth-century St John’s of a vibrant, heterogeneous community of nonBritish extraction comprising Germans, Norwegians, Danes, Dutch, and Jews. Within a population of 19,000, which consisted almost exclusively of fishermen, of whom 90 per cent were native-born, the 1857 census counted 136 residents whose birthplace was outside the British Empire. Germans seem to have constituted a large, if not the largest, non-British group. What little information has survived about them reveals that they came from all walks of life, especially the middle-class occupations and professions. Local records mention such German names as Captain J.A. Wieburg, Surgeon Dentist Dr G. Kellnitz, C.H. Reinhardt of the St John’s Mill and Brewery, Mr D. Hirsch, R. Gruber, esq., and Edward Schultze.23 One Captain John Hagen ran the first northern coastal service in Newfoundland in the 1860s in the ss Ariel and ss Leopard. When the first local telegraph cable was laid in 1857, his son James G. Hagen worked with the New York–Newfoundland Telegraph Company on the line connecting Cape Race with Cape North.24 The marriage in St John’s of Charles A.E. Fischer of Boizenburg, Germany, to Elizabeth Bradford of England was announced in June 1879.25

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Other German-born residents were intermarried into the local community, some to the daughters of well-to-do Newfoundlanders. In addition to the above-mentioned marriages of Oelschlager, Ehlers, Fischer and of Mühlenbruch (see below), the following are identifiable. A girl from Germany shipwrecked in the steamer City of Philadelphia off Newfoundland in January 1855 married Henry Hunt Stabb, the superintendent of the St John’s Lunatic Asylum.26 In June 1855 C.H. Reinhardt of Amsterdam (of Dutch or German descent) married Mary Ann, second daughter of Thomas Lawlor of County Carlow, Ireland. In August 1861 Albert Ehlert, chief officer of the barque Graf von Brandenburg, married Ellen, second daughter of Mr P. Liddy. In November 1863 Friederich Haas of Kiel married the only daughter of John Gibbons, late of the Royal Newfoundland Company. And in November 1864 Henry Zimmermann of Schleswig Holstein married Jane, eldest daughter of Jeffrey Guzzle of the Goulds at the cathedral.27

musicians Musicians formed a surprisingly numerous and noticeable German element in St John’s during this period. To judge by their number, the local market for German music must have been as burgeoning as that for German goods and manufactures. After all, this was the era of Beethoven, Schubert, and Mendelsohn-Bartholdy. Anthony Beyer, professor of music, taught “the Pianoforte and Singing, Guitar, Harp, Trumpet, Bassoon, Serpent, Trombone, etc.” in St John’s from 1822 to 1836. He tuned pianos and had for sale a large assortment of music and musical instruments. Referring to his “many years experience as instructor of Military and other Bands,” he publicly announced in July 1836 that he “would be happy to render his services in that capacity, and to arrange music for the same, or for Concerto.” Three months later “A. Beyer’s Logerian Classic Academy” issued a call for pupils for the purpose of instructing instruments to be played in concert. However, no more was heard of his endeavours thereafter.28 In a notice of 11 June 1844, “Mr. Tillmann, Professor of Music, etc., begs to acquaint the ladies and gentlemen of St. John’s that he ... proposes establishing himself as teacher on the piano-forte, singing, etc., etc. Mr. T. has the most respectable references as to capacity, etc.,” and he offered to tune the pianos of his pupils gratis.29 Tillmann’s services were continued in May 1850 by Mr Edward F. Mühlenbruch, professor of the German language and of singing, from the University of Gottingen. He was also prepared to give lessons in music theory, on the pianoforte and violin, and “in

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Mathematics and other scientific Branches of Education, either to single Pupils or in Classes,” according to an announcement in the Public Ledger of 31 May 1850. Professor Mühlenbruch obviously possessed qualifications in demand in St John’s in 1851, as a notice about the opening of St John’s Academy suggests. The academy was established “to give young gentlemen a Literary, a Scientific and a Commercial Education.” It offered a five-year course in German as part of a six-year program of instruction. Mühlenbruch was last heard of on the occasion of his marriage to Margaret T., third daughter of John Canning of Her Majesty’s Customs, and his subsequent departure for Boston in May 1854.30 His wife is reported to have died in March 1915 at Haubinda, Germany, as “widow of the late Edward Mühlenbruch of New York, U.S.A.”31 Two other possibly German musicians taught in mid-nineteenth-century St John’s. They were A. Deuchar, who in 1842–43 offered dancing lessons “in the Gallopade Waltz, Mazurka, and Common Waltz,” and J.F. Myers of the Queen’s Music Academy, Toronto. During 1849–50 Myers offered lessons on “Accordion and Flutina ... in ten easy lessons,” tuned and repaired instruments of every description, lectured on the history of music, and treated his audiences “to very pleasing illustrations of the science.” He died in November 1854, aged thirty-four, at Kielty Hotel of consumption, while Deuchar departed for Halifax in October 1843.32 Music lovers in St John’s must have experienced a heyday when in December 1851 Gustave Krollman, a native of Hanover, announced a series of “Grand Miscellaneous Vocal and Instrumental Costume Concerts” in St John’s. He was introduced as “the Great Violinist, and only equal of Paganini, from the Paris and Vienna Conservatoire.” Mrs Krollman, whose youth and beauty added “greatly to the charms of her voice,” was featured as appearing in different costumes. The reviews heaped nothing but praise on their well-attended performances, which were held in the Factory. One reviewer regretted only that “the brats and sticks of some of the gentlemen, and most of the boys,” were not left in charge of the doorkeeper, as thus would have been prevented “those discordant noises which are so greatly at variance with all right conceptions of harmony.” At the request of “many among the first families, together with several amateurs and Professors of Music,” the Krollmans agreed to give a benefit concert for local charity before their departure.33 By 1870 the community of German businessmen, musicians, teachers, professionals, and transients drawn to the island by the opportunities of the Hamburg provisions trade, had disappeared. It must be assumed that

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the contrast between the civilized and urbanized life of mid-nineteenthcentury Germany and the “singularly unattractive” conditions which, according to descriptions of English and German visitors (see below), prevailed in St John’s were difficult to endure. They found better prospects elsewhere. At the same time a community of more permanent settlers of German-speaking background in such trades as shoemakers, tailors, coopers, and masons began to replace it (see chapter 4).34 Consisting almost entirely of shops containing “an omnium gatherum of most of the necessaries and rubbish of civilized life,” St John’s could not yet deny to the foreign visitor its character as an old fishing depot. Its physical development was determined by “the single occupation of its inhabitants, the seasonal nature of which had not demanded substantial housing, formal planning, law enforcement, nor the luxuries of church and school.” Counting a population of some 20,000, it had grown rapidly into a commercial town by 1840, but this growth was accompanied by the disheartening blows of an unpredictable fishery, the vicissitudes of world trade, and the devastating fire that destroyed most of St John’s in 1846.35 According to J.B. Juke’s Excursions in and about Newfoundland (1842), most visitors seem to have arrived at the general opinion that “while one can hardly consider Newfoundland ... altogether the place to live in, yet it is well worth a visit.”

l i n k s to g e r m a n y Travels to Germany by Newfoundlanders for business, pleasure, or family reasons became a natural consequence of the commercial and social interactions with German export firms and Germans in St John’s. Henrietta Bennett, a younger sister of Gustav Ehlers’s wife, married Robert McBride of Greenoch in a Hamburg Lutheran church in May 1867.36 McBride and his Newfoundland wife stayed in Hamburg, where he became a partner with his uncle Hermann Ehlers in the old established firm of Sillem and Company, which was prominent in the trade with Newfoundland. The firm continued under the name of McBride and Goldschmidt until McBride’s death in Hamburg in 1893.37 The mother of Francis C.K. Hepburn, with Gustav Ehlers one of the founding directors of the Newfoundland Commercial Bank, died in Austria in December 1857.38 In 1838 the Roman Catholic bishop, Michael Anthony Fleming, returned to St John’s after an arduous fifty-two-day passage from Hamburg. The ostensible purpose of his visit was “to communicate with some of the best architects of the day” in northern Germany about the con-

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struction of a cathedral best suited to Newfoundland’s severe winter climate. He decided in favour of a blueprint prepared by architect O.J. Schmidt of Altona, near Hamburg. A modified version of Schmidt’s design came to form the basis for the general style and layout of the Roman Catholic Basilica of St John the Baptist in St John’s.39 While in Hamburg, Bishop Fleming also bought a medieval church bell that a Roman Catholic family had kept in storage for three centuries after Hamburg Catholicism was banished as a consequence of the Reformation. According to the research of Hans Rollmann, the bell had rung for monks in the Domincan monastery of Saint Johannis near Hamburg until 1529. Bishop Fleming destined the ancient German bell for the church of Petty Harbour, Newfoundland, where it was consecrated in November 1842.40 The promotion and successful sale of tickets in St John’s for drawings of a Great Electoral Hessian State Loan of $6,725,000 in the fall of 1851 may be taken as further evidence that Newfoundlanders considered Germany a familiar, trustworthy country. “Tickets in the drawing of the 30th September had all been disposed of when the last remittance was sent from this place,” announced a notice in the Morning Post of 8 November 1851. The extent of commercial and personal contacts led, not surprisingly, to the establishment of German honorary consulates in St John’s. As early as 1844 Benjamin Scott was appointed Prussia’s first consul. He was succeeded in 1850 by Robert Henry Prowse,41 who in that year became a partner in the firm of Robert Prowse and Son, an extensive enterprise of commission merchants and shipowners in business since 1824. Prowse also became consul of the Free and Hanse Town of Hamburg in 1856 and then of the North German Confederation in 1870.42 In 1858 he appears as a vigorous advocate in the Newfoundland legislature for the abolition or reduction of duties on goods imported from Hamburg.43 From 1871 until his death in December 1904 he remained honorary consul of the German Empire.44 His son Kenneth R. Prowse continued to represent Germany until 1914.45 One of his successors, Robert Furlong (see chapter 7), characterized K.R. Prowse as “some kind of a nut” who considered this position very important and liked to dress up in uniform on every occasion as if he had to attend some royal visit.46 Robert Prowse’s extant annual reports to the German foreign office from 1887 to 1899 form a litany of never-ending economic woes and other misfortunes affecting Newfoundland. He complains about unsatisfactory fishing seasons, conflicts with the French over bait caught on the French Shore and high bounties paid by the French government, destitution among the fishing population, financial crises, the need to prevent starvation by

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providing government relief projects in the form of unnecessary road and railway construction, and the refusal of fishermen to protect themselves against poor fisheries by growing potatoes or other crops suitable to the climate. In 1899 Prowse went as far as to characterize the system of responsible government based on an elected House of Assembly, bestowed on Newfoundland in 1855, as “very unsuitable to such a small colony as this. When the fishery is poor in any locality the people clamour for pauper relief and the Government is unable to withstand the pressure which is most demoralizing and very much abused.” For the years 1887–90, 1894–95, and 1899 Prowse recorded the arrival of a total of fifteen German vessels. No consular reports from St John’s were received between 1900 and 1906, despite repeated remonstrations from Berlin.47

trade with imperial germany In the 1870s the factors conditioning German-speaking migrations to Newfoundland and hence the island’s population of German-speaking background began to change noticeably in comparison to those of the preceding half-century characterized by the Hamburg provisions trade. Changes affected every push-and-pull aspect of the migration process: the underlying and immediate causes for emigration of German-speakers, the nature of communications, Newfoundland’s contacts with German-speaking countries and areas and their interest in Newfoundland, and the opportunities and attractions that the socio-cultural conditions and economic development of the self-governing British colony offered to a German-speaking immigrant or visitor. The most visible and far-reaching change affecting the migration of Germans to Newfoundland was Prussia’s destruction of the Germanic Confederation, a loose association of semi-sovereign German states (of which the Free City of Hamburg was a member) created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and their absorption in 1870 into the burgeoning German Empire. Until 1914 the new technologies, economic needs, and social transformation accompanying Imperial Germany’s spectacular industrialization, as well as its political, cultural, and military ambitions, affected Newfoundland considerably and largely reshaped Newfoundlanders’ image of Germans. Indicative of Germany’s new relations with Newfoundland are the changing volume and structure of bilateral trade during the period 1870 to 1914. The characteristic German imports of the Hamburg provisions trade since 1827 reached their highest volume in 1869–70 with a value of

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$200,000 (i.e., 3.8 per cent of Newfoundland’s total imports) in 1869 and $193,250 (2.9 per cent) in 1870. Thereafter the range and volume of traditionally imported provisions from Germany fell steadily until they reached an all-time low in 1884 and 1885 with a volume of $455 and $890 respectively. In 1870 Newfoundland’s highest-valued imports from Germany were bread ($94,800), butter ($44,469), leatherware ($33,326), woollens ($9,587), pork ($4,680), and tar products ($3,603). By 1879 the volume of German imports had dropped to $4,500, and bread, leatherware, pork, and tar had disappeared from the list altogether. By 1885 only brick and woollen goods were left from the list of traditional provisions as Germany’s sole imports to Newfoundland. Meanwhile, exports to Germany grew in volume and regularity by the 1880s. Prior to 1870 they had been erratic, consisting only of the odd shipload of seal oil. From no exports in 1870 (however, $20,000 in 1869), seal oil deliveries to Germany reached an annual value of $15,000 by 1884–85, with occasional peaks of $46,000 (1879). This commodity, apart from occasional small quantities of furs and refined cod, was Newfoundland’s only export to Germany until the 1880s. In the following decades Newfoundland’s exports to Germany began to climb from $33,517 in 1890 to nearly $300,000 in 1914, while imports from Germany levelled off at $22,500 in 1914. Behind these figures is a story of changing consumption patterns, largely determined by a changing German market. By 1890 Germany had entered the small club of industrial powers as it had transformed itself from a foodexporting to a food-importing country. The needs of an industrial society dictated a growing market for oils, while the refined, urbanized tastes of the nouveau riche classes increasingly demanded such items as pickled herring and salmon, as well as canned salmon and lobster. After 1890 canned lobster consistently topped the list of exports to Germany, amounting to two-thirds or more of the annual export. The significance of the German lobster market was driven home when Newfoundland was suddenly cut off from it. “The whole product of our lobster fishery in the past has been sold entirely to Germany,” wrote Prime Minister Edward Patrick Morris in 1917, “with the result that since the declaration of war there has been no lobster fishery in Newfoundland.”48 A similar case in point was iron ore. The opening of mining operations on Bell Island in 1895 coincided with an unsatiable hunger by Germany’s heavy industry for raw materials. Bell Island thus provided Newfoundland with its second most important article for export to Germany. The Krupp steel corporation was prepared to pay a higher price for the ore than

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American and Canadian customers because German chemists had developed a method of separating the high content of phosphorus from Bell Island ore to utilize the phosphorus for the production of phosphate fertilizer.49 Iron ore exports to Germany began in 1897. “For ten years before the war Germany had taken one million tons per year,” stressed Prime Minister Morris in 1917, and thus it had become Newfoundland’s principal market for iron ore.50 Newfoundland’s relatively small volume of imports from Germany after 1890 (valued at $15,388 in 1891, $22,500 in 1911, $32,000 in 1912, and $59,345 in 1914) consisted largely of manufactured goods, such as marine and household utensils, instruments, tools, machines, and decorative and luxury items. German imports also included substantial supplies of textiles, groceries, liquors, and medicine. Some of the imported goods are indicative of Newfoundland’s esoteric tastes and limited industrial productivity. “Most of the basket-work articles, ornamented tables, doll-houses, flower baskets, toys, etc. which come into this country are made in France and Germany, not by skilled artisans, but by boys and girls,” lamented J.T. Lawton in 1892.51 Civic leaders, endeavouring to promote the idea of industrial education in Newfoundland, at intervals deplored the importation of articles that might have been produced locally because they required few skills. Starting in the decade before World War i, Newfoundland also began to trade with other German-speaking countries. Imports of confectionary from Austria and smallwares, groceries, and watches from Switzerland were balanced with the occasional export of cod oil to these countries.

turbines and guano dryers Generally speaking, imports from German-speaking Europe to Newfoundland in the two decades preceding World War I suggest an increasingly urbanized style of consumption aspiring to quality products. For Newfoundland’s public utilities and local industries, nothing but the best and most up-to-date technology was good enough. For example, this was the case when German manufacturers, over the bids of their British and American competitors, won the contracts to install state-of-the-art equipment in Newfoundland’s first three hydroelectric power stations. In 1900 the Reid Newfoundland Company completed construction of Newfoundland’s first hydroelectric plant, the powerhouse in Petty Harbour, with an American turbine. The company had a franchise authorizing it to operate a streetcar service in St John’s and to light the city from its power surplus. However, this turbine was inadequate to run the street-

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3.2 J.M. Voith turbine, installed at Victoria, Newfoundland, 1913. G. Bassler photo.

cars satisfactorily. Not until two turbines were acquired from Germany in 1908 and 1911 was sufficient electricity generated.52 The two 2,550-horsepower spiral turbines, manufactured by J.M. Voith G.m.b.H. of Heidenheim, needed only half the amount of water to produce the same amount of electricity as the American turbine.53 Voith turbines represented the most advanced technology of the time. In 1903 the company had been awarded the contract for equipping the Niagara Falls power station with nineteen of the largest Francis-type turbines built in the world, with an aggregate output of 200,000 horsepower.54 In 1913 the Newfoundland United Towns Electric Company purchased a Voith turbine of 800-horsepower output for its Victoria hydroelectric station. This turbine guaranteed a sufficient supply of electricity beginning in 1914 to the towns of Carbonear, Harbour Grace, and Heart’s Content.55 The three turbines were installed under the supervision of Voith technicians and serviced by the company at regular intervals until 1953. All three turbines are still in mint condition and continue to be used today (see illus. 3.2). A truly pioneering technological feat was the development and installation in 1909 of a suitable power system for the Anglo-Newfoundland

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Development Company’s new paper mill at Grand Falls. The contract for the power system of the mill was awarded to the bid of the German company Amme, Giesecke und Konegen, A.G., in Braunschweig. This German company’s bid represented, for its time, the most original, innovative, energy-saving design. Its main feature was seven turbines with a total output of 23,000 horsepower. Divided into two sets. The first set of four 4,000-horsepower turbines in the centre of the mill was directly connected to the twenty-four heavy-duty power grinders (Grosskraftschleifer) of 7,000 horsepower each, enabling them to reduce logs into pulp with water power instead of electric energy. The second set of three 2,500horsepower double-turbines, coupled with 1,700-kilowatt generators and equipped with newly patented speed and pressure regulators, produced the electricity required for the entire mill. The generators suitable for these turbines were manufactured by the Swiss firm Brown, Boveri and Company in Baden, Switzerland. An integrated system of four electrically powered three-cylinder oil pumps was especially designed to serve all seven turbines.56 The importation of German technologies was not confined to the generation of electrical power. Areas of the fishing industry, such as whaling, were also affected. The innovator was Ludwig Rissmüller, whose wasteprocessing methods and technologies revolutionized the industry.57 One of three sons of a successful fertilizer manufacturer in northern Germany and an acquaintance of the industry’s famous pioneer, Justus Liebig, Rissmüller earned a doctorate in chemistry at the University of Göttingen in 1873. In 1890, at the age of thirty-eight he left Germany to associate with the Newark Chemical Works and the General American Reduction Company, both in New Jersey. By 1900 he had developed several patents to produce fertilizer from rags, water discarded by glue factories, and slaughterhouse refuse. By then he had also married the daughter of a wealthy American, who helped him finance new ventures in Newfoundland.58 Rissmüller came to Newfoundland at a time when shore-based whaling there was experiencing a brief boom, “a crazy wave of speculation unequalled in any area in the history of whaling,” to quote the chief authority on the topic.59 Whaling stations proliferated from two in 1900 to twenty-five in 1904, only to deplete the whale stock and ruin the industry almost completely by 1906.60 Increased catches also meant increased disposal of carcasses by casting them adrift at sea, the chief and cheapest method known at the time. The tide swept many of the carcasses back, damaging fishermen’s gear, polluting coastal waters, and causing residents to complain about the stench of decay. In 1900 the secretary of the Cabot

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Steam Whaling Company, upon learning of Rissmüller’s patents, invited him to visit the company’s Snook’s Arm whaling factory. There, one contemporary recalled, “on seeing the carcasses of whales towed to sea, Dr. Rissmüller thought out a process whereby not only the expense of removing them so far could be saved, but also an industry promoted, whereby the flesh and bones could be manufactured into guano. The Rissmüller process proved successful, and ... had the effect of inducing a number of capitalists to invest in the industry ... [and] several new industries were organized.”61 In other words, the carcasses were not only removed as a source of aggravation and pollution, but converted into guano (bone meal) for sale as fertilizer, additional whale oil, and other by-products. Moreover, much needed new employment was created. Rissmüller developed the entire process during his stay in Newfoundland. He was constantly experimenting to increase the efficiency and profitability of the operation. From skeletal whale bones, for example, he succeeded in extracting the considerable amount of high-grade oil they contained. The casings of whale stomachs he turned into leather. From other parts he was reported making canned meat, sausages, and glue. Within three years of his arrival, Rissmüller invented four important patents which he registered in Canada. These dealt with the bleaching of undesirable colour from whale and seal oil; the extraction from meat and separation of oils and fats; the construction of double-shelled wooden vats that prevented leakage of boiling acid-alkaline solutions required to release oils and fats from meat refuse; and, finally, the design and operation of his guano dryer, that is, machinery for drying, grinding, and screening viscera to be converted into bone meal resembling birds’ guano. These innovations proved instant successes. There were no reports about unworkable processes or breakdowns of machinery. On the contrary – when in 1903 the Cape Broyle facility was launched, the local press raved that “the doctor had the great guano drier working one hour after his arrival which, with his additional improvements, proved a great success. Not a flaw was shown in any of its workings. Crowds flocked from the adjoining settlements to see this truly great invention of a public benefactor. Three cheers for the Doctor!”62 The availability of this technology enabled the government to require that whale carcasses be processed and disposed of within twenty-four hours. The Newfoundland Whaling Acts of 1902 and 1904 prescribed nothing less than the adoption of Rissmüller’s waste-reduction technology. Through the exchange of his inventions for company stock, Rissmüller ended up controlling over twenty whaling stations by 1905.63 His own

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Colonial Manufacturing Company, incorporated in 1902, built carcassprocessing plants next to whaling stations on the island. The company also acted also as a consultant and contractor for building complete whaling stations. Rissmüller erected model plants to demonstrate his patents and train personnel – skilled workers, engineers, and managers. The chemical laboratories of his guano factory at Bonne Bay were reputed to be the foremost “school to learn how to make guano,” while his plant at Placentia Bay, the St Lawrence Whaling Company, was described by a fisheries inspector as the “headquarters or training school for the guano business.”64 In 1905 the British naturalist J.G. Millais, after touring the St Lawrence operation, credited Rissmüller with having done more for whaling and the use of whale products than any other living man. To him is owed the utilisation of every part of the whale, including the flesh, the blood and liver, and parts of the skin which were only regarded as wastage a few years ago ... The scientific attainments of Dr. Rismuller [sic] are not appreciated in the New World as they should be ... If Dr. Rismuller had made a fortune rapidly out of his discoveries, people in America, Canada, and Newfoundland would have thought him a wonderfully ‘cute’ fellow, and would have placed him on a pedestal of fame allotted to successful trust magnates and other human sharks, but as it is others have for the most part benefited by his genius, and he is still comparatively a poor man.65

By 1906 Rissmüller had acquired a reputation as “the whaleman of the world.”66 His inventions had revolutionized the industry across North America and underlay new government regulations in Newfoundland and Canada. In Newfoundland, however, the whaling industry was collapsing, and Rissmüller and his team of managers and skilled workers decided to move to British Columbia. There they continued to have an equally profound impact on the whaling industry of Canada’s West Coast. When World War i broke out, Ludwig Rissmüller left Canada for the neutral United States, where he died in 1916, a poor man. His whaling stock had become worthless since most of the companies subscribing to his patents had collapsed.67

inuit exhibitions Newfoundland’s expanding contacts with Germany were not without consequence for the Labrador mission. In 1880 J. Adrian Jacobsen, as agent of

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Carl Hagenbeck, a well-known wild animal dealer and zoo director in Hamburg, Germany, came to Hebron to gather ethnographic artifacts and some Inuit for exhibition in Germany. Hagenbeck had begun to display non-European aboriginals in his zoos in 1875 because the wild animal business had stagnated and public enthusiasm for colonialism was on the rise, often under the mantle of advancing scientific knowledge.68 By initiating this degrading exploitation of Inuit for pseudo-scientific, financial, and voyeuristic reasons, Hagenbeck started a racket that other European countries and the United States were quick to emulate. In Labrador Jacobsen met strong opposition from the missionaries but managed in Nachvak, north of Rama, to lure a family of three non-Christianized and illiterate Inuit into his schooner. With the help of the Hudson’s Bay trader in Nachvak, a promise of new clothes, and the prospect of good pay, Jacobsen also enticed a family of five Christian and literate Inuit from Hebron to join him, despite grave warnings from the missionaries The Inuit’s exhibition in the Hamburg zoo started on 2 October 1880. Taken from one zoo-like display to another throughout Germany and adjoining countries, they had to demonstrate their “natural” hunting and survival skills. Within three months they had died, one by one, of smallpox. Inuk Abraham of Hebron has left a moving testimony of his family’s ordeal in his diary and correspondence with missionary Ferdinand Elsner.69 In Germany prominent pathologist Rudolf Virchow denounced protests in the press against the exhibition of humans in a zoo.70 He credited Jacobsen for his work with Inuit71 and publicly thanked Hagenbeck for the great benefit that his exhibition of “exotic people” rendered to anthropological science. In a public workshop of the Ethnological/Anthropological Society held in the Zoological Garden of Berlin, Professor Virchow speculated, in typical eugenic fashion, on the close relationship of the Inuit to Mongols, based on extensive body measurements taken of the exhibited Inuit, especially their skull shapes and chewing muscles.72 The Hagenbeck exhibit in Germany was neither the first nor the only display of Inuit in Europe. Christian Inuit from the Moravian mission stations were subsequently shown in European, American, and African exhibitions. In 1881 a party of twenty-five Inuit taken to the Paris World Exhibition did not live to return home. In 1892 an American agent named Taber won over fifty-eight Inuit for the Chicago World Fair with a promise of two barrels of flour, four barrels of ship’s bread, one barrel salted meat, one new boat, one rifle with ammunition for a year, and a travel bag full of new clothes, plus free accommodation and return passage per family. Such bait put the missionaries on the defensive. From Chicago some of the Inuit were

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taken to San Francisco. Only a few returned two years later, abandoned in St John’s and cheated out of the rewards promised them.73 In 1899 Taber returned to recruit, in defiance of protestations from the missionaries, thirty Inuit from Nain, Hebron, Zoar, and Davis Inlet for the Paris World Exhibition. Over a two-year period they were put on display in England, Spain, France, Italy, Algeria, and finally the United States (Buffalo). Only twelve of these came back to Hopedale in October 1901. The remaining survivors were sent on to South Carolina to an unknown future. They were joined by ten new Inuit whom Taber’s associate, Lauder, had picked up in Nain in 1901.74 In September 1903 six of those turned up at Rama, destitute, sick, and demoralized.75 Inuit returning from exhibition in the United States and Europe were reported to have spread serious epidemics of typhoid fever and venereal disease at every Labrador mission station. In the winter following the return of the Inuit from Chicago, 91 of Nain’s population of 350 died of typhoid fever, and 20 died at Okak. The Moravians considered these imported epidemics the chief cause for the decline of the Native population and urged the government of Newfoundland to prohibit the exportation of Inuit for exhibition purposes. Despite official disapproval, however, the manager of the Eskimo village at the Jamestown Exposition was reported to continue his recruiting trips to Labrador in April 1907. He had had a party of Inuit on exhibition in the United States since the 1905 St Louis Fair and had been visiting Labrador at regular intervals for fifteen years to supplement those Inuit on show. His wife, a “high-caste Eskimo,” was an interpreter at the Hudson’s Bay Company post in Hamilton Inlet. The government and the missionaries were unable to stop him.76 Hagenbeck was still exhibiting Native peoples in 1910 – scalping demonstrations by Sioux proved to be particularly popular attractions.77 At the same time, however, the British government, at the request of the Newfoundland governor, scrapped the planned erection of a “model Esquimaux village from Labrador” at an upcoming Crystal Palace festival.78 In March 1911 the Newfoundland legislature finally passed an act outlawing the abduction or contracting of native peoples without government permission for the purpose of exhibition or related services outside the colony. Hagenbeck, however, was not to be deterred. In May 1911 he cabled Governor Ralph Williams: “Having made contract last year for Siberian and Labrador Esquimaux was unable getting Siberians account floating ice boats lost and as installations houses etc. built here at enormous expense long before new law enacted request your Excellency make exception and grant departure Esquimaux otherwise heavy losses will guar-

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antee people well cared for and brought back. Carl Hagenbeck, The Tierpark Stellingen, Hamburg.” “Request refused” was the governor’s terse reply.79 There were no further applications to remove Inuit for exhibition purposes.

the consulate at nain Germany’s increased contacts with Labrador at a time when the Moravian mission there was reaching the peak of its operation prompted the German ambassador in London in 1879 to request the establishment of a German consulate at Nain. Recommending the appointment of the mission’s superintendent, Johann Heinrich Theodor Bourquin, as Labrador’s first German consul, the ambassador argued that “the Mission of the German Moravian Fraternity consists of about forty German Missionaries, who wish to retain the German nationality for themselves and their families ... At present St John’s is the nearest German Consulate, but as there is no regular postal communication between that town and Labrador, the consulate there is of no use to the Mission. Moreover, there is no official at all of any kind in Labrador, so that it is impossible to obtain legally valid papers.”80 Superintendent from 1868 to 1890, Bourquin served as German consul at Nain from 1880 until his retirement. He was succeeded as superintendent and consul by Moravian bishop Albert Martin (see illus. 2.7). Bourquin was proud of Imperial Germany’s cultural, economic, and political accomplishments. His allegiance to that country and to German nationalism was a sentiment shared by many German missionaries who witnessed the struggles for the unification of Germany and its rise to world power in the second half of the nineteenth century. Although a native of the Russian province of Livonia and a highly respected missionary and author of the most comprehensive Inuit grammar,81 Bourquin was known before his departure for Labrador as a supporter of the romantic nationalist Turnbewegung (gymnastics) and a composer of Turnlieder welcoming the birth of a German navy.82 Moved by what one German chronicler termed a natural “affection for their earthly fatherland and in veneration for the man who had accomplished the long-desired unification of their deeply divided fatherland,” Bourquin and some of Labrador’s German missionaries decided on a concrete gesture of gratitude for the maintenance of a German consulate at Nain. In 1886 they brought to Bismarck the expertly prepared skin of an unusually beautiful and large polar bear caught by Inuit near Nain. Two Moravian ministers in Berlin personally presented it to the chancellor, who

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3.3 Otto Oppelt, the chauffeur, with W.D. Reid’s Fiat, taking visiting sailors from the German warship Bremen for a ride in St John’s, August 1907. From the Evening Telegram, 3 April 1939.

3.4 German warship Bremen visiting the Moravians at Nain, Labrador, August 1907. Courtesy Siegfried Hettasch.

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was apparently delighted at the magnificence of the gift. In his letter of acknowledgment to Bourquin, Bismarck stressed “the special value of the attention bestowed upon me in that it was evidence of how well even faraway countrymen think of me.”83 By 1907, the Labrador mission’s mutual cultural, scientific, and personal contacts with the German Empire had become so pervasive that the visit of a German warship to the Imperial German consul at Nain, Superintendent Bishop Albert Martin, was treated as a self-evident courtesy by the Newfoundland government and the Moravian mission. From 5 to 7 August 1907 the frigate sms Bremen had already visited St John’s, where its captain was ”very greatly pleased with the attention bestowed on himself and his officers.” In St John’s Otto Oppelt, the German-born chauffeur of Newfoundland railway entrepreneur H.D. Reid and a renowned local wrestler (see chapter 4), had entertained the warship’s German sailors and taken some on a ride into the country in Reid’s red Fiat touring car (see illus. 3.3). The provision of a pilot for the Labrador coast by the Reid Newfoundland Company enabled the ship to visit Nain.84 The missionaries at Nain were excited when the ship unexpectedly appeared on 14 August and anchored in the harbour for several days (see illus. 3.4). Bishop Martin reported to Herrnhut his utmost delight at the visit. In every respect, Martin considered the visit a positive event. According to him, Captain Alberts of the Bremen expressed great interest in the mission’s work in Labrador. He invited Martin to conduct a Sunday service on board, his sailors behaved in an exemplary manner on land, and the sale of souvenirs generated considerable revenue for the mission. Martin wrote that “we could have sold twice as many souvenirs, if we had had more. Although we never had a chance to rest from morning till evening, these days were for us personally a veritable recreation. Being suddenly torn out of our Labrador monotony had a wholesome effect. The officers assured us they had a good time because of the ‘uniqueness’ here, especially since they could engage in a successful bear hunt.”85 Even English-born Nain missionary Walter Perrett, who took pride in the fact that “conversation in German does not come difficult to me,” shared the positive evaluation of the German warship’s visit. “A most enjoyable time we had while they were anchored here, pleasures that came quite unexpectedly,” wrote Perrett. “That visit will long remain green in our memories.”86 As a result of official requests from Germany, the missionaries had to accommodate a growing number of German scientists eager to use a mission station as a base for conducting scientific fieldwork in northern Labrador. Reports indicate that the missionaries were always generous hosts, despite cramped living conditions at their northern stations and

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despite the reservations many of these visitors, especially the anthropologists, had about the mission’s objectives.

german scientists in labrador Imperial Germany’s great strides in science and technology found Newfoundland a fertile field of inquiry. Frequently inspired by the scientifically motivated observations of the Moravians, scientists from Germany began in the last quarter of the nineteenth century to study Newfoundland’s fishery, seal hunt, and Native peoples and to investigate systematically the physical, economic, and cultural geography, climate, northern lights, mollusks, and butterflies and insects of Newfoundland and Labrador. Labrador mission stations, in particular, were increasingly utilized by Germany’s scientists as observation posts for their fieldwork. On the occasion of the Year of International Polar Research, 1882–83, Freiburg physicist K.R. Koch received permission from the Unitas Fratrum in Herrnhut and the sfg in London to establish on behalf of the German Polar Commission meteorological observation points at all the mission stations in Labrador. Koch arrived on the Harmony in July 1882 and was offered room and board for a few days in each of the mission stations to enable him to set up his instruments. The son of missionary Hermann Jannasch recalled that Koch was a stimulating guest during the winter he spent in the Nain mission house whose usually monotonous life he “animated immensely with the breath of the big world out there.”87 For Koch the expedition was a full success because of the active cooperation of the missionaries. Apart from precipitation and humidity, measurements were made of the intensity of the sunrays, the temperature of the ground, the movement of the clouds, and the approach of storms. While at Nain, Koch paid special attention to the northern lights as part of Germany’s contribution to international polar research. His wide-ranging observations and experiences, published in several articles, included descriptions of Inuit life and the geography of Labrador.98 In connection with Koch’s visit, the Deutsche Seewarte (German marine observatory) in Hamburg in 1882 requested the Moravians’ permission to equip its six Labrador mission stations with meteorological instruments to measure rainfall, temperature, air pressure, wind, and clouds. The missionaries agreed to maintain the instruments, record the measurements, and send regular reports to Hamburg. Moravian meteorological data col-

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lected in Labrador arrived in Hamburg until 1939, with an interruption from 1914 to 1925. They were cited and interpreted in numerous German publications (see chapter 5).89 From 9 August to 6 October 1906 renowned Dresden natural science teacher and ornithologist Bernhard Adolf Hantzsch (1875–1911) came with the Harmony to the most northern Moravian station, Killinek, in order to examine everything from the culture of the last non-converted Inuit to the botanical and zoological environment on the northernmost Labrador coast. He prepared comprehensive inventories of birds and mammals found in the area between Ikkerasak and Tunnusuksoak, as well as the varieties of local plants with their Inuit names and uses.92 He collected a large number of tools, clothes, and artifacts as evidence of Inuit material culture, later depositing them in the Dresden State Museum for Ethnology. He also drew a new map of the area based on his own surveys and calculations. On his way back he visited all the other mission stations on the coast of Labrador. Drawing on his observations once back in Germany, he criticized the mission for imposing a Christian mould on a valuable pagan culture. The city of Dresden has honoured Hantzsch’s scientific achievements by naming a street after him.91 New and revised lists of mammals, birds, amphibians, and fish identified in Labrador by visiting German scientists and Moravian missionaries were featured at regular intervals in German natural science journals.92 For a German colleague, geologist Johannes Uhlig, Hantzsch had collected rock samples in Labrador which Uhlig later analyzed in a scholarly publication.93 In 1906 Professor Harms, an ornithologist from Germany, was reported to have come to Killinek to study the bird life of northern Labrador. He was alleged to have undertaken this fieldwork on behalf of the King of Saxony.94

interest and connections Germany’s growing interest in Labrador and Newfoundland was not confined to nature and science. In 1908 the distinguished German historian Professor Karl Lamprecht inquired about official publications dealing with the history of the colony. Government House recommended Judge Prowse’s History of Newfoundland and promised to forward a copy of the new edition to be published shortly.95 German stamp collectors, too, discovered Newfoundland. An accumulation of large orders for Newfoundland stamps from Oldenburg indicated an interest in them around 1910–11.96

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By 1914 there was no aspect of Newfoundland and Labrador that was not of some interest to an agency, group, or individual in Germany. As commercial and consular links developed between that country and Newfoundland, beginning with the Hamburg provisions trade, personal, technological, and scientific connections followed, and they intensified with the rapid economic and political transformations of Germany and Newfoundland in the nineteenth century. The liberalization of Britain’s colonial trade in the 1820s enabled Newfoundland to change its trading pattern. For the first time it could now acquire direct imports from Germany – cheap staple foods and fishing gear as well as new varieties of household and luxury items. As contacts expanded, Germans introduced state-of-the-art hydropower-generating and fish-processing technologies to Newfoundland. In return, Germany bought increasing quantities of oil, lobster, and iron ore. The first German community in St John’s was a product of the new Hamburg trade links. Its members eventually found better prospects elsewhere, but other Germans replaced them, and a transient community of people of German-speaking background became a permanent feature in Newfoundland.

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4 “Venturesome sons of the fatherland”

Immigrants, Sojourners, and Visitors, 1870–1914 Mr. Ellershausen’s ... skilful energy and enterprise have produced such wonderful results, and in the short space of three years converted a rugged wilderness into a hive of industry. Rev. Moses Harvey, 1878 Otto Oppelt has been residing in St. John’s for two years, and while he came here unknown, his friends and acquaintances today are legion ... A gentleman in every respect, Otto has won the high opinion and admiration of all who have been brought in contact with him. Evening Herald, 18 September 1908

After 1870 two developments overlapped to set the stage for a different type of German migration to Newfoundland. These were Germany’s ascent to industrial and world power and Newfoundland’s quest for economic diversification, as indicated by the pattern of trade between the two countries. The quest for diversification – a theme still heard today – derived from the realization that the unreliable fishery could never satisfy the needs and aspirations of the island’s growing population. The search brought such land-based enterprises as mining, the construction of a trans-insular railway, and the establishment of a host of manufacturing industries in the 1880s. It also manifested itself in the amenities and aspirations of a consumer style commensurate with such development. In various ways immigrants and visitors of German origin responded to these challenges. For example, they supplied professional services wanted by the evolving urban lifestyle. They also benefited from Newfoundland’s lack of trained artisans, the opportunities to supply entrepreneurship and expertise for new developments, and the possibilities of emigrating to America through cheap,

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easy shipping connections via Newfoundland. In addition, some were attracted simply by the contrasting geographic, economic and cultural conditions Newfoundland offered those caught in the maelstrom of rapid industrialization and urbanization in Europe. During the years 1870–1914, people of German-speaking background appeared in Newfoundland in such capacities as entrepreneurs, engineers, business agents, conductors and composers, teachers, herbalists, coopers, miners, tailors, furniture makers, watch repairmen, gardeners, barbers, entertainers, wrestlers, chauffeurs, deserting seamen, and tourists. They belonged to all social classes and all central European faiths – Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish. They came from Europe and North America. Some settled permanently, some temporarily, and some were merely brief visitors.

francis von ellershausen The most prominent German contributor to the economic diversification in Newfoundland was Francis von Ellershausen. A native of Saxony, Ellershausen left Germany in 1862 at age forty-two to try his luck as a mining engineer in the Nova Scotian goldfields. After his arrival, however, he devoted his efforts to increasingly ambitious, and at times quite lucrative, industrial projects ranging from a pulp and paper mill to drilling for oil and land drainage for agriculture. Ellershausen was a proud, impressive figure, tall and slender with a large Roman nose and full black beard. Highly educated in the arts and sciences, with patents in metallurgy to his credit – the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica describes his process for smelting iron – he had the cultured tastes and dignified manners befitting a member of the German nobility. On the site of his paper mill at the St Croix River he built two mansions, furnished with commissioned paintings and French mirrors, which he surrounded with cottages. In them he housed German immigrants to whom he offered employment after their shipwreck off Sable Island. His grandiose, ingenious industrial-development schemes earned him the respect and admiration of his contemporaries. Implemented with audacity and determination, they were not considered utopian or unattainable at the time. That his ventures eventually collapsed has been attributed to the instability of his financial backing and his inexperience in business rather than to his industrial vision. In Nova Scotia Ellershausen was so respected as a constructive force in the industrial life of the 1860s and 1870s1 that his biographer regrets fate did not tie him to the province for good.2

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Ellershausen’s connection with Newfoundland dates to his arrival in 1874 in Notre Dame Bay, where he went to inspect a claim staked out for him in 1872 by his German associate Adolph von Guzman.3 The two men had been attracted by the great deposits of copper and coal discovered in connection with the Geological Survey of Newfoundland in 1864. Realizing the potential of Betts Cove’s copper-ore body, which its owners, the Notre Dame Bay Mining Company (founded 1869), never intended to exploit, he successfully optioned the site for a royalty on the mined ore. That same year he formed the Betts Cove Mining Company with two Glasgow financiers. By Christmas 1874 he had thirty Germans from his Nova Scotian estate in Ellershouse en route to Betts Cove as miners. There, seventy Newfoundlanders joined them to build the necessary facilities for mining operations to begin in the spring of 1875. As he departed from Nova Scotia, Ellershausen would not tolerate his German miners being teased by the village teacher about heading for the land of “cod and copper”; he is reported to have retorted angrily that cod and copper would bring them bread and butter.4 During the summer of 1875 the miners, digging shafts 150 feet below the surface, managed to produce 6,000 to 8,000 tons of copper for export; a total of 102,000 tons was mined by 1879. Steam engines forced compressed air into the shafts and hauled the ore to the surface. A system of tramway cars transported the rocks from the shaft exits to the smelter and from there to the pier. Newfoundland’s first six blast furnaces smelted the ore for shipment to the Welsh port of Swansea. The initial investment in machinery and facilities was high, more than any local entrepreneur was willing to put up, but so were the profits. “So confident of success was the spirited and intelligent proprietor,” reviewed the Montreal Gazette’s Newfoundland correspondent the first year of operations, “that he spent $40,000 on plant, houses for workmen, and a wharf of 700 feet in length. His returns this year ... will be over $70,000, the quantity of ore shipped being 8,000 tons. This is a splendid success, and the prospects for the next years are still more brilliant. Four hundred workmen were employed during the summer – nearly all Newfoundlanders and earning good wages. Already the population of the village reaches 800 persons. Mr. E. finds that after a short term of training, Newfoundlanders make good miners, so that he imports only a few skilled men from abroad. In all probability several new mines will be opened next year.”5 By 1879 the mines had earned two and a half million dollars,6 and they continued to earn half a million dollars per year. Ellershausen’s success greatly stimulated interest in mining and associated development in the

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country. To the mining historian, his significance lies in his appearance at a time when Newfoundland’s mining industry “needed the catalysing influence of a mining expert with vision, courage and lots of money. He fitted the bill perfectly.”7 By 1878 Betts Cove had sprung up from a place with no inhabitants in the census of 1869 to a town of 1,800.8 Its more than one thousand miners formed a multicultural community of Newfoundlanders, Germans, Canadians, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Californians, and Australians. The wellpaid miners received their wages in custom-made Betts Cove money redeemable at local stores. Ellershausen took a personal interest in the welfare and comfort of his mining community – he inspected the working conditions in the shafts daily and provided for communal entertainment and cultural activities. During the winter season, mine officials, “all young gentlemen of good education,” as the Reverend Moses Harvey noted, gave concerts, public readings, and lectures and even engaged in “amateur theatricals.” The company built a Presbyterian Church and maintained a school with a company-paid teacher and no fees. Law and order were maintained by the appointed justice of the peace Guzman, Ellershausen’s German associate and manager.9 In 1877 Ellershausen petitioned the government asking that a stipendiary magistrate for the entire northern shore of Notre Dame Bay be appointed at Betts Cove, “where there is a large resident population with the prospect that it will greatly increase.”10 Visitors to the Notre Dame Bay mining region, including reporters from all the local newspapers, agreed that Betts Cove represented a model community in Newfoundland. It contained four churches, a school, a hospital, a telegraph station, a constable and a customs house, various stores, and even a “clean, cosy and well-kept market place,” where fish, meat, vegetables, poultry, butter, eggs, and other foodstuffs could be obtained daily. Visitors from St John’s (which had no market) were amazed at the management of this market, noting that “utmost regularity prevails, and cleanliness is a prominent feature ... It would be no harm if St. John’s would take a leaf out of Betts Cove’s books.”11 The Harbour Grace Standard (20 April 1878) confirmed that “there is quite a nice community here, and some little refinement I assure you. It is not the barbarous place that many suppose, and much is due to the excellent arrangement or rather government of Mr. Ellershouse [sic].” His management took pride in the fact that the prohibition on the sale of liquor worked and prevented disasters, quarrels, and loss of employment. Moses Harvey was amazed that a single constable was sufficient to keep order in a population numbering between 1,800 and 2,000. The condition of the

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settlement indicated to him that the material and moral interests of the people were well cared for. Harvey, who confessed that he had seldom enjoyed any visit more than his brief one to Betts Cove, lavished nothing but praise on Ellershausen as a superior labour organizer. “He can direct difficult and complicated operations with that quiet mastery and attention to minute details which mark him out as genuine ‘captain of industry.’”12 To all known observers, Ellershausen’s enterprise was “conducted with a spirit and energy unusual for Newfoundland.” The tenor of their remarks concurred with the hopes articulated by the editor of the Newfoundlander that “this enterprising gentleman and the company with which he is associated may reap abundant profits from their investments. Their success is the success of the country at large. Even as far as it has gone, its influence is most beneficially felt upon the labor of our people, and indirectly upon those other interests the progressive condition of which is in a large degree the measure of general prosperity.”13 In order to “greatly reduce the heavy expenses of mining” and maximize profits, Ellershausen in 1878 pleaded that a link between Halls Bay and St George’s Bay on the West Coast should be built as the first railway line in Newfoundland. Such a line would be much cheaper, easier to build, and more useful than a rail connection between St John’s and Notre Dame Bay, he argued. At present, “workmen have to be brought from long distances: high wages have to be paid, in order to attract and retain them, and all supplies have to be imported.” The proposed line, apart from opening up new areas for the exploration of minerals and coals and for agriculture, lumbering, and settlement, would effectively multiply the labour force in the existing mining region and reduce living expenses. “Gradually many natives of Newfoundland would be trained so as to become skilled miners. In this way the mining industry would be promoted, and capital more largely invested in mining enterprises.”14 In arguing his case for a trans-insular railway at the narrowest part of the island, Ellershausen sketched a vision of Halls Bay becoming the nodal point of a new and shorter route between the Old World and the New. In five days steamers from Ireland would reach fog-free Halls Bay, from where passengers and mail would get to Baie des Chaleurs or Cape Breton in twenty-four hours by train and ferry. For communication between Halls Bay and St John’s, local steamers, requiring twenty-four hours for the trip, would suffice. Alexander Murray, government geological surveyor and main proponent of railway construction in Newfoundland, liked Ellershausen’s plans and its ramifications. Ellershausen’s success had made it “very obvious that

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mining is fast becoming an industry of the very greatest importance in Newfoundland,” Murray argued, and in six years the population of Notre Dame Bay would grow “upwards of 20,000 souls.” He endorsed Ellershausen’s reasoning that “such an influx of population must act as an irresistible stimulus to other industries.” The government ought to look to men like Ellershausen, “whose interests are so greatly involved in progress” for assistance and support in carrying on extensive public works, such as railway building.15 The Betts Cove mine was the largest of eight copper mines that Ellershausen’s Betts Cove Mining Company had leased in Notre Dame Bay in the 1870s. Its copper mine at Little Bay, about thirty kilometers southwest of Betts Cove and employing over five hundred miners in 1878, was almost as successful as the Betts Cove mine. In January 1881 Ellershausen sold all his leases in Notre Dame Bay at a handsome profit to the Newfoundland Consolidated Copper Mining Company. The Betts Cove mine’s new owner, lacking Ellershausen’s engineering skills but eager to maximize profit at the expense of safety, caused the rapid deterioration of the mine and its closure in 1884.16 Some evidence exists that Ellershausen continued to be involved in Newfoundland railway politics, but allegations connecting him to Prime Minister William Whiteway’s shady dealings over the railway contract between 1880 and 1882 cannot be substantiated.17 Until August 1884 Ellershausen, with fifty of his miners from Little Bay and Betts Cove, worked the lead mine at Silver Cliff near Little Placentia (now Argentia). This time, however, success eluded him. He had acquired the rundown mine in the summer of 1883. Also, his German manager, Guzman, had departed for the United States, and his replacement was incompetent. Ellershausen left Newfoundland in 1884, at age sixty-four, for some prospecting in Spain and subsequent retirement in Germany. He died in Berlin in 1914.18 Although from hindsight, Ellershausen’s success in Newfoundland, like that of so many foreign investors, proved to be a flash in the pan, the impact of his ten-year residence on the island may be summarized in the words of an editorial in the Newfoundlander of 28 January 1879: “It seems only the other day that he first entered upon the ground, and already has his enterprise reaped a high degree of success of which the country shares with him the gratification and the fruits. Not Betts Cove alone, but various other localities in the same region are now attesting the value of his efforts and the rare judgement and skill which have directed them; and while the character of this island as the home of mineral wealth has been thus winged abroad, thousands of our people have been afforded remunerative employ-

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ment at home.” Since the Notre Dame copper boom triggered by Ellershausen continued until 1900, if not until 1914 (even though the Betts Cove mine closed in 1886), it may be assumed that some of Ellershausen’s thirty or so German miners stayed in Newfoundland after he had returned to Europe. In November 1880, for instance, the marriage was announced at Twillingate of one Franz Hacker from Dresden, Germany, to Sarah, second daughter of John L. Duder, esq., subcollector of hm Customs in Betts Cove.19

robert von stein Equally well-known was Ellershausen’s German contemporary Robert Carl von Stein, also of noble lineage. Born in 1855 (or 1844) in the German city of Stettin (since 1945 Szczecin in Poland) on the Baltic Sea, he studied marine engineering at Lübeck and then in 1876 went to England, where C.T. Bowring Ltd employed him. This London firm sent him to Brake in Oldenburg, Germany, as chief engineer of the newly constructed ss Kite, a 193–ton, wooden-hulled, steam-driven vessel. It was to sail to St John’s, Newfoundland, to be part of the sealing fleet owned and operated by Bowring Brothers of St John’s. Stein worked for Bowring’s for several years, became a permanent resident of St John’s, and achieved as much prominence in civic life as a German was ever able to obtain in pre–World War i Newfoundland.20 Stein’s association with St John’s dates to 1877, where he appears as chief engineer on the ss Kite or ss Falcon. On 8 February 1881 he married Annabel Downie Morrison, the sister of Attorney General Donald Morrison in the Whiteway government. They had six sons and two daughters (see illus. 4.1). Descendants believe that Robert’s father was one of Kaiser Wilhelm’s bodyguards, that Robert had been married before in Germany, and that he had left a family behind who made fruitless attempts to contact him. On the oldest surviving photograph of Stein (in family possession), he is shown in an imperial German naval uniform with a (wedding) ring on his left hand (see illus. 4.2). Stein never returned to Germany, nor did he cultivate any contacts with his German relatives. In 1935 a German woman claiming to be his daughter Meta wrote a letter to Consul Robert Furlong asking for information about him (see chapter 7). Despite his endeavours to assimilate, Stein could never deny his German heritage, and Newfoundlanders used to identify him by his ethnic origin. In the recollections of family members, he is depicted as an authoritarian

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4.1 Robert von Stein in St John’s with his Newfoundland family. Courtesy Mark Stein.

4.2 Robert von Stein in Germany in imperial German naval uniform. Courtesy Mark Stein.

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figure, the typical stern German father. The sons had many happy childhood memories, but they also remember their father used to whip them for having been bad when he returned from his long absences. The German system of education, he believed, was superior to any other. When Stein’s oldest son, Jack, contrary to his father’s wishes, chose to study in Glasgow instead of completing his engineering studies in Germany, he was thrown out of the house. He successfully nonetheless graduated from Glasgow in October 1907 and followed in his father’s footsteps as second engineer of the ss Silvia one month later.21 Stein’s inability to lose his German accent was frequently noted and made it difficult for him to melt fully into local society. When angry, he used to erupt into a furious cascade of German curses, which must have sounded as so much gobbledegook to Newfoundlanders. Once, upon being rescued from a near-drowning accident in a lake, witnesses reported, “Von had lost control of his vocal powers, and swore vigorously in seven different languages, commencing with the broad teutonic, and the few who stood near state he used French, Spanish and also Arabic.” In the Stein family some of his expressions, such as “mein Gott im Himmel” (God forbid) and “du bist ein Esel” (you are an ass), have been passed down to later generations.22 Apart from his convenient marriage, Stein’s adjustment was helped by the fact that his qualifications as an engineer were in great demand in Newfoundland. His children remember that he was always away from home. While in the employ of Bowring’s, he participated in the seal fishery. As chief engineer on the ss Baer, he devised ways of carrying out difficult repairs on the ice. One spring when his ship got jammed in the ice, he prepared a badly damaged propeller and rudder by having the captain move all his cargo forward in order to bring the stern up and out of the water. He then made a platform with planks on the open water from where he repaired the rudder and propeller. On the ss Baer he is alleged to have witnessed the rescue of the Greeley expedition in the Arctic.23 After the Baer’s sale to the US Navy, Stein found employment with the Newfoundland Railway, then in need of engineers for the construction and operation of its new lines. He was a travelling engineer and chief mechanical engineer in charge of the mechanical shop in Whitbourne. Marine superintendent and master mechanic with the Newfoundland Railway in 1884, Stein was subsequently given responsibility for all the watering works of the Reid Newfoundland Company. As the line from St John’s to Harbour Grace was extended westward, he built and maintained the water chutes for the locomotives’ steam boilers from St John’s to Port aux

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Basques, as well as water tanks for services and steamships in various Newfoundland ports. On 3 April 1894 the Evening Telegram announced Stein’s promotion to the rank of “prominent” railway-car builder: “Two combination cars – postal, luggage and smoking – are being built under his direction for the Newfoundland railway.”The following year he was reported looking after the construction of the new iron bridge at Holyrood. No wonder the press celebrated Stein as “the genial German” and a “venturesome son of the fatherland.”24 Even better known than his engineering feats were Stein’s social and civic activities. They attest to his desire to assimilate and to be fully accepted as a Newfoundlander. His obituary characterized him as a “most enthusiastic sportsman, both with rod and gun.” The Evening Telegram of 20 September 1892 boasted that Stein and a friend in three days of hunting “easily brought down a hundred and some odd partridge” but considered their “wild goose chase” unsuccessful because they saw many more than they managed to shoot. From none of the three partridge-shooting excursions did he seem to return with fewer than a hundred birds, which he used to distribute to his friends. For years Stein was on the committee of the Game Protection Society advocating caribou preservation.25 In 1899 he became the second president of the Murray’s Pond Fishing Club, founded in 1892, and was one of the persons who introduced rainbow trout into Newfoundland. A champion of the time-honoured curling matches between “Englishmen and the World” (as they were termed), “Herr von Stein” represented “Prussia” against the “Newfoundland” team of C.R. Duder and John Rooney. “His cheery voice will long be remembered in the great winter game of curling which he used to enjoy to the full,” mourned the Evening Telegram after Stein had passed away. In football matches he was the goalkeeper for the team from the railway depot. In 1896 he came forward as one of the proponents of a plan to celebrate the discovery of Newfoundland by Cabot.26 Stein’s most illustrious contribution to St John’s civic life appears to have been his enthusiastic participation and assistance in the organization of the annual Regatta. From 1896 to 1910 he was appointed every year to the Regatta committee, after 1900 as an honorary member. On 5 August 1897 the Daily News noted that “the most energetic member of the Regatta committee was R. von Stein, who was superintending the erection of tables and other fixtures for the dining tent. He complained that, although he had a big committee he was the only worker. They wouldn’t even come down and talk to him to break the monotony. If the committee are not pleased

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with the arrangements made, it won’t be the fault of the genial German.” Always good at climbing the greasy pole, Stein, “that prince of good fellows,” was in charge of awarding the prizes for this event in 1896, namely, a barrel of flour, a pair of boots, a two-dollar bill, and a ham.27 After his retirement, Stein operated a nursery with two steam-heated greenhouses on his estate, and a flower shop on Water Street. He grew and sold vegetables and acquired a reputation for his floral arrangements. The ground around his stately white house on Kenna’s Hill, which, according to the name plate on the front door Stein had baptized Herzberg (heart’s hill), was attractively landscaped and came to be known as Stein’s Hill.28 When Stein died, just a few days before the outbreak of World War i, he was eulogized as a “prominent and popular” Newfoundlander. He was thus spared the crushing experience of witnessing his house searched on the suspicion of his being an enemy agent because of his alleged high connections to the German throne. The unconfirmed rumour still circulates that these searches brought to light better maps of the Bell Island ore tunnels than the government of Newfoundland had and that copies of these maps were found in the possession of German officials before the war. It is highly likely that Stein would have been arrested and interned had he been alive until 1915.29 Closely associated for many years with Robert von Stein’s civic activities was Robert A. Brehm, who came to Newfoundland in 1879. Together they were officers of the Game Protection Society, the Regatta committee, and the Murray’s Pond Fishing Club. A Canadian from Halifax which, like Lunenburg, had a substantial and nearly assimilated German community dating back to 1750, Brehm is alleged to have been of German descent. However, little is known about his background, and there is not sufficient evidence to corroborate this contention of local residents. He had a strange British accent and reminded one contemporary of a Prussian officer. As a St John’s resident, he was known to be almost deaf and to have married a second time. His second wife was probably a Canadian from Nova Scotia who was considerably younger than he. He does not appear to have cultivated any contacts with German-speaking Europe or Germans besides Stein.30 Brehm moved to St John’s to manage the butterine factory of Hearn and Company on Forest Road. Around 1900 he became its owner and renamed it the Brehm Butterine Factory. This company merged in 1925 with Harvey’s Creamery to become the Newfoundland Butter Company (later Newfoundland Margarine Company), owned by George C. Crosbie.31 Brehm had four sons, two of whom acquired prominence in Newfoundland

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public life. Frank, an avid curler, sportsman, and pioneer motorcyclist. became director of the butterine company upon his father’s death in 1919 and a director of the Unilever subsidiary, Harvey-Brehm, in 1937. Robert A. Brehm junior was Newfoundland’s foremost public health officer from 1903 to 1936. He died in 1942. Since World War ii the Brehm family has disappeared from Newfoundland.32 Today Robert A. Brehm senior is remembered chiefly as the acknowledged founder of the Murray’s Pond Fishing Club and its first president from 1892 to 1899. He successfully imported 150,000 rainbow trout eggs from California in 1887 to be hatched (at first unsuccessfully) at upper Long Pond and then (successfully) at Murray’s Pond. From this hatchery rainbow trout have been introduced by the government into many ponds throughout Newfoundland.33

co o pers Coopers were the first identifiable class of arrivals from the German Empire. In Germany prospects for their trade seemed uncertain. Skilled journeymen in general experienced increasing difficulties attaining master’s status in the stagnating mid-nineteenth-century German economies. For many skilled tradesmen, emigration was an escape from proletarianization in the industrialization boom that followed. Only a few decades later, changes in shipping technology would spell decline for the cooper’s trade in Newfoundland as well. In the 1870s, however, their trade was booming on the island and in Labrador as never before. Coopering may be considered the principal industry at the time, and the single largest group of workers of any trade in St John’s were coopers.34 Wealthy local merchants, the traditional employers of coopers, went to considerable trouble to hire foreigners qualified as journeymen coopers. The merchants wanted both to relieve the local shortage in the industry and to break the hold of unionized local coopers because their trade union had established fee schedules for daily wage rates.35 In 1875 two Germans including cooper Carl Jochsen, who was employed by St John’s brewer John Lindberg, received publicity for being beaten up while attempting to stop a fight in a public house.36 Coopers Otto Kruger and Michael Grubert are mentioned in the Newfoundland Directory for 1871 and the Harbour Grace voting list for 1874. Henry Bendel from Bremen worked as cooper in Carbonear. Otto and Hans Grimm are also remembered as German coopers in Carbonear.37 Skilled labourer Charles Myers who migrated to St John’s from Germany in 1879, may have worked in the cooper’s trade

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4.3 Henry Homfeld. Courtesy Max F. Homfeld.

as well.38 Four German coopers recruited in Hamburg – Charles Schroeter (Schroeder), Carl George, Conrad Wiese (Wise), and Heinrich (Henry) Hermann Homfeld (see illus. 4.3) – are known to have worked at the Labrador fishing stations of Carbonear fish merchant John Rorke from 1875 to 1878. While these four did not intend to stay, at least four of the others became immigrants in Newfoundland. The migrations and experiences of Henry Homfeld and Conrad Wiese are particularly well documented. Apprentices in a Hamburg cooperage who were out of work during a labour strike, these two men learned through their boss of a letter from a Liverpool cooper indicating that a Labrador fish merchant was eager to hire at least three coopers, “Germans preferred.” Passage would be paid and wages begin when they embarked at Liverpool, England. It appears that they were contracted in Hamburg at a monthly rate for a fixed period of not less than two years. With the choices of making good money in the New World or being redrafted for

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military duty in the Old World at any time – they had been drafted in the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 and a resumption of hostilities was feared in the mid-1870s – they decided to emigrate. In April 1875 they sailed from Hamburg to Grimsby and then travelled via Sheffield to Liverpool, where they stayed in a German inn at the expense of their Newfoundland employer. From there they sailed on the Allan liner ss Caspian to Halifax and, after a delay of eleven days because of ice drifts, on to St John’s. There, the German consul waited for them and guided them to a Carbonear-bound ship owned by their master. After a sixweek stay with their employer, John Rorke, in Carbonear they proceeded to that fish merchant’s Labrador fishing station. The trip from Carbonear to Venison Island “took nine days, and with such a little fish boat it was an ordeal,” confided Homfeld to his diary. On Venison Island they worked for three years, through the winters, making fish barrels.39 Homfeld spoke no English when he left Germany, but he changed his name Heinrich to Henry when he arrived in Newfoundland. He saved his pay – his Rorke account 1877–78 show two deposits of £120 each to the Union Bank – and spent money only on few items such as postage, photographs, and a copy of Shakespeare’s works. Shortly before his contract was up, he charged new tweed suit material, a hat, a dress shirt, a box of collars, a wallet, and an advance, perhaps to pay the tailor.40 In a letter from Venison Island to his brother in Germany, Homfeld articulates his experience thus: It is very lonely here indeed, quite all right in summer time when all the fishermen from Newfoundland are here, but in winter there are only the storekeeper with his family, my colleague and myself. The winter lasts here from eight to nine months and during this time we are completely cut off from the world, having no mail, no telegraph to give us any news. But besides that I like the place all right, our old man being a nice chap and having good foods and drinks. The food consists chiefly of pickled pork or beef, peas and dumplings. We drink coffee and tea with sugar but without milk, because the latter, too, is not available here. The best of all is fish such as salmon, mackerel, codfish and herring – real delicacies. Once in a while we get fresh meat from seals tasting quite good but looking a bit blackish. Fishing is the only trade of the Newfoundlander, and I do not believe you have such fat herring in Bremen as those in Labrador.

Homfeld goes on to describe Venison Island as a naked rock such as the whole coast of Labrador is, and its size as big as the Buergenwald in Bremen, but very mountainous. When on Sundays I climb the rock,

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I can see in the West the rocky coast, and in the North, East and South is the ocean with its innumerable icebergs. I can tell you these icebergs never fully disappear and boy, what a journey from Newfoundland to this place between all the ice and such a little boat not bigger than the tugs on the Weser River and lasting nine days! I would rather travel three times from Europe to America ... Only three times in the summer there is mail service and during the winter we are frozen in.

A third German cooper in their company who worked at St Francis Island near Venison Island got so homesick he actually started walking back across the frozen Atlantic. His employer eventually found a ship that took him back home. Homfeld’s other buddy, Conrad Wiese, married a Newfoundland girl, Mary Jane Thomas, from Carbonear, in Labrador. Homfeld and Wiese extended their contract for one year, and when their three years were up, along with Wiese’s wife, they decided to take a boat to Baltimore to visit the United States. After finding work and making good money for a year in a Chicago cooper’s shop, Homfeld and Wiese set up their own shop in the small, predominantly German settlement of Valparaiso, Indiana. Both became Americans.41 We do not know how many other Germans used this or a similar route to migrate to the United States.

varieties of newcomers In the three decades before World War i, some seventy persons of identifiable German-speaking background indicate the existence of a noticeable German community on the island of Newfoundland. They represented a wide range of the occupations prevalent in Germany. Although many of them were transients, the number of those present at any time was steadily growing and reached an estimated forty-five by 1914. Of the latter, twentytwo became permanent residents, most of them belonging to the class of seamen, labourers, gardeners, and housekeepers. Between 1884 and 1911, Newfoundland’s foreign-born population (including Americans but no native of a British colony or dominion) grew from 464 to 731, while the native population grew from 187,000 to 239,000 by comparison. The oldest verifiable names of German settlers who immigrated after 1870 and whose descendants still reside in Newfoundland are Myers, Knight, Nelson, Bear, and Rickert. When Richard Knight immigrated sometime in the nineteenth century, his name was Richard Ritter. A Methodist minister at Pouch Cove, he found it expedient to adopt as his name the English translation of the German word Ritter. After two generations, the only trace of his ethnic heritage is the memory of his assimilated

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4.4 James (Emil Joseph) Rickert. Courtesy Augusta Mercer.

grandchildren that this German immigrant used to pick wild mushrooms, as well as peppermint and dandelion leaves, to eat. Immigrant John Behr similarly adapted his name to Bear, and Emil Rickez, or Rickerts, to James Rickert.42 Emil (James) Joseph Rickert, born in 1876 in the German Baltic port of Danzig, grew up without brothers and sisters and left Germany at the age

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of fourteen, after both his father and stepfather had drowned at sea. After having seen the world as a cabin boy, mostly on British vessels, he was discharged for the first time in 1894 in Newfoundland, where he decided to stay. Three years later he changed his name from Emil to James. In order to make a living in St John’s after the great fire of 1892, he continued to contract as a deckhand on various outgoing vessels until 1905. Then he found a job as pilot on a tugboat in St John’s harbour. Between operating his tugboat from dawn to dusk and raising a family of six children – his Newfoundland-born wife died at age thirty-nine in 1915 – there was little time for making friends or maintaining contact with others. Rickert’s fourteen-year old daughter Augusta had to look after a family of seven when her mother died. In school, Augusta recalls, she was stigmatized as a Jew although her parents had no Jewish background or friends. Rickert knew members of the local German community and used to sing German songs to his children and teach them German words such as Messer (knife). He also corresponded regularly with an aunt in Germany until 1914. But after that he dissociated himself from German culture and even avoided public gatherings. He would often say that “if something happens, they have me in for questioning, it is not worth bothering.” He died in 1956; his children are completely assimilated (see illus. 4.4).43 Rickert was one of an increasing number of German seamen discharged in St John’s in the decades before World War i. The identity of eight more can be established from government records.44 Most received media attention only when associated with trouble. A sensational case of May 1907 under the headline “German Thief Caught” was related in considerable detail. Identified as John Laskowski, who had worked his passage from Cadiz on the steamship Huntcliff, the eighteen-year-old was caught trying to break into the Royal Stores. The “Dutchman,” as the article labelled him, spoke imperfect English. The police fed him upon discovering that he was desperately hungry and ready to do anything to secure food. They learned that after leaving his steamer, he had kept in the suburbs until hunger drove him to the city. Police searches of his belongings uncovered tools and keys of various kinds, as well as numerous items that had been reported stolen in the city. His appearance was described as “sharp and smart, with eyes alert to every movement of those about, as well set up and apparently very strong.”45 Of many pre–World War i German residents, only the scanty record of their more or less illustrious public impact survives. When the Church of England College in 1892 announced its reopening after the great fire of 1892, it advertised as a member of its teaching staff “Third Master, Herr

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Wandelt, Univ. of Berlin, and Officer of the Reserve of the Prussian Army.”46 About the same time German immigrant barber Eisnuth (who operated one of the few barber shops at a time when most men wore beards) was known as the “odd fellow” for collecting different coloured beard stubbles in order to make pictures of the Roman Catholic basilica and Church of England cathedral out of red, white, and black human hair.47 Following reports of a minor chemical explosion at the residence of “Mr. Herr Koch” in January 1899, readers of the Daily News (11 and 12 January 1899) learned that Koch, “though now a tailor, studied chemistry in a high school class at Hamburg” and still considered himself a “lover of chemistry.” In 1897 one Alfred Meyer from Germany was naturalized in Newfoundland. In January 1897 jeweller and watchmaker Edmund Dietlinger became a member of the Star of the Sea Association, after it had been reported earlier that he used to help his German countrymen in distress “for the sake of the fatherland.”48 Martin Halmberg, “expert watchmaker and optician,” arrived on 6 December 1903 to enable A. McNamara to go into the optical business.49 Gustav Alfred Thiele left Germany in 1911 to be employed with the A.N.D. Company in Botwood. Businessmen Samuel Frehlich from Germany and Joseph and Philip Deshowitz of Austria took out naturalization papers in 1908 and 1913.50 Frehlich, like the German-born Isidor Epstein who arrived in 1912, also associated with the St John’s Jewish community.51 Mrs Bertha Holland, née Kothe, came to Newfoundland in 1908 (or 1893). With her husband Fred B. Holland, an Englishman, she opened the Seaview Hotel at Topsail. The couple had been married in Berlin, Germany, in 1905 (see chapter 7). Among other identifiable pre-war German women married to Newfoundlanders were the wife (since 1855) of Dr Henry Hunt Stabb, superintendent of the St John’s Lunatic Asylum. As mentioned earlier, she had been shipwrecked off Newfoundland. Marie Ungerer arrived in 1898, aged seventeen, and married Eikum Hutchings. In 1899 German-born Adele Ficke, from the town of Varel in Oldenburg, Germany, married Newfoundland-born Francis White from Shallop Cove, St George’s. They had met in New York, where as a firefighter he had rescued her from a burning house. Following a visit to his home and her conversion from Lutheranism to Roman Catholicism, they decided to stay in Shallop Cove, where they raised nine children.52 A German newcomer who became one of the co-founders of the first St John’s synagogue was Charles Miller. Born in Hamburg in 1876, he emigrated to the United States in 1890 and moved to Halifax and then in 1897 to St John’s. Together with Elias Gittleson, he opened the usp (Picture and

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Portrait Company) at 165 Water Street, a picture-framing store, which expanded into a house furnishings business. In 1902 Charles married his cousin Henrietta, whose parents were also from the east Prussian part of Germany. The biographer of his son Leonard Albert (who studied medicine, entered government service, and rose to become director of medical services in 1944 and deputy minister of health in 1949) characterized the Millers with their well-established German Jewish background, as ranking among the elite of St John’s mostly Russian-descended Jewish community. Yet for the newcomer Millers, “heavy-set, speaking with a foreign accent and keeping to themselves,” the pressures to assimilate were “insidious.”53 Many of the immigrants and frequent visitors of German background who came to Newfoundland from North America are traceable to Canada’s districts of eighteenth-century German settlement. William Niehaus, representative of the firm of L. Breithaupt and Company in Berlin (now Kitchener), Ontario, was “well and favourably known” to residents of St John’s.54 All those who worked with the Newfoundland postal service seem to have known Barney Piehl, a native of Stetten, Germany, who had skipped ship in Cape Breton and married a woman from there, according to his obituary.55 Joseph R. Smallwood’s boyhood chum A.B. Lehr, who became a St John’s dentist, was, like Robert A. Brehm, a native of Halifax.56

celebrities in herbal medicine, music, and wrestling “Professors” F.H. Ackerman and E.R. Krippner, together with chauffeurwrestler Otto Oppelt, were, no doubt, Newfoundland’s most celebrated Germans around the turn of the century. Between 1896 and 1900 herbalist Ackerman travelled around the island promoting his herbal treatment for lung, throat, heart, nervous, blood, liver, and kidney diseases. From the beginning he drew crowds numbering as many as six hundred people. When sued by the medical establishment for violating the Newfoundland Medical Act, he found enough witnesses to testify that they had been cured by his medicines. The widely publicized trial and his acquittal made him even more popular. “I do not give medical advice or consultation for fee, gain or reward,” Ackerman proclaimed proudly in the press. “I am simply Professor F.R. Ackerman, the German ‘herbalist.’ I am the manufacturer and sole proprietor of Standard Proprietary Medicines, through the use of which so many satisfactory and beneficial results have ensued in St. John’s and elsewhere.” Wherever he went, “the genial Professor”

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sold “enormous” quantities of his medicines. For these he imported roots, herbs, and barks. People came “from far and near to be treated by the professor.” In January 1899 he had to engage a travelling sales agent. When Ackerman left Newfoundland for good, St John’s druggist M. Connors appeared as the authorized agent who “keeps on sale – wholesale or retail – Prof. F.H. Ackerman’s Celebrated Medicines.”57 Few Newfoundlanders know today that Newfoundland’s national anthem, the “Ode to Newfoundland,” was first set to music by a German musician residing in St John’s, Professor E.R. Krippner. He came to the city in the late 1890s as a bandmaster and instructor for the Catholic Cadet Corps, a local boys’ brigade, probably at the invitation of local musician, teacher, and music businessman Charles Hutton.58 As a member of the music staff of St Bonaventure’s College, Krippner taught violin. The string orchestra he organized provided music for public festivities, such as King Edward’s coronation in August 1902 and the King’s birthday in November 1903, as well as orchestral accompaniment for theatre in St John’s. Rendering musical selections during the interval of a play in the Casino theatre on 21 January 1902, Krippner, according to one source, had to overwork the brass sections of his orchestra “in its efforts to burke the incessant back stage noises as sets are being changed.”59 Like his local patron, Charles Hutton, Krippner had ambitions that went beyond those of a bandmaster and teacher. At his residence on 71 Military Road, he opened a musical supply store where he sold and traded sheet music and, as one of his advertisements read, “15 first class violins, all made under my supervision in Germany – best material and workmanship guaranteed – prices moderate. Used or unused Newfoundland postal and revenue stamps taken in exchange.”60 By 1902 Krippner aspired to be recognized as Newfoundland’s foremost conductor, bandmaster, and composer. On 22 January 1903 the Daily News reported that “at the theatre last night Miss Farmes Daisy Foster rendered with exquisite feeling a new song entitled ‘Newfoundland.’ It proved a pleasant surprise and the general appreciation of it was marked by the audience joining spontaneously in the chorus. It now transpires that the song was composed by our own esteemed and popular Governor, Sir Cavendish Boyle. The music for the Governor’s poem was arranged by Professor E.R. Krippner and reflects much credit to his musical ability. The colorful anthem bids fair to become our national anthem.” Krippner immediately made arrangements to have his composition copyrighted and widely distributed. He prevailed upon musicians and bandleaders to teach and play it as an obligatory piece in their repertoire. In

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4.5 “Ode to Newfoundland,” with “Musik” by E.R. Krippner. Courtesy panl. Reproduced in Prowse, History (1971), 619–21.

anticipation of profits from a growing demand for the sheet music, Krippner ordered at his own expense more than one thousand bound copies from the Leipzig musical printing firm of C.G. Rüder. The front cover of the binding was lavishly illustrated in colour. It featured a Newfoundland sealer on the left and a British naval reservist on the right side of the illustration, complete with the Newfoundland flag and the Union Jack, as well as a seal opposite a Newfoundland dog in the foreground and a sealing steamer opposite a British warship in the background. “For patriotic appeal,” F.W. Graham commented, the cover “left nothing to be desired.”61 The book was published by E.R. Krippner, St John’s, with the inscription “Dedicated to the People of Newfoundland, January 1902. Words by Sir Cavendish Boyle, K.C.M.G., Governor of Newfoundland. Musik [sic] by E.R. Krippner” (see illus. 4.5). By the fall of 1903, Krippner’s Musik had become Newfoundland’s officially acknowledged national anthem. But the appeal of its time did apparently not measure up to expectations. Krippner, it was pointed out, “had not been disposed to sacrifice dignity to popularity” since tunes that were favoured by the “lower orders” were associated with music halls and the appeal of such tunes tended to be short-lived. The anticipated sales of his

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sheet music did not materialize, and sitting on close to a thousand unsold copies of his work by 1904, he was in financial difficulties. His plan to approach the government for financial assistance thus coincided with a growing desire to replace his official musical setting of the national anthem with one “which would appeal more to the general task.” A deal was therefore worked out whereby Krippner agreed to turn over the copyright, printing plates, and unsold copies of his music to the Newfoundland government in return for $100. After three composers, including Charles Hutton, tried their hand, the choice fell on the version by Sir C. Hubert Parry, which was adopted in May 1904. By then Professor Krippner (or “Mr. E.R. Huppness,” as Cavendish Boyle referred to him) had disappeared from the Newfoundland scene.62 The idol of pre–World War i automobile and wrestling fans in St John’s was unquestionably Otto Oppelt, a native of the German state of Bavaria and recent immigrant to the United States. He is an integral part of the beginnings of automobile driving in Newfoundland and of the origins of professional wrestling in St John’s. Both these activities commanded enthusiastic followings in those days. The first automobiles had been brought to St John’s from New York in 1903 by two (Harry D. and Robert G.) of the three Reid brothers, Newfoundland’s foremost railway entrepreneurs. Their older brother, William D. Reid, followed suit, however, with a marked preference for European cars and German-speaking chauffeurs. In August 1905 he imported Newfoundland’s first Fiat, a twelve-foot-long touring car with “a very fine appearance.” The new Fiat, boasted the Evening Telegram, “is the largest motor car here. The engine connected will develop thirty horse powers and the car will be very speedy.” It was chauffeured by Philip Ewig, a Swiss German. In December 1905 Ewig was reported on his way to his native Switzerland to bring back another car, “a 12,000 dollar auto,” probably a Daimler. He spent the winter in Switzerland and returned in March 1906. In September his marriage was announced to Janet Holt, governess at W.D. Reid’s. The couple proceeded to England for their honeymoon and from there to Italy.63 Otto Oppelt succeeded Ewig as chauffeur in the fall of 1906. News of this German driving W.D. Reid’s automobiles appeared first in July 1907. Between that year and 1913 white-coated amateur wrestler Oppelt at the wheel of Reid’s big Fiat and great red Daimler cars became a familiar road mark in St John’s and the source of sensational stories.64 As early as July 1907 a case against Oppelt for fast and “furious” driving came up before the courts. Despite maintaining that it was impossible to round curves at a

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greater speed than eight miles per hour, he was fined $5 or fourteen days for “recklessly driving a motor car.”65 To sympathetic journalists, however, Oppelt was “a gentleman in every respect.” He was “not a talker, but a worker” who had won “the high opinion and admiration of all who have been brought in contact with him.” Even his driving bravado found local defenders, who maintained that “as a chauffeur he may be by some considered reckless, but the impression of those qualified to know is that no more careful and efficient driver ever had charge of an automobile. A total abstainer and possessing more than the ordinary will power, he has never been known to lose his head or forget the fact that more than his own life usually depended on the manner in which he performed his duty.”66 In September 1907 Otto Oppelt carried out the incredibly difficult feat of climbing the steep hill on the Southside Road of St John’s, a task considered impossible for Newfoundland’s one dozen automobiles. The Evening Telegram noted that this was “the first time an auto had climbed this steep hill, and driving a machine over it was regarded as impossible. The road is so narrow that Mr. Oppelt had to go right out to Blackhead [a community about 12 kilometres from St John’s] before he could turn.” Unfortunately, in June 1909 Oppelt and a few passenger friends smashed up the big auto on a telephone pole when the pin came out of the steering wheel as he was driving down another steep hill, Patrick Street, “at a moderate rate of speed.”67 But the same summer his employer bought another Fiat for Oppelt, one “of the most modern manufacture” and “far larger than the machine now in his garage.” With a seventy-horsepower engine. it would be capable of developing “the great speed ... of 60 miles an hour,” the Evening Telegram bragged, and it “will have no peer in this country.” In February 1912 Otto was reported buying still another vehicle for W.D. Reid, a ninety-horsepower auto, on his return to London from Bavaria, where he had been visiting his parents. The car “is being built specially and Otto will look after the construction work.”68 The year before his first arrival in Newfoundland, Oppelt had made a name for himself in America when he defeated Bernard Hansen, the world champion in amateur middle-weight and heavy-weight wrestling, in St. Louis. There he became known as the Bavarian Tiger, Young Hackenschmidt, or simply “Hack,” because he was a partner of the great American wrestler of that name and so much resembled him. Oppelt had only recently learned the art of wrestling from a Professor Hollis in Brooklyn. In Newfoundland he became a sports celebrity overnight following a wrestling victory in May 1908. In this incident he went to Sydney to challenge Dan MacDonald, the wrestling champion of Cape Breton and Maine,

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4.6 Otto Oppelt, the wrestler. Published in The Evening Herald, 30 January 1911.

and defeated him in eight minutes. The North Sydney Herald (14 May 1908) hailed Oppelt as “the best built athlete and one of the most clever mat artists who has ever appeared here. Besides, he is one of the gentlemanly sort, without even the slightest trace of bragadocio which is usually noticeable in athletes of this kind” (see illus. 4.6). When, four months later, Oppelt “threw” a local challenger twice in the packed T.A. Hall in the second show of its kind in St John’s, one local paper raved about the new sport that he was popularizing on the island. It also raved about Oppelt, praising his work as having “always been that of a true sport and a gentleman ... He plays the game and will put forth every ounce of vitality in his manly frame, but he will take no mean advantage no matter

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who his opponent may be.”69 Later that year Oppelt accepted the challenge of Pius, the visiting American “Handcuff King,” who bet $1,000 that no one could unlock the handcuffs on his wrist. Before a capacity audience, Oppelt was reported wrestling the “great Pius” out of commission “with ease.” Otto Oppelt was unknown when he arrived in Newfoundland, remarked one paper, but “his friends and acquaintances to-day are legion.” Had wrestling been as lucrative for him as chauffeuring, he revealed, he would have devoted all his time to it. But it was not easy to arrange matches.70 Oppelt reached the apex of his wrestling career between 1909 and 1911 when, among numerous matches, he defeated first the local wrestling champion, Jim Smart, and then the SwedeYoung Olson, world champion in lightweight wrestling, twice in catch-as-catch-can-style matches to a finish. “The chauffeur,” commented one analyst, “is looked upon as one of the cleverest exponents of the mat game that has ever been before the public ... He is recognized as a true sport and has made hosts of friends by his gentlemanly conduct.”71 Among the generation of the father of Ferd Hayward, Newfoundland’s athletic champion and participant in the 1946 Olympic Games), wrestler Otto Oppelt was idolized as the athlete “who could not be beaten by anyone.” Many of Newfoundland’s athletes in other sports also took a fling at wrestling during these years. The Otto Oppelt Club that he opened in St John’s, was the first wrestling club to offer systematic training to meet challenges from visiting wrestlers. The inauguration of professional wrestling in St John’s is credited to Oppelt. He left Newfoundland for good in January 1913 with W.D. Reid’s automobile in order to join Reid in New York.72

shipwrecked visitors From the 1870s on, improved ocean travel and a growing number of German vessels choosing Newfoundland ports increased the number of German visitors. This influx can be seen in the published lists of hotel arrivals and ship passengers in and out of St John’s, whose German names become more numerous. Newspapers also report more frequently about German sailors roaming the city and getting into various kinds of trouble. In March 1906, for example, a local paper reported that “an old German sailor, drunk and shivering with the cold, approached Sgt Sheppard last night on Water Street and asked to be taken to the station, which was done. He had been paid off from his ship, had $33 in his pocket and feared if he wandered about it would be taken from him.”73 American and British steamers packed with German immigrants and German passenger steamers crossing the Atlantic occasionally stopped in St John’s for coal or supplies.

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There were also numerous shipwrecks involving German crews, German passengers, and German goods stranded in Newfoundland. A few of the shipwrecked Germans are known to have stayed. Some of the shipwrecks caused some minor diplomatic complications and hence additional official and semi-official contacts. In August 1869, for instance, the Hamburg-America Lines steamer Germania, sailing from New York to Hamburg with 270 passengers and 120 crew, struck the rocks near Trepassey and sank. All lives were saved, and arrangements to salvage the mail, part of the cargo, and an amount of gold bullion were brought to a successful conclusion. In October 1871 the brig Thomas Edward, bound from Hamburg to St John’s with a cargo of provisions, burned out totally off Cape St Francis.74 Other shipwrecked German vessels mentioned in the local press include the Lisette (1882), Oscar Wendt (1893), Helgoland (1900), and Assyrian (1901).75 The loss of the German packet steamer Herder off Cape Race in 1882, with 228 mostly German passengers on board, may serve as an example of the type of diplomatic incident that ensued and the length of time for settlement. The Herder case dragged on for 17 years until 1899. The ss Herder was bound from New York for Hamburg and ran ashore in heavy fog at Long Beach on a Sunday, 8 October 1882, three days after clearing New York. Since the weather was moderate and nearly all the steamer’s lifeboats were saved, all the passengers, most of their luggage, and the mails could be brought ashore to Mistaken Point on Monday. On Tuesday the Colonial steamer Neptune, hired by the German consul, took all the passengers, crew, and recovered luggage to St John’s. After the Herder had been abandoned and before the wreck commissioner or any other authority had had time to arrive, the crew of two fishing boats boarded the steamer twice during the night and took property from her. This property could not be recovered by police, despite complaints by the owners, by the time the Herder’s passengers continued their voyage one week later on the steamer Gallert, bound for England.76 Nine months later the German government, through its local consul, addressed the governor of Newfoundland to ascertain what steps had been taken to mete out justice to those who had stolen the unrecovered property. “I am sorry to say,” stated Imperial German consul Robert H. Prowse, that “on the part of the people of the neighbourhood [of the wrecked Herder] many depredations were committed especially in reference to passengers’ luggage which was unlawfully carried away and concealed and afterwards in part discovered by the authorities in possession of the plunderers ... Notwithstanding [their acknowledgment of guilt] no steps have been taken for their trial in the Supreme Court and all accused have been discharged from custody.”77

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The police magistrate’s report revealed that some of the stolen goods were only found after a fisherman tried to sell silver in St John’s and that nine offenders had to be released from police custody in January 1883 on application for a writ of habeas corpus. It was not until October that year that a police raid on the dwelling of Timothy Lawlor of Renews yielded the remainder of the missing property. The magistrate argued that with Newfoundland’s small and sparsely scattered population along thousands of miles of seaboard, “it is impossible for persons who live in older and more settled countries to appreciate the difficulties which we have to encounter in carrying out the law.” The report concluded that “notwithstanding these difficulties and notwithstanding also that not unfrequently vessels have been intentionally wrecked and the fishermen have been tempted to plunder by the culpable negligence of the ships’ officers I can state ... [that no] expense or trouble [has] been spared in prosecuting the offenders.” It was not until June 1899 that the German consul was able to acknowledge receipt of the $80 restitution money regarding loss of ss Herder.78 The unfortunate Herder affair, however, may well have been an isolated incident, at least as far as German visitors to the island during the period 1870–1914 were concerned. Most visitors would certainly have endorsed the magistrate’s assurance that Newfoundland fishermen “are most hospitable and kind to strangers and ... [their] gallantry in saving the lives of shipwrecked seamen has been frequently unrecognized and unrewarded.” In a reverse situation in December 1904, where the ss Köln of Germany rescued the shipwrecked crew of the abandoned Newfoundland schooner Harold at sea off the coast of Baltimore, the Newfoundland government presented substantial awards of money to the captain of the Köln, his third officer, and six of his men. The master and the seamen of the Harold were unanimous in expressing their admiration of the gallantry and judgment displayed by the rescuing party. The Newfoundlanders were rescued by a lifeboat from the Köln, manned by the third officer and six men, “who incurred very great risk by reason of the high cross seas and the difficulty of getting alongside the wrecked vessel.”79

attitudes towards germans and german connections The predominantly positive depiction of Germans in the local media reflected their contemporary image in Newfoundland. Germans and Germany were respected and well spoken of, often even admired, in turn-of-the century St John’s. It became not unusual for Newfoundlanders to study and travel in Germany and to publish accounts of their journeys to such attractions as the

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passion plays of Oberammergau in Bavaria.80 Newfoundland’s celebrated violinist Sybil Dunfield, née Johnson, liked her music studies in Leipzig from 1905 to 1909 so much that her sisters Estelle and Dorothy joined her there in 1906 and 1908.81 Was it coincidence that quite a few Newfoundlanders born at the time received conspicuously German first names, such as Agnes, Clara, Clothilde, Elsie, Gertrude, Alfred, Herbert, Herman, Otto, Karl (with the German “K” instead of the English “C”), Roland, and Walter? The city’s entertainment centre, the Nickel, celebrated so-called German festivals with evenings made up of a combination of instructive and amusing films about Germany. These included such features as the old custom of reaping and gleaning the harvest in the Rhineland, to be followed by detective and humorous shows and to be concluded with an inspection of the German warship Deutschland by Prince Henry of Prussia. This last was reviewed as a “striking film” whose conclusion “delighted all.”82 Among manifestations of a growing acceptance of German tastes may be also be included the brewing of Bavarian lager beer in St John’s. Its introduction in the early 1880s by the J. Lindberg Brewing Company on Signal Hill is most certainly related to the spreading popularity of lager beer in the United States and the aggressive marketing strategies of American breweries since the Civil War. There, the cool and light lager produced by bottom-floating yeast replaced virtually overnight the traditionally heavy, bitter, top-floating British ales and porter beers brewed at warm temperatures. In their production of lager, German Americans relied on state-of-the-art recipes and technologies developed in Germany and applied by skilled German brewers. The American Pabst and Busch brewing companies distributed lager across the continent, including Newfoundland. One of the malt beverages imported to Newfoundland in the 1870s was called “Bavarian bitter beer.”83 It is interesting to note that in Britain and Canada, in contrast to the United States, traditional English ales remained the preferred malt beverage.84 Whether this was the case in Newfoundland in the decades before 1914, however, cannot be determined. John Lindberg was the only local producer of lager at the time. Although he declared “Bavarian,” that is lager, to be his chief product, he also brewed English stouts and ales and imported Barr, Bass, Guinness, and McEwen beers. The brewery employed an average of twelve men and had an annual output of 8,000–9,000 gallons in the 1890s.85 In 1885 Lindberg – incorrectly characterized by posterity as “a German beer baron”86 – renamed his brewery the “Bavarian Brewery.” In 1895 it is listed as the “Bavarian Beer Depot” and its proprietor as a resident of Halifax. The brewery disappeared before World War i. In April 1883, in the famous Bavarian beer case of Sergeant M. Kearney versus John

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Lindberg, Bavarian (malt) beer was at first licensed, then exempted from licensing as a malt liquor, and finally by a special bill in the legislature again subjected to licensing. The publicity surrounding this case seems to have been the best promotion Bavarian beer could have wished for. Interestingly, in 1891 Lindberg’s beer was awarded a medal at the Paris exhibition.87 Even at Government House the German connection was undeniable. Henry Fitz-Hardinge Maxse, Newfoundland governor from 1881 to 1883, had a German wife and a reputation as a German scholar. He felt more at home in the cultured climate of Germany than in either England or Newfoundland. His devotion to Germany, where he visited frequently, found literary expression in his publication of a translation of Bismarck’s letters to his family and his subsequent appointment as governor of Heligoland. From 1886 to 1887 Newfoundland even had a German-born governor: Sir George William Des Voeux, a native of Baden, had left Germany when he was five years old in 1841.88 Judging by press reports, visits by German naval ships in 1903 and 1907 were welcome. In August 1903 Commander Frantzen of the German gunboat Panther, bound from Halifax to Newfoundland, requested permission to practise gunnery outside St John’s harbour. Governor Cavendish Boyle granted the request.89 Before visiting several Newfoundland south coast ports and engaging in target practice off Bay Roberts, the Panther anchored in St John’s harbour on 1 August 1903 for almost two weeks. From their first day on land the crew drew considerable attention for their fluency in English and their appearance. The “bluejackets,” noted the Evening Herald, “are a smart looking set of men and their neat uniforms ... were much admired by citizens.”90 At the request of the city council and the mayor of St John’s, the Panther’s band treated the local population to several concerts. On the second day of the ship’s stay, the band made the Mount Cashel garden party a “big success” by agreeing to play from four o’clock on through the evening. “Thousands,” claimed the Evening Herald, “fully enjoyed themselves.” The next day the Panther’s band “delighted hundreds along the waterfront” as it played a choice selection of airs prior to and after a service held on board. The German sailors were also invited to participate in the annual Regatta three days later. Their boat, the Blue Peter, disappointed at the rehearsals but “put up an excellent race” on Regatta day and almost took second place. Their band was all the more appreciated. The Evening Herald was elated that “thro the kindness of the commander of S.M.S. Panther the German band was in attendance at the Regatta yesterday and played thro the afternoon. Pres. Mare made a pleasing address to

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them, thanking all for their kindness and expressing the committee’s pleasure at the good feeling and relationship existing between England and Germany. The band showed their appreciation by playing ‘God Save the King,’ and the German Imperial Anthem.”91 Another German warship, the Bremen, visited St John’s from 5 to 7 August 1907. “She is a pretty ship, painted white, and has three funnels,” observed the Evening Herald. She was at the Jamestown Exhibition and, on the way from America, called at St Pierre. Experiencing much the same welcome as the Panther four years earlier, the Bremen’s captain “expressed himself as very greatly pleased with the attention bestowed on himself and his officers.” Soon after entering and anchoring off Jobs, the Bremen saluted the port with twenty-one guns. Then the leading representatives of the German community were seen calling on the ship. First German consul Prowse went on board and was honoured with a salute when he left. Then Robert von Stein approached Captain Alberts, requesting permission for his sailors to compete in the Regatta races. He left with the promise that a team would go to Quidi Vidi Lake for practice the same afternoon. The next day W.D. Reid’s German chauffeur, Otto Oppelt, turned up to give a number of the warship’s German sailors a ride in Reid’s Fiat touring car. The local press reported that “they were driven countrywards and were delighted with the scenery.” During the entire presence of the Bremen in St John’s harbour, the flag of Germany flew over the Prowse’s residence and his office on Queen Street. The warship’s visit ended with a dinner at Government House attended by six local dignitaries in honour of Captain Alberts and three of his officers. The favour was returned with a dinner on board the Bremen in honour of Governor MacGregor. The day before the ship’s departure, its band played at a festival celebrating the anniversary of the king’s coronation.92 The Reid Newfoundland Company provided Captain Alberts with a pilot for the southern part of the Labrador coast to guide the sms Bremen to a six-day visit in Nain, chief station of the Moravian mission and seat of an Imperial German consulate since 1880 (see chapter 3).93 The Evening Herald informed its readers that the event was well received by everyone involved. The captain and officers had the pleasure of shooting two fine black bears, the sailors held a picnic at Nain at which a large number of Inuit were present and the German band “rendered some very fine pieces of music,” and on Sunday the missionaries held a service on board with “quite a crowd” attending. Captain Jacob Kean, who piloted the Bremen from St John’s to Nain and back to Battle Harbour, remarked that he had a very good time and wished that the trip had lasted longer.94 Generally speaking, Newfoundlanders looked upon the attitudes, habits,

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and customs of Germans with a mixture of critical curiosity and admiration and condemned these German ways only when they were in conflict with ingrained British and Irish customs. Probably in reaction to the frequency with which the unintelligible idiom of German was heard by 1895, the following gag made the rounds in St John’s: “The Rev. Mr. Spurgeon said to a friend one day. ‘Do you know how the German language originated?’ ‘No,’ was the reply. ‘Well,’ said the preacher, ‘I do.’ There were two workmen at the tower of Babel, one standing below the other. The uppermost one accidentally threw some mortar from his trowel into the mouth of the lower one, and he began to sputter with the mortar in his mouth. The sound is known as German.”95 Little evidence exists that even on the eve of World War i Germans encountered the kind of anti-foreign sentiment directed against Poles,96 Chinese, Jews, Maronites, and Syrians (lumped together as “Assyrians”) in Newfoundland at the time.97 Newfoundland’s educated elite, however, also tended to view German Jews and some German practices through contemporary British eyes. Judge and historian Daniel Woodley Prowse, brother of the German consul, exemplified this mindset. In a well-publicized court case of November 1895 dealing with the complaint of a German sailor on an English schooner against his Irish mate for alleged incompetency and forgery of his certificate, Judge Prowse gave the German sailor the following “tongue lashing”: “You know I have no sympathy with you. Here are you, a German from Hamburg, from which everything is adulterated, finding fault with a full-blooded Irishman, who is mate on board a British ship ... You will go if the captain will have you, but I wouldn’t give such a miserable specimen of a Hamburg Jew as you are, house room. Go on board or go to jail.”98 In his much-acclaimed History of Newfoundland, published in 1895, Prowse glorifies Newfoundland’s British colonial past. Apart from praising the Moravians’ labours in Labrador, he does not have much to say about Germans. But he repeats his characterization of Hamburg as “the greatest factory of adulterated goods in the world” where imported Newfoundland seal oil was allegedly “converted by German science and dexterity into the finest quality of ‘Pure Codliver Oil’ [emphasis in the original].”99 This assertion could be read as a compliment to German science. More likely, however, the allegation of Germany as a producer of adulterated goods reflected the contemporary stock-in-trade British put-down of Germany’s growing competition on the British-dominated world market. In Britain, resentment that the competition from cheap and shoddy German produce was “unfairly” impairing British trade on the world markets led in 1887 to the Merchandise Marks Act, or the “Made in Germany” measure. This law compelled German manufacturers to identify the origin of their (presumably inferior) wares.100 Simi-

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larly, Prowse’s antipathy for Jews reflects borrowed Old World anti-Semitism, since by September 1895 there were virtually no Jews in Newfoundland.101 While Jews, Chinese, and “Assyrians” were subjected to frequent vitriolic sneers and ridicule from the day the first few began to arrive in the 1890s, Germans in Newfoundland benefited from Britain’s (grudging) admiration of Bismarck’s and the young Kaiser William’s Germany, as well the close family ties between the German and British royal houses. Moreover, German efficiency and progressiveness were often upheld as models by Newfoundlanders. In July 1907, for example, a prominent local physician called on the Newfoundland government to examine state-of-the-art German hospitals as a yardstick for remodelling the St John’s General Hospital. “While we cannot hope to emulate the Germans,” L.E. Keegan wrote in a long letter to the editor, such a study “may stimulate us to accomplish more than we have heretofore.”102 Despite, or rather because of, the rather positive attitude towards Germans, there is little evidence beyond personal contacts of any organized German community life in pre–World War i St John’s comparable to that of the Chinese and Jewish communities. The diversity of the Germans’ geographical backgrounds, which included several European and North American countries, was compounded by wide differences in social class. Assimilation pressures and temptations constituted a significant factor contributing to the absence of a collective desire to preserve cultural values and ethnic identity, especially in view of the widespread acceptance of north and west Europeans as equals. These pressures can be presumed, for example, from the known early and drastic instances of name changes. They may be attributable to the ethnic homogeneity and rural social structure of the relatively small resident population, which was 99 per cent native-born in 1911. “There is no colony belonging to the British Empire,” wrote the Reverend Philip Tocque about late nineteenth-century Newfoundland, “where influence and name tend so much to form caste in society, and where it is more regarded than in St. John’s.”103 In this type of society, where everyone is acquainted with or related to everyone else, outsiders are bound to stick out and sometimes be considered with suspicion. Non-British immigrants from western, northern and central Europe who intended to remain in Newfoundland have responded to these pressures, then and now, with an accelerated rate of assimilation in comparison with immigrants in Canada and the United States, an option that was, however, not so easily available to visible minorities. The alternative to assimilation has been, of course, to leave Newfoundland, and this is exactly what a high percentage of non-British (and British) migrants have always done.

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5 “Few of civilization’s blessings”

Images, Impressions, and Perceptions In St. John’s the stores are poorly furnished, the streets are dirty, the houses rather shabby; modern civilization has not progressed to the point where one could eat a good meal or sleep in a clean bed. Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg, 1888

Chapters 3 and 4 have shown how the nineteenth-century economic, social, and political transformations of Germany and Newfoundland generated a new spectrum of linkages between the two countries. As a result, people of German-speaking background in increasing numbers not only ended up as settlers in Newfoundland but also travelled to the colony for other reasons, such as tourism, science, or commerce. Some of these visitors put their impressions on paper and published them later in German-language books, journals, and periodicals. Their amazingly wide-ranging observations have discovered, so to speak, this part of the world for the German reading public. Their publications reveal how contemporary German eyes perceived the colony, what aspects interested Germans in particular, and what kind of images of Newfoundland and Labrador were transmitted to the German reading public at the time. These reports from German tourists, scientists, and missionaries who came to see Newfoundland or met Newfoundlanders during the period 1870–1914 constitute, apart from Moravians’ comments and an anonymous 1861 account of the Labrador seal hunt pursued annually by some four hundred Newfoundland ships,1 the earliest written impressions of life and conditions on the island from a German visitor’s perspective. Interestingly, the images these first-hand accounts project are highly contradictory, depending on whether the focus is on the promise of Newfoundland’s unexplored resources and opportunities or on the culture and lifestyle of the resident population.

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early impressions of the newfoundland fishery Not surprisingly, it was the observation of fishing operations on the Grand Banks that elicited the first detailed comments on Newfoundland from a German visitor. His name was Theodor Anton Verkrüzen, a natural historian with special interests in the fishery and malacology. Originally motivated by the desire to find exotic specimens of mollusks,2 he spent three summers in Newfoundland, where he became increasingly interested in all aspects of the fishery. After a first visit in 1876, he came to St John’s a second time in the summer of 1880 to study the bank fishery. The observations he published form a mine of information on what intrigued a German at that time about Newfoundland’s fishery, marine biology, and geography. In his detailed reports on the fishery, Verkrüzen compared and contrasted the bank fishery, the traditional shore and seal fisheries, and their catching and curing methods. Starting with the traditional shore fishery, Verkrüzen noted that it was the annual arrival in June of the caplin, followed by the squid, that usually marked the beginning of the cod season which was the most profitable of all the fisheries. In 1880 he estimated the annual value of all branches of the cod fishery at $6.4 million and the annual seal hunt at $1.6 million. Other species of fish were less profitable but nonetheless useful. While the squid served as cod bait, the fast-spoiling masses of caplin were good only as fertilizer and were sold to farmers for $1 a truckload. The caplin were harvested from beaches with small, round hand nets, while the squid were retrieved from boats with long sticks equipped with a hook in front and strange-looking fishing rods. Verkrüzen observed a large number of boats in Petty Harbour engaged in this operation. On his visit in 1880, he was invited to participate in the bank fishery on one of the first three boats equipped by St John’s merchants for that purpose. They told him that after the English, French, and Americans had pursued this fishery on a large scale for some time, it was now the Newfoundlanders’ turn – they were going to send fifty schooners in 1881 and up the number soon to a hundred schooners. Equipping a large ship for the bank fishery was expensive and could be funded only by rich merchants, who had hitherto invested their capital in the seal hunt. The local merchants got started in 1880 with the Newfoundland government’s offer of a premium, such as the French government had always been paying to its bank fishermen. To get a berth on one of these three boats, Verkrüzen had to travel to a far-away outport, where the captain was busy catching

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herring for bait. The 72–ton schooner with a crew of twelve, plus the captain and a cook, took twenty-seven hours to reach its destination. The account that Verkrüzen gave of the six days of bank fishing on his dirty, wet schooner omitted nothing. He described how six dories, manned by two seamen each, fanned out from the schooner with six trawls each containing 1,200 lines with hooks; how baits were cut and attached to each line; how a buoy was fastened to the end of each line; how the dories went back and forth from the end of the line to the ship every three hours bringing fish; how the ship’s captain and cook had to fire shots and blow the horn to help their dories find the way in perilously thick fog; and how the division of labour for cleaning fish on board was organized – four men in four distinct operations beheaded, gutted, deboned, and salted. Verkrüzen reported admiringly in meticulous detail how the entire crew, while deprived of any and all comfort, worked for five days at a stretch on their boat, hauling in, gutting, and salting the catch with incredible dedication, coordination, and skill. With this work they managed to harvest 7,000 cod, that is, 180 quintals, many weighing twenty to thirty-five pounds each. He also related how the fish was dried and profitably sold. The more than three hundred ships that visited the banks each summer, according to Verkrüzen, included Newfoundland schooners that made the trip eight times between the end of April and the end of August. Each of them harvested some 50,000 cod a time at a value of $1.3 million per trip. To his regret, Germany had not participated in this lucrative enterprise; so he offered his connections and knowledge to start such an undertaking. Suggesting that one ship could easily be fitted out for £1,500, he hoped that his report would trigger an initiative from his homeland.3 The equipment of ships for the bank fishery, Verkrüzen explained, was in part also a response to the declining seal fishery. He justified the seal hunt as an important income source at a time of the year when neither agriculture nor fishing could provide sustenance or work. When the sealing steamers prepared for their annual hunt in March, crowds of impatient Newfoundlanders would besiege the offices of the ship-owning merchants to acquire a spot “for the ice,” Verkrüzen observed. The sealers would pay a small fee for accommodation on board and a meagre diet. Once they reached the seals, they would gorge themselves on seal heart, liver, and flippers, and would string the kidneys like a rosary around their belt so they could eat them raw on the ice. This delicacy was supposedly very healthy and the best prevention against scurvy. On sailboats sealers used to get half the proceeds, while on the steamers, only one-third of the total catch. Yet they preferred the latter because the hunt on steamers was shorter and

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associated with more comfort, less stress, less danger, and equally high profits. Verkrüzen’s observations, while exuding a remarkable fascination for the all aspects of the fishery, showed little moral compunction for the fate of the seals, whose oil was valued for lamps in mines, in lighthouses, and as lubricant for machines.4 Eight years later another German tourist, geographer and travel journalist Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg (see also the next section), also recorded fairly detailed impressions of the Newfoundland bank fishery and seal hunt. By the time of his visit in 1887, the Newfoundland fishing fleet had grown to hundreds of ships manned by some 10,000 fishermen, while the French fleet, based at St Pierre, counted only 6,000–8,000 men. Between these two fleets he observed a deep-seated animosity causing, in recent times, serious English-French tensions over subsidies and bait. The French government policy of subsidizing its Newfoundland bank fishery at no less than 72 per cent of its value had resulted in loss of market share in Europe and South America for the more expensive Newfoundland dried cod. In return, the Newfoundland government prohibited the sale of fresh bait to the French; however, the British government wanting to maintain its good relations with France, refused to ratify the prohibition. At issue was the squid fishery, an important industry in Newfoundland. Hesse-Wartegg observed how squid was jigged with a long red pole full of protruding pointed nails. A twisting motion under the water hooked the squid on the nails, and the skilful fishermen avoided having their clothes ruined from the water and dark ink sprays of the squid. The next-preferred cod bait was caplin, millions of which were washed ashore at the end of June and were also used as garden fertilizer. Herring, which appeared in the fall, was also a favourite bait. Loaded with such bait, the fishermen sailed southward to the banks. The bank fishing that Hesse-Wartegg witnessed was arduous. First of all, the fishermen had to sacrifice their night’s sleep because bait attracted the cod at dusk, night, or dawn. The line also had to be lowered to a depth of 60 metres near the sea bottom and then hauled up again, often with only one fish on the line. Among the occupational hazards were chafed and bleeding hands, prone to infection when in contact with bait, not to speak of storms, rain, fog, and collisions with other boats. On the banks, cod was also fished with large nets reaching to the ocean floor, especially where masses of squid or bait fish abounded. Back on land, Hesse-Wartegg described how a four-man team prepared the fish for curing: the first one sliced the fish open, the second decapitated it and removed the entrails, the third adroitly removed the backbone, and

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the fourth salted the two fish halves. Then the fish was spread out to dry on so-called flakes covered with boughs. For two to three weeks the fish had to be constantly watched, turned, and covered up in piles by night and in rainy weather. They were considered properly cured when dried out, hard on both sides, white, and without any residue of salt crystals. When marketing their catch, the fishermen were often cheated by the merchant’s practice of reimbursing them with overpriced but necessary consumer articles. By January they were usually in debt again and had to live off advances on their next catch from the merchant. This “cruel” form of enslavement by the St John’s shipowners and merchant princes, HesseWartegg taunted, was known as “the truck system.” With regard to the seal hunt, Hesse-Wartegg articulated an attitude that has endured in continental Europe to the present. He conceded that for the 10,000 sealers, surviving under the most pitiful and miserable circumstances on nothing but fish and pork fat all winter in inadequately built and barely heated shacks, the seal hunt was an economic necessity. He grudgingly acknowledged the sealers’ fearlessness, dedication, and dexterity on the icefields. But Hesse-Wartegg was repelled by the bloody mass slaughter on the ice. His real sympathy was clearly with the thousands of helpless seals he saw skinned alive and wriggling around for hours naked, a “horrible view.” Deprived of their young ones, the remaining seal herd was portrayed as limping back slowly into the water, “shedding tears like humans.” With up to half a million seal pelts being harvested annually, Hesse-Wartegg warned of the extinction of the seal.5 Reports such as Verkrüzen’s and Hesse-Wartegg’s were indicative of a new German interest in the Newfoundland fishery. This may also have inspired German historical scholarship to re-examine the origins of the Newfoundland fishery. In an article published in 1883 and titled “The fishing of the Gascons and the discovery of Newfoundland,” Eugen Gelcich questioned widely held beliefs (refuted by Selma Barkam in 1978), that explorers sent out by the English crown and English merchants in the sixteenth century pioneered the cod fishery on the Grand Banks, and in the process discovered Newfoundland. Based on a review of available Spanish-language sources, Gelcich set out to corroborate the stubbornly surviving local saga that Basque seafarers from Gascony were the first to reach Newfoundland and Labrador, either in pursuit of whales or by being blown off course. Whaling on the Cantabrian coast was first documented in 1237, and in a 1371 petition it was referred to as having been pursued “since times immemorial.” Experienced and skilful shipbuilders and seafarers since the thirteenth century, the Gascons had traded by sea with northern Europeans

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since the Middle Ages. Although their cod trade could be traced to 1351, Gelcich believed that the cod fishery developed later than whaling. Noticing the regular arrival of whales in the Bay of Biscay in the fall and their departure in the spring, Gascon whalers had developed a tradition of following them to their feeding places off Newfoundland. There the whalers discovered the abundance of cod. According to two of Gelcich’s sources, Gascons reached Newfoundland a century before Columbus started on his voyage. Indeed, according to Gelcich, Columbus likely learned about the new continent from a Biscayan who had lived in Newfoundland and believed it to be the land of the Tartars. Portuguese sources also confirmed that Newfoundland was known as early as 1463 and that by 1500 Portuguese fishermen were organizing annual convoys of some sixty ships to Newfoundland. Basque seafarers from Gascony, also known as busy maritime traders, fished off the coast of Ireland and imported whale oil, blubber, and cod. Gelcich had little reason to doubt that they also pioneered whaling and cod fishing in the waters surrounding Newfoundland well before the arrival of the English.6

portrayals of st john’s and outport living conditions before 1914 The enthusiasm Verkrüzen showed for the fishery was not quite as evident in his perceptions of the island. He noted that the interior was an inaccessible wilderness with rocky, barren terrain alternating with marshes and woodland. The only inhabited areas were coastal districts settled by English, Irish, and Scots. St John’s made a gloomy impression on him, in part because of the frequent fog and rain and the damp, cold climate, in part because of the shoddily built wooden houses lacking the welcoming appearance of their Norwegian counterparts. Only Water Street had stone and brick buildings. Although on the same latitude as southern Germany, Newfoundland had a climate more like Norway’s. Verkrüzen portrayed the winters as long and rough, and the ground snow-covered from November to April. June brought the only month of spring and August an unbearable heat. “I experienced there some truly tropical days,” Verkrüzen recalled. And, he added, the weather sometimes suddenly changed from burning heat to freezing wind, with the temperature dropping by twenty degrees Fahrenheit. The disappearance of the original Native population, the Beothuks, Verkrüzen saw as the outcome of a gradually evolving, tragic three-way conflict over the land between the Beothuks, the white settlers (who had initially cultivated friendly relations with the Beothuks), and the Mi’kmaqs

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(Micmacs), who, coming from Acadia, had been supplied with guns by the French. In the extinction of the Beothuks, he assigned the French the most fateful role: “not only did they shoot them down like wild animals wherever they saw them, but they even set a price on the head of each red Indian, which accelerated their destruction by the Micmacs.” The remaining Mi’kmaqs who lived on the west coast reminded him of their mainland fellow aboriginals – they participated in the shore fishery, roamed the wooded interior, and had generally proven to be decent people.7 The culture and fate of the Beothuks, it should be noted, remained a topic of special interest among German scholars and travel writers. In 1894 geographer M. Klittke reviewed the historical evidence and state of research. He concluded that the French, in concert with the Mi’kmaqs, trappers, and local fishermen, from their first contacts, “hunted these [Native people] like game” and, aided by the restrictive seclusion of the Beothuks’ island habitat, “simply exterminated them like a harmful pest.”8 The island’s economic backwardness in relation to other British colonies Verkrüzen attributed to the enforcement of oppressive laws by the imperial power until sixty-five years earlier. Imposed in order to enrich a few English merchants by guaranteeing them a monopoly over the Newfoundland fishery, these laws were comparable to the monopoly enjoyed by the Copenhagen merchants, “who sucked the blood out of the poor Icelanders.” As a result, the settlers were treated as redundant and undesirable, and the country’s colonization and development were prevented. This century was the first to see population growth and some industrial development. In 1880 Verkrüzen knew of mineral deposits existing only in the area of Notre Dame Bay and Exploits Archipelago, and he knew about the mining near Tilt Cove and Betts Cove. But the future of the country looked bright to him. The first transatlantic cable had been landed in Trinity Bay in 1858, and a contract was signed in 1880 for the construction of a railway line from St John’s to the mining region of Notre Dame Bay. The growing population was no longer able to depend on the unreliable inshore fishery, but the successful development of agriculture, industry, and mining, aided by a network of railways, was to Verkrüzen “only a question of the not very distant future.”9 Quite a different image of Newfoundland was conveyed to the German reading public by Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg (1851–1918), a popular Viennese-born travel author who has left insightful descriptions to posterity of his visits to the Americas and major Asian countries. The highly decorated scion of the Austrian nobility, he was a distinguished member of eleven international geographic societies and learned institutions. His judgment

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may appear harsh and condescending today, but his belief in the superiority of European civilization was widely shared among his contemporaries. In a hundred years, Hesse-Wartegg predicted, people would look at his impressions with the same amazement with which he was reading the century-old English and French chronicles of North America’s discovery by Leif Eirikson and the voyages of John Cabot.10 Hesse-Wartegg visited St John’s in 1887 on the return from his trip to Canada. His book, entitled (in translation) “Canada and Newfoundland, according to my own travels and observations,” was published in 1888 by the reputable Herder publishing house in Freiburg, Germany. It appeared as part of the popular German series “Illustrated Library of the Study of Lands and Peoples.” The tenor of Hesse-Wartegg’s impressions is struck in the first paragraph of his account of the island and its fishery. Newfoundland, he suggests, though England’s oldest colony and geographically closest to the home country, is so unknown and abandoned that it might have been forgotten long ago had not a dog breed spread its name! Ironically, the Newfoundland dog was barely known on the island, and the few specimens existing there had been imported from England. Hesse-Wartegg’s highly critical and at times cynical comments harp on six themes – the horrors of the fog for travellers along the south coast, the poverty of the fishermen and misery of their existence, the shabbiness and backwardness of St John’s, the unbearable climate, the monotony and toil of the cod economy, and the cruelty of the seal hunt. Much of his information, Hesse-Wartegg concedes, was derived from English naval officers in St John’s. Wartegg called his five-day voyage in heavy fog around Cape Race one of the most frightful experiences of his life. Why nobody had hit upon the idea of building a railway from St John’s across the island, in order to avoid the dangerous Newfoundland fogs and shorten the ocean passage from Europe to North America by four to five days, was beyond his comprehension. Such a railway would open up the country and make St John’s a centre of the transatlantic passenger traffic. The sight of the city, he thought, was beautiful only from a distance. There, at the end of the harbour, the stacked terraces of wooden fish flakes formed the Newfoundland counterpart to the hanging gardens of Semiramis. The place of the latter’s fragrant flowers, however, had been taken by the strong and penetrating smell of thousands upon thousands of codfish. In the capital city “the stores are poorly furnished, the streets are dirty, the houses rather shabby; modern civilization has not progressed to the point where one could eat a good meal or sleep in a clean bed in St John’s.” Only the few families of the fishocracy, living in their own district near the

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cathedral, endeavoured with their hospitality and kindness to leave the foreign visitor with a more favourable impression of their homeland. Hesse-Wartegg attributed the city’s backwardness primarily to its great seclusion from the world. The bimonthly arrival of the postal steamer excited the entire city population and drew them to the harbour, where, as Wartegg claimed to have experienced, “we few arrivals were gazed at like some exotic animals” (201–2). For Hesse-Wartegg, harsh climatic conditions aggravated the effects of isolation. St John’s was “wrapped for almost the entire year in thick, cold fog. If is doesn’t rain here then it snows.” In the long winters even in St John’s, “the seat of all of Newfoundland’s small amount of high culture,” he likened life to a vegetable that was spiced with neither theatre nor music, nor any intellectual and social entertainment other than card playing. No wonder, he mocked, did Newfoundland’s ladies have a reputation as the best poker players in North America. By 10 p.m. he saw the silence of a graveyard settling over the town, “only to be disturbed by the night watchman who, a relic of bygone centuries, roams the streets with hellebarde and horn without being able to exercise any of the duties of his occupation other than calling out the hours” (203). The small Twillingate Island, Hesse-Wartegg found out, was as also known as “stink island.” Because of the extensive application of rotten fish as the only fertilizer available for the island’s barren ground, ships could smell the stench up to seven kilometres from the coast. Hesse-Wartegg wanted to leave to his readers’ imagination what life was like for the people in these “wretched” fishing villages. Three-quarters of the fishermen passed their lives in misery and ignorance. Fish and fishing so dominated every facet of life that they had become the people’s curse. Having forgotten the art of farming and animal husbandry, the people had become victims of the unreliable fishery and of the fish merchants. They were no better off than indentured servants or American blacks. In their miserable small settlements, lacking judges, magistrates, priests, or doctors, they somehow managed to eke out a living. While Hesse-Wartegg was visiting some of the outports regularly on board a British naval vessel, a British Captain Kennedy convinced him that the fishermen’s health problems were largely the result of insufficient clothing and nourishment (204). “In many parts of Newfoundland numerous people starve during the winter,” Hesse-Wartegg quoted Kennedy, “although in the far-away capital such facts are laughed off as exaggerations.” On his tours around the island Kennedy was reported to have seen misery that made him “sick” and “ashamed” to acknowledge these creatures, rotting in the most abject

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squalor, as subjects of the queen and compatriots of the British. As long as the population depended entirely on fishing, Hesse-Wartegg saw “little hope for improvement. The people ought to be taught sheep raising, the women spinning and weaving so that, at least during the winter months, they could make their own clothes and keep their children from running around half naked during the harshest seasons.” In every settlement he visited, almost the entire population badgered the doctor for treatment and medicine when most of their problems were actually caused, he believed, by a lack of proper clothing and sustenance (205). Hesse-Wartegg did not have much faith in the future of the island’s barren interior, where only one-tenth was cultivable. But the cultivation of even that one-tenth would be far off, he warned, based on his encounter with the wilderness not far from St John’s. There, “clouds of mosquitos descended upon his party,” so that he had to beat a hasty retreat covered with sores everywhere. “Throughout the summer from June to October mosquitos are the absolute masters of the island.” In nice weather residents who lived away from the coast had to stay indoors. Agriculture was possible only when heavy rains and strong winds chased the mosquitos away. As to the trans-insular railway that was supposed to open up the interior, the company went bankrupt after having built 130 kilometres although the government had given it all the credit and land it had wanted. To be sure, Hesse-Wartegg scoffed, such a railway would have numerous advantages and benefits, but this was all “pie in the sky” (206). That, in view of such conditions, anyone in Britain would dare to promote European emigration to Newfoundland was simply preposterous to Hesse-Wartegg. He urged these efforts to be redirected to publicizing the misfortune afflicting the people wasting away on the island’s coast. He found it incredible that the conditions he experienced would endure for centuries without attracting any public attention. “An England which was building hospitals for dogs and opening retirement homes for horses taken out of service would no doubt contribute its share to ameliorate this situation of the most luckless of Her Majesty’s subjects.” The English consumers of codfish should inform themselves about Newfoundland’s woes, he urged.11 In addition to Verkrüzen’s and Hesse-Wartegg’s accounts, German geograpers Emil Deckert (1904) and A. Oppel (1906) published brief sections on Newfoundland in their textbooks.12 When or whether they visited the island is not known. Verkrüzen’s and Hesse-Wartegg’s recorded impressions may be considered as representing the two basic types of images that Newfoundland has evoked among German observers. These two conflict-

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ing kinds of experiences recur among later visitors, in subsequent encounters, and in the responses of immigrants. Moravian missionaries, incidentally, had similar impressions of late nineteenth-century St John’s to those of Hesse-Wartegg. Some of these derived from the warning of Newfoundland fishermen visiting Labrador that those caring for their personal safety were ill-advised to be on the streets of St John’s by night.13 Missionary Adolf Hermann Jannasch had very negative impressions of St John’s when he visited as the Labrador mission’s representative in 1891 and in 1903. His first shock came upon his arrival – when climbing into his carriage, he had to be wrapped in a blanket from tip to toe for protection from the muck of the neglected city with no paved streets. Overall, he felt St John’s benefited from few of civilization’s blessings. While the heads of the local churches and government were all eager to hear of the Moravians’ work, the governor’s and prime minister’s promises to remedy identified abuses remained empty words. In his dealing with authorities, his impression was that of hopeless rot. “No wonder the forestry and fishery on the Labrador coast were in such a neglected condition.”14

moravian encounters with newfoundland fishermen Jannasch’s critical perceptions of life in St John’s may have been preconditioned by the missionaries’ struggle to protect their Inuit converts from the corrupting influences of Newfoundlanders fishing off the northern Labrador coast during the summer months. Starting in 1860, Moravian missionaries recorded rapidly increasing numbers of Newfoundland fishing schooners appearing in the area around Hopedale: twenty-five in 1865, two hundred in 1868,five hundred to six hundred in 1869, eight hundred in 1879, and some three thousand in 1901. Each schooner had a crew of twelve to fourteen. This translated into around forty thousand fishermen descending upon the coastal districts of the Labrador Inuit in 1901. A. von Dewitz, director of the Moravian mission school at Niesky, Germany, gave vivid expression to the detrimental influence these fishermen had on the Labrador mission and how the Moravians tackled the problem. In his booklet An der Küste Labradors (On the coast of Labrador), published in 1881 in German-speaking Europe to publicize the Moravians’ cultural work, he attributed the severe decline of the Inuit population on the Labrador coast in part to the sudden appearance of large flotillas of fishing schooners, mainly from Newfoundland. Not only did these cause a noticeable decline in the cod catch for the Inuit, but they were

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also “endowed with minimal religious and moral insight, often very ignorant, to the extent that many of them cannot even read. These poor people pursue their occupation at sea year after year for six or more months, away from home and church. No wonder, if even the better elements among them succumb spiritually to the bad influences and temptations around them. And for seamen such temptations are never lacking anywhere, – especially not here, where among the immigrant population many a truly ‘lost son’ can be found, who enjoys the vices of this world and seeks to indulge in sin far away from home.” “How much misery of this kind the white man had brought into the country is beyond belief,” Dewitz lamented. “The Inuit would have been destroyed long ago without the steady counter-acting work of the mission.”15 The booklet, which was based on information supplied by Labrador missionaries Friedrich Rinderknecht (1865–92) and Heinrich Ritter (1874–83), characterized these fishermen as “Christians by name,” which, however, was no guarantee against “godlessness, ignorance, and brutishness.” To be sure, there were exceptions of God-fearing seamen, the booklet conceded, but more often than not the heart of the missionaries trembled at the approach of these illiterate and drunk “guests” romping about and causing such noisy disturbances that the missionaries had to worry about their mission-house windows. Some entered the Moravian church, where they deliberately spat, ate, and disrupted the service. In particular, brandy consumption and immoral behaviour were the two vices the missionaries feared could seduce even Christianized Inuit.16 Dewitz relates how initially Hopedale’s German-born missionaries could not even communicate with these seamen because of insufficient knowledge of English. In 1870, therefore, one missionary fluent in English, the Irishborn James O’Hara, was sent to Hopedale specifically to visit the schooners and invite their crews to special Moravian church services in English. At first these endeavours were rewarded with much indifference, derision, and abuse, but after a few years the services became known and seamen started coming on their own. The Moravians introduced a special Hymnbook for Visitors, held Methodist “prayer meetings after their own fashion,” and sold increasing quantities of religious literature. In 1879–80, Dewitz summed up, seamen finally filled the three-hundred-seat Hopedale church to capacity.

game hunting in the interior German tourists’ fascination with the North American wilderness is well known. The Newfoundland interior, however, did not became a favourite

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destination for tourists until the decades before World War i, and then mainly for big-game hunters from the North American mainland. In September 1900 German travel writer and explorer Paul Niedieck participated in such a hunting excursion, and he has left a published record of his experiences. It forms a chapter in his book With Rifle in Five Continents (1905), which was immensely popular. The book appeared in its fifth German edition in 1927 and had already been translated into English in 1909.17 Niedieck’s destination was Red Indian Lake. His trip by train from New York to Boston and from there to North Sydney, Nova Scotia, took four days and four nights. He had been enticed to come by an American acquaintance who offered to guide him to these hunting grounds. Despite Newfoundland’s discovery ages earlier, it had remained a tabula rasa for European tourists, he explained by way of introduction. “I have not myself, for instance, met a single living soul who has seen the country. Simply as an explorer I should never have felt any inducement to visit this region of the Far North, known only by name from the dogs which are called after it, and from the banks which the boats pass as they go to and from Europe.” Niedieck crossed by boat from North Sydney to Port aux Basques, Newfoundland, where the customs authorities let everything through without question, “baggage, guns, ammunition, and provisions. I opened nothing, and I had no duty to pay.” Port aux Basques struck him as a “charming little town, which, with its rocky bay and general air of peacefulness, recalls vivid memories of New Zealand.” The purchase of a third-class hunting licence for £16 entitled Niedieck to kill five male and two female caribou. He then went by train to Winter Station, a district the caribou pass through every fall on their way from their summer places in the North. The train’s eight-hour delay brought him to his destination on 1 October in a “bitterly cold” night at 2 a.m. Winter Station turned out to consist of nothing more than “a tiny log hut, in which there are but two pieces of furniture, the stationmaster’s bed and a telegraphic apparatus.” The stationmaster was the only person living there. For Niedieck’s accommodation, a tent was pitched nearby. Unfortunately, the tent-stove’s pipe had burned a hole several feet in diameter in the tent. As a result, he froze all night while counting the stars overhead. The next day he learned from his Newfoundland guide that, since they were not allowed to hunt at the pre-selected spot, they had to take the freight train to Howley, forty-four miles west of Winter. The train was due at 12:30 p.m. but did not arrive until 4 p.m., so that they did not reach their destination until 9 p.m. and needed until 11 p.m. to put up their tent “in the free realm of nature.” In the following days they took up positions

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at the caribou crossings, but found to their disappointment many other hunters around them. They were also bedevilled by heavy rains, hard frosts, and blackflies. These “abominable insects” were a “veritable torment” to Niedieck. “You cannot keep them off except by lighting a little fire and letting the smoke of it blow in your face. Every country has some curse from which the hunter has to suffer – in India it is the ant, in Africa the mosquito, and here flies. These last evil insects can actually destroy the whole of one’s pleasure in hunting.” To get away from the “many guns in our neighbourhood” and ahead of the fast-moving caribou, the local guide made his tourist hunters run for a mile and a quarter, sometimes over tree trunks and stones, sometimes “performing balancing feats on the slippery pine trunks, sometimes going between them either to fall in the quagmire below or spike himself on a sharp fir branch.” To their “bitter disappointment,” Niedieck and his American acquaintance managed to kill only nine of the twenty-one caribou to which their hunting licences entitled them, and only one had fairly good antlers. But they comforted themselves with the knowledge that others who had pitched their camps along the railway line fared no better, and some of them had actually left empty-handed.18

scientists experience labrador Public awareness of Labrador in German-speaking Europe originated with nineteenth-century Moravian accounts.19 The manifold challenges the missionaries faced in this rugged northern wilderness, with its inhospitable climate and encounters with the aboriginal Inuit population inspired a growing number of scientists to visit the mission stations in order to carry out fieldwork (see chapter 3). To one of these visiting scientists, K.R. Koch, we owe the earliest German-language description of Labrador by a nonMoravian visitor from Germany. K.R. Koch was professor at the Technische Hochschule in Aix-laChapelle. On behalf of the German Polar Commission and with the permission of Moravian authorities in Herrnhut and London, he visited six mission stations in 1882 in order to complete the commission’s net of North Atlantic meteorological observation posts between Greenland and Canada. Such posts were considered essential for the preparation of synoptical weather charts for the North Atlantic and the polar region, as well as for examining the connection between polar lights and earth magnetism. During his thirteen-month visit, Koch looked around with open and curious eyes. He appeared interested in everything from the topography to

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aspects of plant, animal, and human life along the coast (see chapter 3). His two published reports convey his fascination with the many unusual discoveries he made.20 On nearing the entrance to Hopedale in the Moravian sailing ship Harmony, Koch had his first encounter with Labrador. Shots were heard and a boat, followed by others, rowed alongside. Two Inuit families inhabited it, along with their tents, ten dogs, five children, and a nine-month-old baby, who had a piece of seal blubber stuck in his mouth as a pacifier. A penetrating odour of rancid blubber permeated the ship as flat- and broadfaced people with thick, protruding cheekbones greeted the captain and boarded, dressed in suits that were rather “European clothing shreds – to call these clothes would not be appropriate – glaring with fat and dirt.” Underneath these suits women seemed to wear their national costume – pants and a shirt-like jacket with hood (attije) and tail (akkut) – as one of them revealed. These costumes were cut from European fabrics in Inuit style. Koch found Inuit still wearing the traditional fur costumes year round only north of Rama. Such eye-catching peculiarities of the Native population tended to hit foreign visitors such as him upon their first arrival in Labrador, Koch explained, but he got used to them quickly. Koch’s first impression of the Labrador land was one of desolation and bleakness – rounded, bald rock islands resembling cabbage heads floating in the water. But hidden in the coves and inlets along the coast, he was surprised to discover evergreen and larch forests extending to the far-away mountain ranges and enclosing deeply dark and calmly mirroring lakes. He noticed the numerous spectacular cataracts, often 40 feet or higher, that interrupted virtually all rivers flowing into the Atlantic, as well as the massive deforestations around Hopedale. The latter he attributed to Inuit and fishermen. The flora was reminiscent of the Alps and Norway. North of Hebron the scene assumed an increasingly Alpine character but with deep fjords cut into the beachless coast by mountains rising almost vertically out of the ocean. After climbing atop a 2,400-foot mountain near Rama, Koch breathtakingly described the “most magnificent scenery ever seen”: there “at my feet the deep dark blue-green fjord, surrounded by steeply declining wall-like cliffs covered on top with herbage which the first night frosts (it was September) had coloured red; to the left the deep-blue ocean with its greenish white icebergs; across and to the west steep jagged peaks and narrow, ravine-like valleys containing a dark mountain lake with water black as ink mirroring the jagged points; towards inland higher and higher mountains covered with fresh snow and building up, as far as the eye could reach to the north and south, into an imposing mountainscape with peaks of 8,000–9,000 feet.”

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Animals of every kind – reindeer, fowl, birds, seals, and fish – were being hunted for sustenance. Though plentiful during the spring and fall migrating seasons, they were virtually non-existent during the summer. Seals were scarce because they were being over-hunted, Koch believed, and the Inuit had to use nets owned by the Moravian store to catch their quota of food for the winter. The Inuit hunted fur-bearing animals primarily to trade their skins for other essentials of daily life at the Moravian store. Koch watched them catch cod, sea trout, and salmon at river estuaries using ingeniously constructed piercing devices and nets. They fished cod mostly with rod and reel. He was amazed to see a simple rod catch up to a hundred cod in one hour. The thousands of Newfoundland fishing schooners, however, used nets. Even on that coast, he noted, the fishery appeared to be the monopoly of the English. How were the people inhabiting this bleak coastal district able to support themselves while constantly fighting off hunger, cold, and danger, Koch wondered. Expecting a frugal lifestyle with long-term planning, he was surprised to find the opposite. “People live without saving, in abundance when hunting fortunes are favourable, in order to be exposed again to the bitterest deprivation after a few days or weeks.” In appearance, character, and behaviour, Koch noticed little difference between the English or Canadian settlers in the south and the Inuit in the north. The Inuit, however, with their low birth rate and high child mortality, were not expected to exceed a total of 1,200. Like all Native peoples in contact with Europeans, they were a dying people, constant victims of epidemics introduced by the fishing schooners. The settler population, on the other hand, with its large and healthy families and low mortality rate, was growing steadily and spreading northward. Following a description of the rough, arduous lifestyle and seasonal migrations of the Inuit, Koch credits the Moravians for having had not only a Christianizing but also a civilizing impact. “I believe there is no Eskimo on the entire coast without reading, writing, and maths skills,” he affirmed and added that during the winter months Inuit usually played the harmonium during church service, “always accompanied by a small orchestra also composed of Inuit.” Despite Moravian grief about Inuit ingratitude, Koch confirmed that the Inuit enjoyed a relatively harmonious relationship with the missionaries. They appeared to him to be “like nothing else than big and often quite undisciplined children.” German geographer Karl Uebe, in his doctoral study on the physical and cultural geography of Labrador, published in 1909, agreed that the lifestyle of the Inuit guaranteed their survival, provided they adopted ethical, social, and hygienic improvements.21

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For the interest of climatologists, the data received by the German marine observatory in Hamburg from the meteorological posts that Koch had helped to set up in Labrador were evaluated in studies published in 1937 and 1940 in the observatory’s Archiv series.22 The first study, by Ludwig Döll, tabulated and interpreted the pre-war measurements of temperature, barometric pressure, wind direction, wind force, and cloud cover collected at four mission stations (Hopedale, Zoar, Nain, and Hebron) three times a day. This climate analysis was supplemented by a report about the weather pattern generated by a typical cyclone, as observed by Nain missionary Paul Hettasch on 9 February 1933. The study concluded by comparing these data with data collected from points at the same geographical latitude at Hudson’s Bay, the west coast of Greenland, Alaska, and Ochotsk in East Asia. The second study, by D.S. Baumbach, described and analyzed the Labrador data collected by Paul Hettasch from 1927 through 1939 with particular attention to storms.23

perspectives on the economic significance of labrador As much as pre–World War i Labrador was valued as a pristine laboratory for scientific fieldwork, its economic potential was downplayed or ignored almost entirely by German observers. Karl Uebe’s doctoral thesis of 1909 showed awareness of large iron ore deposits in the interior but considered these inaccessible. Labrador’s sole economic significance, he maintained, lay in its seasonal coastal fishery of cod, herring, and salmon, which employed more than 30,000 men annually. As for prospects of economic diversification and development, Uebe could only imagine the likelihood of logging along Labrador’s richly forested southern coast to feed the growing appetite of European paper mills for raw materials.24 Two decades later, entirely new perspectives opened up. In a two-page illustrated supplement, Hamburger Nachrichten of 7 February 1931 gave prominent publicity in Germany to the economic and strategic value of Labrador with its known and potential resources. Based on unconfirmed intelligence from the Chicago Financial News and entitled “Labrador verkauft?” (Labrador sold?), the article elaborated on the aim of prominent Chicago and Detroit financiers to buy Labrador at a time when Canada and other countries considered this land of “icefields” worthless. The secret negotiations of the syndicate of American “dollar Croesuses” reminded the anonymous writer of the American experience with the acquisition of Alaska for $7,000,000 sixty-two years earlier. Like Labrador, Alaska was

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nothing but snow and ice that barely offered enough moss for its few caribou herds. No one suspected thirty years later that in 1898 this immense territory would yield over $100,000,000 worth of gold and hold unknown treasures of minerals still awaiting exploitation. In addition, Alaska was now offering rich grazing during the summer months for hundreds of thousands of cattle from California and Oregon. Similarly, the article predicted, Labrador’s rich forest stands in the south contained all the prerequisites for the development of a pulp and paper industry, while grazing in the north offered sufficient sustenance for huge caribou herds and moose, not to speak of the paradise of furs “valued in the millions” by trappers and hunters. Yet the syndicate was mainly intrigued by the geology of the Cambrian and Precambrian deposits because of their traditional yield of gold and copper ores in Canada. The mere lack of transportation facilities had delayed appreciation and exploitation of Labrador’s rich natural resources. Yet gold prospectors had recently learned to cross the immense wilderness by dogsled and airship. Since trains and ships had started carrying Canadian wheat via Hudson’s Bay to Liverpool, it was only a matter of time for the still secluded harbours of Rama, Okak, Nain, Zoar, and Cartwright to be connected to trade routes, for the interior to be settled and opened up, and for the products of Labrador to be shipped the shortest way to Europe. In his 1934 book Zwischen U.S.A. und dem Pol (see chapter 8), German travel author Colin Ross struck a similar tune. Labrador was a desolate “land of stones,” observed Ross, exactly as the Vikings had described it in the Icelandic sagas. Still, the history of this region might have taken a different turn had native skrelings not driven the Vikings out of Vinland. Ross thought it ironic that for a long time neither the French nor the English cared to own Labrador, then Canada and Newfoundland fought over it, and finally Newfoundland offered to sell it. Canada would one day regret not having bought Labrador, Ross predicted, just as it regretted having lost part of its Pacific coast, with its fish, fur, and gold treasures, through the sale of Alaska to the United States. Writing in 1933, he could not say whether Labrador, with its wood, water, and mineral resources, would ever become a second Alaska. Bypassed by all shipping lines, Labrador’s interior remained as unknown in 1933 as it was when the first Vikings visited it. More significant, Ross thought, was Labrador’s strategic location on the air route from Europe to Asia. Its economic and political future would most likely hinge on the development of air traffic.

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6 “I have with great patience withstood many insults”

The Enemy Alien Experience, 1914–1919 The very name of German seems to convey to the mind scenes of desolation, butcheries and espionage and the presence of a German in our midst is the cause for his immediate arrest. Daily News, 27 October 1914 I have with great patience withstood many insults and often had to traverse long byways and lanes to escape the jeers of the ignorant of our community ... my good customers have forsaken me on account of my nationality. I have had many sleepless nights and more days full of worry. Tailor Ernst Koch, 1915

World War i, also known as the Great War, affected residents of Germanspeaking background in all Allied countries unlike any other event in their history. Virtually overnight, the traditional positive pre-war perceptions of Germans were replaced by stereotypes with such negative descriptions as cruel, untrustworthy, and disloyal. Negative stereotyping was accompanied by the increasingly severe measures of social ostracism, internment, and deportation. In Newfoundland, unlike in Canada and the United States, people with the remotest German association were treated as suspects. Here, the pejorative World War i image of Germans as spies and saboteurs received a new lease on life during World War ii and has survived in some quarters until today. The story of what these individuals, defamed as spies and enemy agents in Newfoundland, actually did and what was done to them during the war, however, has remained in the dark.1 Their experience and identities form the subject of this chapter. It traces the stages and

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contributing factors in the reversal of the Germans’ pre-war positive public image with particular attention to the government’s role. The outbreak of war in 1914 found Newfoundland, one of five selfgoverning dominions in the British Empire, ruled by an unstable party, a weak premier, and an appointed authoritarian governor. Prime Minister Sir Edward Patrick Morris,2 absorbed in local affairs and unprepared to take charge of the war effort, handed over administration of Newfoundland’s war effort to a group of private citizens known as the Newfoundland Patriotic Association (npa). Representing every shade of political opinion and organized interest on the island, it began coordinating all aspects of Newfoundland’s defence efforts and contributions. (A special committee responsible for defence of the home front against attacks and espionage, the Home Defence Committee, was not created until June 1915.) The npa was launched by Governor Sir Walter Davidson, who was eager to live up to his announced intention of running Newfoundland as a crown colony and imposing his will in matters of home defence.3 The authority of Davidson as the representative of the imperial government was bolstered by the need for military coordination with Britain and by the special powers conferred upon him in time of war. He chaired the npa until its replacement in July 1917 by a newly created Department of the Militia.4 The declaration of a state of war for the British Empire on 4 August 1914 caught Newfoundland utterly unprepared. There were no blueprints for the defence of Newfoundland, no troops ready for duty, no emergency legislative measures, no plans for dealing with residents of enemy nationality. The Newfoundland Patriotic Association was not formed until 17 August. On 4 August fear gripped St John’s when the British Admiralty reported that the German cruiser Dresden was near St Pierre, the French island 250 sea miles off St John’s. In the event the warship decided to enter St John’s harbour, Governor Davidson had a bold contingency plan improvised. It called for sinking two local vessels to block the narrow harbour entrance and armed resistance by the people to any hostile acts. The plan also considered the possible surrender of the German warship “before the advent of superior [local] force,” in which case the safety of the crew would be guaranteed, officers and men would be transported to neutral territory, and the ship would be saved. The alert, however, turned out to be the first of many false alarms, for the Dresden was in reality heading down the Brazilian coast.5 The kind of noble treatment envisioned for the captured enemy, however, was only being considered on the first day of the war. A few days later, the situation changed drastically.

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arrest and imprisonment A series of despatches from the secretary of state for the colonies to Davidson offered welcome directives for dealing with enemy aliens. A telegram of 7 August urged the arrest and detention of all German military reservists, including those working on British or neutral merchant vessels, in order “to have means of enforcing proper treatment of British officers and men who may be captured.” Subsequent despatches urged detention of Austro-Hungarians, censorship of mail to and from the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, the release of known and trustworthy enemy aliens from detention, and compliance with the 1907 Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land. The legal basis for proceeding against enemy aliens became the War Measures Act, passed by the legislature on 7 September 1914 but retroactive to 1 August. It was modelled on similar British and Canadian statutes. It conferred upon the governor-in-council wide discretionary powers to order arrest, detention, exclusion, and deportation “for the security, defence, peace, order and welfare of Newfoundland.”6 German and Austrian nationals in the capital city of St John’s awakened to their new identity as enemy aliens on 7 August when the press noted the arrest of a German who had served as a stoker on a coastal boat. In the following weeks a dozen enemy aliens, including seamen taken off British and foreign boats, were reported arrested and detained in police custody. Among those caught in the net was Swiss German engineer Trenkle, who was employed by the United Towns Electric Company. He had come to Carbonear in the first days of October to complete installation of a Voith turbine that the company had purchased from Germany for its hydro station in Victoria (see chapter 3). Although Voith had sent a Swiss national from its New York branch office after the outbreak of war, Trenkle was nonetheless thought to be a German spy. He was taken to Victoria in the company of a policeman, who arrested and interned the Voith engineer as soon as his installation job was completed. He was soon released.7 Arrests quickly spread to spy suspects and victims of denunciation. From the outset, denunciations rarely distinguished between visiting German nationals and long-time naturalized Newfoundlanders of German descent. German-born Otto Rusch, who had immigrated in 1896 and was married to a Newfoundlander, was one of the first targets. As German seamen were reported captured and confined during the last week of October 1914, letters to the editor alleged that Rusch had expressed his desire to fight

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against the Allies and should be detained in the country. A letter by A.H. Salter demanded that Rusch, like all Germans, should be jailed, while another writer proposed that Germans should “have to pay security for good behaviour.”8 On 19 August the St John’s Penitentiary was officially designated a prisoner-of-war camp “from time to time.” Since its exercise facilities turned out to be insufficient, the additional use of police quarters in Harbour Grace, Newfoundland’s second-largest town, fifty miles northeast of St John’s, became necessary. By December 1914 six Germans in the militaryservice age bracket were being held as prisoners of war in St John’s and six in Harbour Grace on the grounds that they might offer themselves for duty if the opportunity arose. In January 1915 four German seamen were sent to prison quarters at Bay of Islands on Newfoundland’s west coast. In June three other internees from the Penitentiary were sent to the Placentia jail on the south coast. Minister of Justice Richard A. Squires, concerned that prolonged detention under the local conditions would “make them idle by habit,” recommended the early transfer of the prisoners to “properly organized concentration camps in the British Isles.”9 Complaints by a German merchant seaman about the severe treatment to which he was subjected triggered an official inquiry to satisfy the Prisoners of War Information Bureau in London. The internee objected to the quality of the food, the accommodation, the absence of medical treatment, and the want of clothing. Reports requested from the “Keepers of H.M. Gaols” maintained that the prisoners of war were well fed, in good health, and kindly treated. In Harbour Grace “the prison is primitive in construction, being built in 1830.” There was nothing for the pows to do during the long winter but make small boats, rig them, put them into bottles or electric bulbs, and trade them for tobacco, “which they are very fond of.” Their behaviour was described as “respectful, appreciative, polite, orderly, and clean in their habits.” In St John’s they were confined in a prison with ordinary criminals and fed the same spartan diet as prisoners in remand and under long sentence.10 Their chief grievance was detention in the company of criminals. “They are right to a certain extent,” the superintendent agreed. “I am not aware of another instance in which prisoners of war have been confined in a common penitentiary.”11 They desired transfer to one of the outports, where they expected to get better food and more freedom and fresh air. Available documentation about internment conditions at Bay of Islands illustrate the experience of enemy aliens detained in a Newfoundland outport. In January 1915 four German seamen arrived from the St John’s

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Penitentiary. They had been removed from British and Norwegian ships in Carbonear, Wabana, and St John’s in the fall of 1914. Until 28 July the following year (when they were transferred to Donovans for deportation in October to Canadian internment camps) their accommodation was the Bay of Island’s jail at Curling, “small two cells sleeping rooms 5 x 8” as an official report noted. The report also stated that the internees’ exercise consisted of “walking around at times, some voluntary work performed at times, a part of which they have been paid ... [in] tobacco and repairs with their clothing.”12 In reality, the local constabulary inspector, Isaac Bartlett, as his grandson related, “had them build a rock wall, which still stands... He’d have them down to his place, his property, and to keep them occupied he had them clearing the land and building this wall as a boundary to the land ... The wall the prisoners built around the Bartlett property is about 1,000 feet long. In places it is five feet high and four feet deep. Some of these rocks are quite large. They must have spent a considerable time building the wall. It’s very well built.”13 To build a huge rock wall a thousand feet long, five feet high, and four feet deep with large rocks in six months must have been hard labour. Having the pows build the wall around the inspector’s private property and having them clear his own land may well have contravened the definitions of “exercise” and “labour” for pows according to the Hague Convention on prisoners of war, then in effect. It certainly qualifies as a borderline case. According to local lore, however, the prisoners were treated well and even “enjoyed their extended stay.” Their alleged freedom during the day to jig cod at sea was an unlikely kind of privilege for pows during the Great War. It would have involved a breach of rules. Yet their diet seems to have been adequate. That is confirmed by a letter former internee Otto Rasch (not to be confused with German-born St John’s resident Otto Rusch) sent to Bartlett from famine-stricken Germany in 1920. Compared to the food substitutes, unemployment, and revolutionary chaos in Germany, Rasch wrote, he certainly had “good times” in Curling. “I wish I could have some of them codfish we used to get there or rabbit pie and cabbage.” Rasch’s letter does not say or imply that the internees had come to consider Bartlett as a friend, as has been inferred.14 A June 1915 report from the Magistrate’s Office in Bay of Islands to the minister of justice in St John’s simply concluded, “Behaviour good, their habits in my obinion [sic] show the discipline of their country.”15 From the beginning of the war the attitude of Newfoundlanders towards Germans was greatly affected by the propagation of a paranoia known in the British Empire as “spy fever.” Transmitted by the media from British

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and particularly Canadian sources, it led people to believe that all persons of German descent were eager to harm the interests of Britain.16 On 24 August 1914 the St John’s Evening Telegram carried an article from Montreal with the headline “No Doubt about German Spies Being Active. Information is being transmitted from Canada. Have agents a wireless station?” The writer contended that somewhere in eastern Canada a secret wireless station was in hourly communication with German vessels along the Atlantic seaboard and that the entire police force must take the matter seriously. The same paper on 2 September raised the spectre of armed resistance by alleging that in the district surrounding Prussia, Saskatchewan, “all arms and ammunition” were bought up by the local German population. By December 1914 the St John’s press worried about “German Designs on Newfoundland.” Referring to rumours originating with the general manager of the Nova Scotia Steel Company that German arms manufacturer Krupp had detailed plans of the Nova Scotia company’s iron ore mines on Bell Island, Newfoundland, the Montreal Star had asked, “How far is St John’s being used as a spy centre?” Did Germany, traditionally the second largest consumer of Bell Island iron ore, “know every detail of the island’s potential usefulness as a military pied a terre for terrorizing and possibly invading Canada,” the article wondered, eliciting fantasies from other correspondents about “Newfoundland as a German Colony.”17 The British media further inflamed the local press by alleging that atrocities characterized the German advance into Belgium and France. Thus the editor of the Daily News as early as 5 September 1914 decried Germany’s war effort to be no longer traditional war, “but cold-blooded, pre-meditated, deliberate murder of non-combatants and combatants alike, of old and young, of soldiers and civilians.” Naive victims of war propaganda and bungled Allied strategies,18 Newfoundlanders soon began to experience revulsion at anything German. “The very name of German seems to convey to the mind scenes of desolation, butcheries and espionage,” a Daily News correspondent from Carbonear summed up a rapidly growing mood on 27 October 1914, and “the presence of a German in our midst is the cause for his immediate arrest.” A reminder by an Evening Telegram columnist on 17 April 1915 that Germans also “belong to the Human Family – they are of our common brotherhood” and should be treated “honourably” and “fairly,” remained a lone voice.19 Newfoundland government and police records20 indicate that the negligibly small number of some sixty residents of German and Austro-Hungarian origin neither posed a security threat nor had any plans or disposi-

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tions for such a role. Governor Davidson acknowledged in December 1914 that they were all “harmless” and none of them was “actually or potentially a spy.”21 Why then were the few natives of Germany and AustroHungary residing in Newfoundland treated as enemy agents without proof of subversion and without a trial? The available evidence suggests that in Newfoundland, where fervent loyalty to the cause of the British Empire and suspicion towards outsiders were natural instincts,22 government and society were able to cope with the unprecedented stress and ordeals of total war only by the creation of a tangible scapegoat from within. The country’s “enemy aliens” were the natural candidates for this role. The wartime stigmatizing of a small minority of innocuous fellow residents was made possible by the hysteria British propaganda successfully whipped up from the very beginning of the war.

enemy alien identities The very first charges of espionage for Germany were levelled at Robert von Stein (see chapter IV) just two months after his death. The 12 September 1914 issue of the St John’s Mail and Advocate remembered him as an “exceptional clever engineer and scholar” who moved in the best circles, “a fact which evidently won him the confidence of the people.” Nonetheless, it accused him of having two of his sons serve in the German army. Less than two months before, an obituary in the St John’s Evening Telegram 23 had eulogized Stein as a “prominent and popular citizen.” The Mail and Advocate alleged that the North Sydney Herald had conclusive proof from “private reliable sources” of Stein’s systematic gathering of intelligence for the kaiser and that this had been a “religiously kept secret.” Stein’s sisterin-law refuted the accusations three days later in the Mail and Advocate, as well as in the Daily News, as a slander on Stein’s memory. Otto Rusch, another old-time German-born resident who had immigrated in 1896 and was married to a Newfoundlander, managed to escape arrest despite repeated denunciations. It appears that his employers, Prime Minister E.P. Morris and the Honorouble John Harvey, for whom he worked as a gardener, interceded on his behalf.24 Richard Warschauer, Newfoundland’s most prominent German resident, was castigated in the Daily News of 21 October by a writer who considered it “unfair that a poor sailor should be jailed while a rich German is left free.” Warschauer was one of four enemy aliens – a German national, a German Canadian, a naturalized Newfoundlander, and an American of British descent – who were singled out locally as being of a “dangerous or

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suspicious character,” according to Davidson’s report of December 1914 to London about the treatment of enemy subjects. Aged thirty-six and manager of the Newfoundland Trading Company,25 Warschauer had come to the island in early 1914 as the agent for the German trading house Rosenstern and Company of New York to buy tinned lobster for the German market. “He travelled around the coast of Newfoundland,” as one government report put it, “and explored the harbours.” Since Germany had bought Newfoundland’s entire lobster catch before the war, the economic significance of Warschauer’s business cannot be underrated. His lavish lifestyle – he owned an expensive automobile – and marriage to an English woman in St John’s made him an object of considerable attention in the island’s closed social circles. After the outbreak of the war, Deputy Minister of Justice C.H. Hutchings noted with alarm “that the German lobster merchant telegraphs too much to a German firm in Philadelphia.” Because of the number and character of his telegrams with New York, Warschauer was arrested on 21 August 1914 but released on $4,000 bail after a few days although he was an officer in the German reserve. He was vouched for by several prominent citizens, including his firm’s legal counsel, Alfred B. Morine, who was a well-known lawyer and politician. While mail censorship disclosed Warschauer’s correspondence to be confined to the “recovery of doubtful debts,” growing public pressures and continuing suspicions that he was secretly communicating with enemy subjects26 led to his rearrest on 18 July 1915. The next day he was released a second time on parole. He was permitted to reside at Hicks’ Hotel in Salmonier under police supervision until new internment facilities were completed. In August 1915 he was permanently interned, at first in Newfoundland and then in Canada. In allowing Warschauer to be left free for so long, a Government House memorandum of January 1916 explained to the governor general of Canada, “the Government was actuated largely by its unwillingness to confine a man of education in the penitentiary.” The memorandum conceded that although suspicion alone had linked Warschauer with German espionage, his internment and deportation to Canada were justified because “it is not unreasonable to suppose that the German Government has been represented in Newfoundland and that no one else has been so markedly exposed to general suspicion as a German agent.”27 A second potentially “dangerous” suspect was Franz Theodor Lüttge, a twenty-nine-year-old German Canadian from Manitoba. Giving the appearance of a man of means and leisure, he had taken up residence with

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his family at the Willcox Hotel in Placentia in May 1914. Since he was a member of the Canadian militia and a British subject, he volunteered for active service with the First Newfoundland Contingent in August 1914. In order to avoid suspicion, he used his mother’s name of Smith. Upon discovering that he was hiding his real name, the regiment’s rank and file objected to the company of a young man who, as Davidson explained to London, appeared to have been “well drilled and of foreign origin.” Accusations that Lüttge was a spy must have lacked credibility because the governor’s marginal notes reveal that he was “believed to be quite loyal.”28 Nevertheless, Lüttge was asked to resign from the regiment and then kept under police supervision at the training camp with the prospect of internment, “so as to obviate any risk of his communicating with an enemy state.” In response to his protests to the British Foreign Office and to Davidson about his treatment, he received assurances that his personal liberty would not be curtailed. In December 1914 Lüttge reapplied, again unsuccessfully, for a place in the Second Contingent. The minister of justice recommended, instead, that he be kept under police observation. In 22 July 1915 the authorities still listed him as a “suspect at large,” and on 8 August they ordered him to leave the Colony. He left for Montreal two days later.29 A third major spy suspect “to whose liberty exception has been taken locally,” as Davidson put it, was thirty-five-year-old steward Peter Kercher. Because of his German origin, he had been dismissed from his employment on the ss Florizel. According to Davidson’s judgment of December 1914, however, he was “an eminently respectable man who has resided since his boyhood in America, has been 10 years in Newfoundland and is married in St John’s.” He had acquired American citizenship in 1907 and became a British subject in August 1914. Interned in July 1915, along with the other enemy aliens, he was spared deportation to Canada with the other internees because his conduct was of a “most exemplary character.” In the internment camp Kercher appears to have been of “great assistance to the authorities” with work as well as with the maintenance of discipline and order. He was released on condition that he depart for the United States, give “satisfactory bonds [of $4,000] to remain in that country and to report fortnightly to the British Consular Agent at New York.” His British naturalization papers were confiscated and not returned to him until April 1919.30 Newfoundland’s most illustrious enemy alien was not even of German descent. He was the American artist Rockwell Kent, deported in July 1915 for alleged pro-German activities and for protesting the violation of his right to free speech. His case affords unique insights into the interaction

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between the public, the government, and the enemy alien. A New York artist with English ancestry and American citizenship, Kent had in February 1914 chosen the solitude of the picturesque outport of Brigus to escape the city and renew his bonds with nature. He brought with him his family, a commitment to socialism, and an admiration for German culture. At social functions he volunteered to sing lieder, revealing his love for a language and its songs learned from his Austrian governess before he spoke English. Unwilling to conceal his convictions and endowed with a personality which, according to his biographer, was “a combination of charm and abrasion,” Kent made friends as well as enemies in Brigus before the war.31 When war broke out, he was denounced as a German who was concealing his real name and engaging in espionage. Not content with ascertaining Kent’s English extraction, the investigating police insisted that he looked like a German. But to Kent’s question “Did you ever see one?” the detective gave no answer.32 Kent was particularly incensed that his pursuits as an artist and his mere knowledge of the German language reflected suspicion on him and that nothing was done to clear him of the “serious charges which this action brought upon me in the public mind.” The intercession of the American consul resulted in assurances from Premier Morris that Kent would not be inconvenienced any more. His troubles were attributed to overzealous police and to his personal entanglements in Brigus. The matter might have ended there had Kent not insisted on the right to hold and express his views within the limits of the British constitution. His treatment by the authorities seems to have embittered him further towards the Allies.33 Provocatively, he continued to write to his American friends in German and did not care to hide his admiration for the Germans. For the sake of German culture, Kent even wished Germans “a limited victory to crown their struggle.” Life became difficult for Kent in the small town by November 1914, when even the local magistrate cast doubt on his integrity. In December 1914 Davidson cabled the British Consul in New York to investigate whether Kent was a German agent.34 At the request of the American consul, Squires conducted an inquiry in January 1915. It concluded that Kent’s expression of sympathy for Germany and his obvious contempt for the British residents of Brigus proved that he was not a German spy because no spy would be guilty of such indiscretions. However, he himself had created the unpleasantness in which he was involved by associating himself publicly with Germany’s culture and cause, a position with which “the residents of Brigus evidently do not concur.” The governor and the prime minister appeared to be sym-

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pathetic to Kent’s pleas of innocence but “were powerless to stem the rising tide of mob hysteria or halt the police in their support of it.”35 New provocations weakened Kent’s cause further. In a letter published in the New Republic of 22 May 1915, he denounced the “dogma” of British virtue, heroism, sea power, and loyalty as a “pile of trash” and cursed Newfoundland, praying that the enemy “come, capture, transform, and annihilate that sterile land.” While passing by the Harbour Grace jail with a friend, Kent was reported waving to the German internees who worked outside with pick and shovel and shouting at them in German: “The Kaiser is winning, you will soon be out.”36 His last act of retaliation was a signboard painted yellow at the entrance to his house: “Warning. Chart Room. Wireless Station. Bomb Room.” In July 1915, when general internment and deportation of enemy aliens were on the agenda, Kent’s fate was sealed. For Davidson, there was now “ample evidence officially on record that he is hostile in intention.” Kent was ordered to leave at the first opportunity, although nine residents of Brigus signed a petition regretting the loss of his company and arguing that, as an anti-imperialist and anti-militarist socialist, Kent had been treated unfairly.37

internment The submarine scare that followed the sinking of the Lusitania on 7 May 1915 subjected the fate of enemy aliens to a new exigency. (In Britain, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith announced the internment on 13 May of all enemy aliens of fighting age.) The U-boat had come to symbolize to the Allies the ubiquity, surreptitiousness, and immorality of the enemy and his agents – this despite the fact that limited fuel capacity, underwater endurance, and range of operations did not permit U-boats to venture into the western North Atlantic until 1918.38 However, by May 1915 the Admiralty was at a loss to explain its failure to anticipate the commercedestroying potential the submarine had demonstrated around the British Isles. British commerce was imperilled and naval strategy was in disarray.39 Thus enemy aliens began to loom large as suspects and scapegoats for the Admiralty. If British shipping losses were attributable to the activities of German spies,40 then could not Newfoundland’s enemy aliens also be envisioned as informers about the movements of British shipping and as contacts enabling submarines to extend operations to Canadian waters? Referring to information coming solely from rumours and fears, Admiralty intelligence officer Captain G.H.F. Abraham kept raising the spectre of German submarines turning up in the northwest Atlantic anytime,

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establishing bases of supply in “out of the way bays,” and contacting agents in Newfoundland and Labrador. From May to July 1915 Abraham alarmed Davidson with this scenario. “The time has come,” he urged Davidson on 8 July, for it to “be prudent to intern the enemy subjects ... still at large, and to remove from the country those who actively sympathize with the enemy.”41 Crediting Abraham with “clear vision and power of lucid explanation,” Davidson appeared satisfied that the Admiralty’s advice was “the wisest course to adopt.”42 He was anxious to protect himself from being censured if, despite official warnings, he did not employ all safeguards for the protection of imperial interests. This anxiety coincided with his concern about the added expense of guarding the coast and watching the actions of possible agents if enemy subjects and sympathizers were left at large. Davidson’s decision to have Newfoundland’s remaining German-born residents interned received the concurrence of the newly formed Home Defence Committee, responsible for coordinating coastal defence.43 Internment of all enemy aliens, although requested by the Reserve Force Committee of the npa as early as 14 June 1915,44 was not carried out until 17 July. On that day all German- and Hungarian-born males under the age of thirty-five were arrested. Of the twenty-five internees, twenty-two were of German and three of Hungarian origin, three were married (two to British subjects), and four had been trained as army reservists in Europe. Eleven were merchant seamen (ten German and one Hungarian), most of whom had been taken off boats in the fall of 1914. The case of Sir Wilfred Grenfell’s governess illustrates how zealously anyone with the remotest German ancestry was pursued when the minister of marine and fisheries and npa Recruiting Committee member A.W. Piccott insisted that no exception should be made even in this case.45 The person arrested at the St Anthony mission of Wilfred Grenfell and taken for internment to St John’s by Admiralty commander Lieutenant A. MacDermott on 4 August 1915 was Josephine Feuchtinger, an American by birth and citizenship whose mother was Irish and whose father was a German-born immigrant naturalized in the United States in 1865. She was in charge of the orphanage at St Anthony, and for Grenfell irreplaceable. He pleaded with Davidson to have her interned in the mission rather than deported. In St John’s she was asked to sign a statement indicating her and her parents’ citizenship and ethnic origin and was allowed to return to St Anthony.46 The Evening Telegram of 19 July 1915 welcomed the “conveyance” of local Germans to the penitentiary, “where they will likely remain and help

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to beautify the surroundings there until the termination of the war.” It noted with satisfaction that German-born tailor Emil Sulzbach, who “not long ago got cashiered” from the tailoring establishment where he had worked for a year and a half, had now been arrested. The public apparently perceived arrest and internment as tantamount to a conviction and confirmation of the enemy alien’s guilt. Since there was no suitable accommodation for the pows “without the outlay of considerable funds,” the government’s long-range solution was the transfer of the pows to a “concentration camp in the United Kingdom under escort of next draft for Newfoundland Contingent.” Davidson reasoned that “even if we have to pay for their keep in England, the cost of maintenance will probably not be greater than it is here.” As an interim improvisation, it was decided to consolidate internment operations by converting Donovan’s Hostelry near St John’s into Newfoundland’s sole pow camp. The camp was in operation from 28 July to 28 October 1915. The number of its inmates fluctuated between twenty-two and twenty-five.47 Since there were no facilities to accommodate security personnel, the entire available regiment of thirty men was ordered to camp at Donovan’s instead of having guards commute from the city every day. The camp rules for internees provided for three meals a day, prepared by a camp cook, and lights out at 10 p.m. The officer in charge was responsible for enforcing smoking restrictions, cleanliness, and “no communication of any sort” with the outside world except on postcards. Still, the internees must not have been too dissatisfied with the treatment accorded them at Donovan’s; otherwise they would not have presented a set of pipes to the head constable on 23 October 1915.48 Although Davidson inquired about transferring Newfoundland’s pows to a Canadian internment camp, he opted for the cheaper British offer of 3 August 1915 to accept twenty-two pows on condition that Newfoundland defray the detainees’ cost of passage to and maintenance in England. Because of a shortage of shipping space on the direct run from St John’s, eighteen internees were to be transported by rail to Quebec, from where the troop carrier ss Corsican was to take them to England on 30 October. Upon their arrival in Quebec, however, they were not permitted to board the ss Corsican and were instead interned by Canadian military authorities in the nearby Beauport pow camp. In November they were transferred to Amherst camp in Nova Scotia: in January 1916 Warschauer’s address was the Halifax Citadel. Three of the deported internees (Richard Warschauer, Richard Korner,49 and Hans Plieninger50) were married men who had to leave their wives behind in Newfoundland. Warschauer and Korner

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protested in writing against their deportation from Newfoundland and the consequent separation from their wives; but the wives could not be accommodated at the Canadian internment camps with their husbands.51 With no “alien enemies” left in Newfoundland except for the three internees’ wives, who were “all under police supervision,” the colonial secretary recommended removal of the guards assigned to the various cable stations.52

moravians as enemy aliens By the eve of World War i, the Moravians on Labrador’s coast and the nature of their activities were still largely ignored in Newfoundland. Thus their existence as a potential enemy agent problem remained unnoticed until June 1915. An anonymous letter in the Daily News of 4 June that year pointed to the little-known Moravian mission with its northern Labrador stations, whose occupants had German names, spoke German almost exclusively, and had immense landholdings on the coast. Few Newfoundlanders seemed to know and appreciate that the Moravians, encouraged and assisted by British authorities, had operated this mission for almost a century and a half. A 1918 count showed 1,271 Inuit to be under the care of the Moravians. In 1915 the six mission stations along the coast from Makkovik to Killinek at Cape Chidley were occupied by nine German-born and five British-born missionary staff and their families. The German-born Moravians, including their families, numbered thirty-four.53 Not until mid-July 1915 did repeated denunciations of the missionaries’ activities give government officials “grave cause for suspicion.” The staunch British agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company along the coast were reported keeping a sharp lookout for anything suspicious. It so happened that they had an equally keen competitive interest in the Moravians’ trade. Tips from “informed” persons in July 1915 alleged that the missionaries were engendering such strong pro-German feeling among some of the native Inuit “that in some cases the tribes are split up in factions.”54 Such tips were ominous in light of Abraham’s alarming scenario of enemy submarines arranging for bases “to meet their supply ships on various points of the coasts, partly for safety and partly to increase their range for action.” To counter the perceived threat, the Home Defence Committee envisaged the necessity of adopting progressively more drastic measures week by week. On 21 July the committee issued instructions that the mission stations be watched, on 27 July it decided to order the missionaries to appear in St John’s in person for interrogation, and on 7 August it adopted the radical view that, as enemy aliens, the German missionaries and their male

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6.1 Moravian missionaries under police guard, 1915. Courtesy uah.

dependents over eighteen years of age should be interned in St John’s or deported to England by their own Moravian ship, the Harmony.55 The day before this decision was reached, a Mrs Wakefield56 had just come from Labrador to inform Davidson that the Inuit at Hopedale were impressed with Germany’s strength on land and that the mission ship Harmony had supplied the mission stations with rifles, ammunition, and motor oil. She advocated detaining the German subjects in St John’s through the winter, believing that doing so would cause no hardship to the Native people. Mrs Wakefield’s advice coincided with news that the British government had decided to intern or deport all German missionaries in London.57 In the end, Davidson’s more moderate counsel prevailed, but not because it was moderate. His objective was to keep the number of internees below twenty-five so that their deportation to England via Canada would not be jeopardized. Davidson proposed that the missionary staff and their dependents of German nationality or German birth be examined before the governor-in-council and asked to subscribe to an oath of loyalty. Those who cooperated would be allowed to return to be interned on their own mission stations. As a guarantee to the public that this agreement was being maintained, a few members of the constabulary were to be stationed in Labrador (see illus. 6.1 and 6.2). On 26 August 1915, twenty-two Moravians (German, Austrian, and British) from all but one of the stations in

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6.2 Newfoundland constable guarding missionaries interned at Hebron, 1915. uah (mbs 06066).

Labrador were brought to St John’s to sign the required declaration. The only missionary absent was Karl Filschke (see illus. 6.3 and 6.4) from the northernmost station of Killinek because the steamer could not stop there.58 The Moravians’ return to Labrador in the company of three constables was facilitated by a report from Abraham indicating that in the latest expert opinion, the Strait of Belle Isle was not being used by submarines. Since, therefore, “the northern coast of Labrador cannot be of value to enemy vessels, the only reason for interning or removing the Missionaries would appear to be gone.” In addition, a letter from the manager for the Moravian Church and Mission Agency in London reminded Davidson that the missionaries’ welfare work in Labrador “was not a matter

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6.3 Missionaries Karl and Clara Filschke with son Martin, Killinek, 1914. Courtesy Martin Filschke.

calling for any distinction as between the Germans and English who were employed” and that Moravian missionaries in other belligerent countries had caused few difficulties so far. The lenient treatment accorded to the missionaries did not appear to go down well with the public. Davidson referred to “groundless rumours current in the Colony, to the prejudice of the action of the Government,” that the German missionaries got away with mere detention at their mission stations. In November 1915 the cabinet therefore agreed to a request from the secretary of state for the colonies to consider ways of freeing the country from German clergy in the future, namely, by repatriating anti-British suspects, not replacing retiring German missionaries, and

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6.4 Karl Filschke with Inuit confirmation class, Okak, ca. 1912. Courtesy Martin Filschke.

prohibiting the service of new German missionaries after the war.59 When, however, in June 1917 the colonial secretary offered to issue a prohibition for new members of the Moravian mission to take up residence in Labrador, Davidson suggested insertion of the usual words “except under permit of the Governor of Newfoundland.” Otherwise, he warned, “the Moravian missionary body – already perilously near extinction – might abandon Labrador where their presence is, on the whole, more desirable than their absence.”60 The occasion to demonstrate firmness arrived in June 1916 when the censorship of missionary Karl Filschke’s mail detected an allegedly dangerous anti-British spirit. He was accused of disloyalty61 and suspected of trying to get the Inuit at Killinek to think favourably of Germany. In reality, his rapport with settlers and Inuit suffered as a result of horror stories originating with Hudson’s Bay Company officials. These stories alleged that Germans had crucified and burned a Hudson’s Bay Company employee.62 Filschke, who had been unable to accompany the other missionaries to St John’s for a signed statement of loyalty, was now depicted as a man likely to aid enemy raiders in the North Atlantic. The fact that the remote and isolated station which he and his family occupied by themselves was icebound until August every season (see illus. 2.5) mattered less now than the

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memory of a German warship cruising along the Labrador and visiting the mission station at Nain prior to the war. On Christmas Day 1916, Filschke, his wife, and their three small children were deported. Filschke maintained then and later that he was never informed on what grounds he and his family, including a one-year-old baby, were suddenly ordered to depart after nineteen years of service in Labrador. In St John’s they had to seek accommodation at their own expense while making futile inquiries about their fate. Upon arrival in London, the family was unexpectedly separated. Filschke was detained in English internment camps for one year before being repatriated to Germany, while his family was sent on to Germany in January 1917.63 For Davidson, the other German missionaries were now also tainted with suspicion for not having received orders from their bishop, Albert Martin, at Nain enjoining on them absolute obedience to the authorities. In 1917 Bishop Martin, a German, was thereupon superseded as superintendent by the Englishman Walter Perrett of Hopedale as the number of German missionary personnel was reduced from eighteen to thirteen. For the first time the Newfoundland government carefully examined the extent and legal basis of Moravian landholdings and appraised the value of the mission’s property, but no concrete steps appear to have been taken to seize it. After the war, however, the eighteenth-century Moravian land grants in Labrador continued to be referred to as “enemy property.”64 Regardless of the real reasons for Filschke’s deportation, from 1914 to 1917 the entire Moravian mission in Labrador was unwittingly party to an unrelated deal with the enemy, one never uncovered by the British or Newfoundland authorities. Since the whole life of the Labrador communities was based on the arrival from outside of the Moravian supply ship Harmony, she continued to make her annual runs from England to Labrador through 1917. This British merchant ship travelled unharmed through British coastal waters, which Germany had declared a war zone and where submarines were sinking Allied merchant vessels without warning. The slow-moving Harmony should have been an easy target for a torpedo but, miraculously, she was never attacked.65 Not even the Harmony’s captain seemed to know of the deal that Moravian Bishop J. Taylor Hamilton had struck for the ship’s safe passage. As the American representative on the General Mission Board, Hamilton went to Germany in 1914–15 to get a commitment that the Harmony would not be sunk. The chief of the German Navy promised to cooperate and requested a detailed description of the Harmony. Hamilton obtained the required information from London. By way of Switzerland and with the help of the

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Red Cross, it reached the chief of the German Navy, who then transmitted it to every U-boat commander. Unaware of the arrangement, Captain Jackson of the Harmony always attributed the safe voyages of his ship through submarine-infested waters around the British Isles to the guiding hand of God.66

the alien witch hunt After Newfoundland’s residents of enemy birth had been safely interned, any visitor with the remotest German association was investigated and, if still considered suspicious, expelled. In July 1915 F.L. Huebsch and James S. Hanson were deported along with Kent, Lüttge, and Kercher. Huebsch and Hanson were American traders accused of spying while visiting Labrador on business. A naturalized American subject, Huebsch was considered dangerous not only because he was by birth an enemy alien but also because he represented a firm “which bears a name which appears to be German.” Hanson, a British subject of Scottish birth, was denounced by Mrs Wakefield (see notes 54 and 56) as a German spy for exploring all the runs and tickles along the coast without reporting himself.67 In October 1916 the visiting American-born representative of the United States Steel Corporation, J. Kellerschon, could not clear himself from suspicion cast on him because of his German parents. In April 1917 Davidson advised against the employ of American-born engineer C.S. Peters, who was sent by the New York manager of the Western Union Cable System to do some special wiring at the Heart’s Content cable station in Newfoundland. He was considered as a “potential German citizen” because his father was a naturalized American of German birth (although his mother was American-born).68 In May 1917 Toronto-born, fifty-year-old Annie Kleiser, who represented the Stafford Ink Company of New York, was expelled because the parents of her eighty-three-year-old husband, from whom she was separated, had come from Germany. In September 1918 naturalized American citizen Joseph R. Schnitzer was deported as the main suspect in an attempt to damage the Marconi Wireless Station in Mount Pearl. Suspicion fell on Schnitzer, who had been born in Jerusalem and was “probably of German descent as his name indicates,” because during the attack on the wireless station a prominent citizen allegedly overheard a stranger talking German.69 The entry of the United States into the war on 2 April 1917 expanded the witch hunt for spies. The catalyst was again rumours, this time originating in New York, that Newfoundland’s shores provided bases for newly

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equipped submarines preparing to rendezvous off the Grand Banks in order to intercept transatlantic commerce.70 Despite the absence of U-boats in Newfoundland waters until August 1918,71 a new local panic was fuelled by Germany’s resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917 and by Canadian apprehensions that a victorious Germany would take possession of Newfoundland.72 The government tightened press censorship and alerted every official as well as the public to watch the coastline for anything suspicious.73 Fear that St John’s “would probably be shelled” in the event, “however remote,” of a visit by a hostile submarine or raider prompted a proposal to organize all car owners for a speedy evacuation of women and children. The submarine paranoia reached a climax when the Home Defence Committee decided that from 15 June to 30 October 1917 the harbour of St John’s would be closed at night by a boom, the harbour leading lights and the lights at Fort Amherst at the harbour entrance would be extinguished, and the city would be darkened. Enemy agents were now suspected among the nationals of neutral countries, especially Norway. Suspicion at first focused on Norwegian millionaire Christoffer Hannevig. Having amassed a multinational shipping empire with branches in Norway, England, the United States, and Argentina, he now proposed to start an enterprise in Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, to build wooden ships for the American government. He arrived from the United States in June 1917 in his 355–ton steam yacht intent on sailing her to Norway for pleasure. His plan, which in the opinion of government officials could only succeed with the cooperation of German naval authorities, cast suspicion on Hannevig’s entire enterprise. Was it not obvious that the ships which Hannevig proposed to build at a place where “there wasn’t enough timber in the neighborhood to build a matchbox” were in reality intended to supply submarines at certain blind spots not far from the coast? By 15 June 1917 the Executive Council, following the advice of Captain Abraham, had traced out what was believed to be an “important move of the enemy”74 and forced Hannevig to abandon his plan of crossing the Atlantic. In October 1917 Governor Davidson was tipped off that a Norwegian named C. Bjerknos, second clerk in the Harbour Grace shipbuilding enterprise, was a “man of German sympathies” and was “possibly German by nationality.” A second employee of the enterprise, Norwegian mining engineer C.G. Larsen, was accused by the police of stealing documents for the enemy when the blueprint of a Bell Island ore mine was found in his possession. Both left Newfoundland in September 1918 under suspicion.75 By August 1918 the managers of the Harbour Grace company were suspected

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of having connections with Germany and of acting as German spies. Seven of Hannevig’s Norwegian staff expected “any time to be interned or deported.” Concerning Norwegian Anton Eide, the inspector general of the constabulary noted: “Recent occurrences as you are aware have disclosed the fact that Enemy Agents are operating in Newfoundland, attempts are being made to destroy our Telegraph communication, our large Railway Bridges, and to give information to enemy submarines which have been on our Coast for some weeks past. This is not being done by enemy subjects, as there are none in the Dominion, except they are masquerading as Neutrals.”76 Eide and his wife were expelled in September 1918 for unfriendly utterances about Great Britain. Before the end of the war, three more additional Norwegian members of the Hannevig management left Newfoundland protesting their innocence when the Department of Justice intimated to them that their presence on the island was undesirable. By December 1918 only two of Hannevig’s original Norwegian staff of twenty were left in Harbour Grace.77 By the end of World War i, nearly all of Newfoundland’s immigrants and visitors of enemy background had been interned or deported, and alleged sympathizers of the enemy had been expelled. Only a few pre-1900 arrivals and their assimilated descendants had, though investigated, been spared official harassment. Exempted from this enemy alien treatment by order of Davidson were also so-called Syrian Christians from Mount Lebanon hailing from the Ottoman Empire. Since their church and people had suffered from persecution in their homelands, they publicly endorsed the cause of the Union Jack, which, as their spokesman stressed, “brings equal rights and justice wherever it waves.” From November 1914 their St Joseph’s Syrian Benevolent Society contributed to the Newfoundland Patriotic Fund and many of its members volunteered for active service in the Newfoundland Regiment.78

the trauma of social ostracism Among the few assimilated German Newfoundlanders left at liberty, some volunteered for the Newfoundland Regiment and died for the Allied cause.79 The handful of older immigrants of German-speaking background who were left free on parole during the war were often not much better off than the internees. They lost social contacts, economic security, and peace of mind. Tugboat operator James Rickert from Danzig, a St John’s resident since 1893 and married to a Newfoundlander, spent most of the war hiding at home, avoiding all public gatherings for fear that someone might ques-

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tion and denounce him.80 His daughter (born in 1901) remembers that she was stigmatized in school and had to quit to help support her family.81 Otto Rusch, who immigrated in 1896 and earned his living as the gardener of Prime Minister E.P. Morris and the Honourable John Harvey, survived the war under the protection of his influential employers. At the end of the war the Department of Justice decided to utilize his services as a translator.82 He and fellow German-born Newfoundlander Ernst Koch, although exempted from internment on account of their long residency in Newfoundland and obviously harmless characters, had been kept under “strict surveillance of the police” on orders of the Home Defence Committee of August 1915, to be ”interned at any time” at the discretion of the minister of justice.83 Tailor Ernst Koch, a forty-four-year-old Hamburg native whose presence in Newfoundland can be traced back to 1893, is the only local German known to have put his personal experience on paper. For him, freedom from detention after thirteen months of war was not freedom from jeers and threats, and he confided to Police Inspector Sullivan that “what has been a dread for many months has now become a necessity, namely: my surrender to internment sooner or later.” I have with great patience withstood many insults and often had to traverse long byways and lanes to escape the jeers of the ignorant of our community, and also had to travel on the streetcars when ... my pocket money would allow me ... I also had to abandon the friendship of some of my earlier companions, who have tried to define my thoughts about the present conflict and have often misconstrued my honest expressions about the same and have twisted many of my sentences. Such friends? I have long discarded. I have often hit the ground with my stick in response to all sorts of names when I felt like hitting my insultors. It was indeed hard to control my temper ... In my small way of making a living I have also suffered, for besides the general depression of the trade several of my good customers have forsaken me on account of my nationality. I have had many sleepless nights and more days full of worry ... At times when alone I feel that the strain on my mind cannot stand much longer, in fact, I have not been jolly for a long time ... Moreover, I have been taking at times more liquor than was my usual custom and at such time would have retaliated to my tormentors if they had been present ... I shall not commit to paper all that transpired, but however, shall give you full explanation when sometime in the near future I shall request an audience from you and in all probability shall make arrangements for my internment.84

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The wartime ordeal of stigmatization, social ostracism, and deportation came as a shock to residents who had been held in high regard and considered assimilated before the war. As late as the early 1930s, one of the German internees, who had returned to Newfoundland after the war, communicated his bitterness about his “unjustified” internment to Robert S. Furlong after the latter had been appointed consul for Germany.85 Few of them understood that the relentless pressures of the war and war passions, demanding continuous demonstrations of loyalty to the imperial cause and ever-increasing sacrifices, cast enemy aliens inexorably in the role of scapegoats. Although Governor Davidson considered them to be harmless, strong pressures from the British Admiralty and from the public in favour of sweeping arrest, internment, and deportations overcame his own convictions. Alleged defence requirements and official war propaganda demanded vigilance against subversion and turned the denunciation of fellow citizens suspected of disloyalty into a patriotic duty. Newfoundland’s residents of German and Austro-Hungarian background had become victims of a wartime fear that hindsight now exposes as a myth. Their experience may not come entirely as a surprise to those aware of the experiences of ethnic minorities in other belligerent countries. Rather, what surprises is the subsequent failure to distinguish phantom from reality. This failure attests to the deep and enduring impact of this war on ethnic identities, perceptions of the home front, and historic legacies.

legacies Although government records open to the public refute the wartime charges of disloyalty and treason, those stigmatized and penalized as enemy aliens were left with the dishonour attached to them and their names. Rockwell Kent – neither German nor a spy – was the only wartime spy suspect whose name the Newfoundland government subsequently cleared. In 1968 Premier Joseph R. Smallwood publicly entertained and apologized to Kent after the latter had been awarded the Lenin Peace Prize.86 Smallwood’s remark that “we had a few prisoners of war, you know, in the First World War, we had a few in the Second as well and anyone that looked suspicious was just locked up in an internment camp” has been the only official reference to the treatment to which enemy aliens were subjected during the Great War. Although innocent of even the verbal provocations committed by Kent, the remaining enemy alien victims have never had their names cleared. The conspicuous silence about their real fate has left the impression that their ordeal was less harsh than Kent’s or more deserved.87

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In Canada, Britain, the United States, and Australia the wartime treatment of these victimized civilians has received considerable public and scholarly attention, and even official apologies. In Newfoundland, however, the fate of enemy aliens has never been acknowledged publicly or in scholarly studies. As a result, outlandish tales about local residents of enemy origin acting as spies and saboteurs have survived to this day and continue to be presented as fact. In the town of Baie Verte, for instance, a local legend still circulating alleges that the nearby Terra Nova copper mines had to stop production in 1915 because a mine official of German extraction and supposedly sympathetic to Kaiser Wilhelm sabotaged the mine in order to stop ore shipments to England.88 The real reason for the closure of the mine, however, was the insufficient incentive it provided for its owner, the Cape Copper Company Ltd of England.89 Not only wartime residents but also pre-war German celebrities such as Otto Oppelt have become the subject of such tales. The Oppelt legend was recently republicized by two local writers, one of them in a book titled Strange but True Newfoundland Stories. It depicts Oppelt as U-boat commander sent on a secret mission to Bay Bulls to drop off two German agents who were to attack the Marconi wireless station at Mount Pearl. Oppelt was allegedly able to direct the saboteurs to the Marconi station because of his knowledge of the Avalon Peninsula. A fifteen-year-old sentry at the station became a local hero for claiming to have captured the two agents.90 Government records of this September 1918 incident, however, confirm neither U-boat landings nor Otto Oppelt’s involvement in any wartime sabotage nor the capture of two German agents. Instead, the inspector general of the Newfoundland Constabulary deported visiting American citizen Joseph R. Schnitzer as the main suspect. As we have seen, suspicion fell on him because he was “probably of German descent” and during the attack on the wireless station a “prominent citizen” allegedly “overheard a stranger talking German.” Another tale published in the Sunday Herald of 20 February 1949 alleges that a former Newfoundlander from Trinity Bay in World War i became captain of a German submarine that sank a ship with four Newfoundland crew members. “When taken on board the submarine they were startled to find copies of Newfoundland papers and a map of Newfoundland in the captain’s quarters. The captain then told them that he was a former Newfoundlander, and told one of the prisoners to look up a certain girl when he got back to St John’s and give her a message.” After dumping the Newfoundlanders near the English coast, the captain vanished. The unverifiable story was allegedly reported by the prisoners.

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Nearly five years of systematic anti-German brainwashing bequeathed deeply ingrained negative stereotypical images of Germans to later generations of Newfoundlanders. Their impact was reinforced by the post-war failure to distinguish fiction from reality. The Great War thus all but wiped out the memory of Newfoundland’s pre-war population of German-speaking background and its contributions, reinforced latent anti-foreign sentiment, and facilitated the revival in World War ii of the imaginary enemy within.

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7 “I can get another Hiscock anytime, but I cannot get a Weber”

Newcomers after the War, 1919–1939 [Brewmaster] Hans Wich was every bit a German – strict, swore in German, and slept in a cold bedroom. He started the day at 8 a.m. and fired people with hands in their pockets. Gil Sharpe (former brewery employee), 6 December 1983

One of the casualties of World War i was Newfoundland’s German heritage and community. Four years’ exposure to patriotic brainwashing, the loss of 1,300 Newfoundlanders on the battlefields of France, and the intense engagement of the entire population in a total war against Germany had forged a new sense of “nationhood” in Newfoundland not conducive to any appreciation of German roots and contributions.1 The island was gripped by the same anti-alien sentiment that swept the British Empire for a number of years after the war. Between November 1919 and June 1920, over 30,000 former enemy aliens were expelled from Britain,2 6,100 from Australia,3 and 100 from Canada.4 In Newfoundland, an Act Concerning Former Enemy Aliens, passed in 1920, prohibited the landing from sea or air of any former enemy alien for a period of three years from 13 July 1920. However, no regulations were formulated under it,5 and as shown below, some former residents of Newfoundland who had become enemy aliens in 1914 were exempted from this prohibition. Also, there were no official restrictions on the entry of German ships into Newfoundland ports in 1919.6 The end of the war left the island and Labrador with no more than a handful of German-born residents. These intimidated people had understandably little reason to take pride in their ethnic identity. Anne Power, the youngest of nine children of her German mother Adele, née Ficke, and Newfoundland father, Francis White from Shallop Cove, St George’s (see

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chapter 4), remembered how she and her siblings were taunted as “German spies” in school as late as 1930.7 Only Otto Rusch is known to have achieved full social acceptance and some recognition for his contribution to his adopted country ten years after the war. The press mentioned his election in November 1930 as an officer of the Knights of Columbus in St John’s and his service as a vice-president of the Newfoundland Poultry Association. In January 1931 Rusch was reported to have received an award for his twenty-year connection with the association.8 In Labrador the German-born Moravian missionaries as late as 1929 complained about the changed attitude of the Inuit toward them ever since the war. The missionaries attributed the loss of the naive intimacy in their relationship with the Inuit to the impact of war propaganda and wartime suspicions about the mission.9

postwar migrations Among the first German post-war arrivals appear to have been two of Newfoundland’s enemy aliens who had been interned and deported to Canada. In 1919 and 1922 they were allowed to return, rejoin their wives, and reclaim the property they had had to leave behind in 1915. After Germany had signed the Treaty of Versailles, the minister of justice A.B. Morine, of the newly constituted government of Sir Michael Cashin referred to one of them when he advised on 23 August 1919 that a formerly interned German citizen, returning to join his wife who was a native Newfoundlander, had “to be treated here as an ‘alien friend’ ... That is to say, the aforesaid German would be entitled to all the rights and privileges which we extend in this Colony to any aliens who come here.”10 In October 1919 Moravian missionary Karl Filschke, however, begged in vain for permission to return to his ministry in Labrador. He and his family had been removed from their Killinek station in 1916 and deported to England and then Germany for alleged disloyalty (see chapter 6). The colonial secretary in St John’s advised that it would be undesirable to permit the return of any missionaries of enemy alien origin for some time.11 Nor was the government interested in German-speaking doctors. In 1925 the Austrian government inquired whether, in view of the overcrowding of the medical profession in Austria, there would be any openings for Austrian doctors to practise in Newfoundland. The colonial secretary in St John’s replied that only names appearing on the register approved by the Newfoundland Medical Board would be eligible to practise medicine, surgery, or midwifery here. Eligibility for persons not holding medical

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degrees from a university in the British Empire was based on passing examinations satisfactory to the board. Quite apart from that, the prospect of Austrian physicians obtaining lucrative employment would be slim, the reply concluded, for “whilst it is somewhat difficult to obtain doctors for certain places in the Colony, the number required is so small that it is probably not worth bringing to the attention of the Austrian authorities.”12 Newfoundland Constabulary registers indicate that Berlin-born Anna Clarke, wife of Heber Clarke from Calver’s Field, arrived in 1920 at the age of twenty-four. The circumstances of her arrival are unknown.13 Equally mysterious is the context in which Phoebe Feldmann and her daughters, Margarethe and Stella, immigrated in 1926. According to an inquiry by a Hamburg relative with the German consul in 1934, the Feldmann children were eleven and four years old in 1926 and lived in an orphanage in 1933 (see below). They appear to have come to St John’s by way of Canada. German seamen deserting their ships in St John’s in 1924 were among the first German nationals whose entry the press reported after the war. In 1926 two of them made headlines for being sentenced to one-year terms for larceny. They subsequently escaped from the Penitentiary and were never caught. According to a newspaper report, the escape was triggered by detectives who told the German prisoner Walter Dahn that, as an undesirable who was a burden on the country, he would be deported as soon as his term was up. Dahn made his getaway while working under guard at the Government House grounds, where he told the governor’s gardener, German-born Otto Rusch, that he had been connected with the revolution in Germany at the close of the Great War and that if compelled to return, he would be liable to fifteen years’ imprisonment. On making his escape, Dahn broke into the home of lawyer L.E. Emerson on Circular Road, where he exchanged his prison garb for a full outfit of clothing as well as some fat cigars.14 German-speaking migrations resumed as soon as the prohibitions on enemy nationals had lapsed and war-shattered, revolutionary central Europe’s contacts with the rest of the world were being restored. Among the first German-speaking post-war immigrants to Newfoundland were German Jews. Edward and Albert Epstein hailed from the pre-1918 German territory of the Polish Corridor. They arrived in 1924 and 1925 to join their brother Isidor, who had come to Newfoundland around 1911 and operated a store on Water Street in St John’s. Albert had his fiancée Frieda, a German gentile from the Polish Corridor, follow him in 1927 after he had established a business in Badger.15 Isidor Epstein was also responsible for the immigration in 1927 of Harry Hirsch Brenner, a native of the same

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formerly German town of Nackel as the Epsteins. “The reason I left Germany was because there wasn’t much business there,” Brenner explained to the authorities in 1940, “and when Mr. Epstein was in Poland on a holiday I met him and he told me that business was very good in Newfoundland and that I could make a nice living.” The four immigrants became retail merchants in Buchans, Bishop’s Falls, and Corner Brook.16 Another merchant of German Jewish birth who visited Newfoundland first in the late 1920s in connection with his Swiss textile business was Frederick William Ottenheimer. In 1932 he married Margarite Ryan, daughter of a Harbour Grace fish merchant, and two years later he settled in Newfoundland as a fish merchant.17 Hans Oltmann, a merchant, allegedly emigrated in the 1920s with his wife, Marie, and son Martin from Hamburg to St John’s.18 Family reunion was the reason for the immigration of Frederick Wilhelm Kothe in 1926 and his sister Anna Louise in 1933. Both came to join their sister, Mrs Bertha Holland, who had lived in Newfoundland since 1908. With her husband, Fred B. Holland, an Englishman, she owned a tourist home by the name of Seaview Hotel at Topsail. Bertha Holland was also employed as chief cook in the Hotel Newfoundland. On the occasion of their silver wedding anniversary in October 1930, the Evening Telegram carried a long write-up congratulating them on their many friends at home and abroad. The event was celebrated at Bally Haly in a mixture of German and English customs with Bertha’s brother, Frederick Wilhelm, as toastmaster introducing the traditional German wedding letter. Bertha Holland and her brother are remembered as German people who spoke poor English with an accent by as late as the end of the 1930s.19 F.W. Kothe earned his living at first as a hotel manager and then in prospecting in mining claims. A German war veteran, physically incapacitated with a leg wound, he became impoverished, unemployed, and unable to meet his medical liabilities. “In view of the fact that this man is likely to become a public charge, “ the chief commissioner of immigration urged in May 1939, “I suggest that immediate consideration be given to his expulsion.”20 The story of his subsequent internment will be dealt with in the next chapter. His sister Anna Louise, who prior to World War i trained as a nurse in England, was publicly honoured for her services on the occasion of her golden jubilee in the nursing profession in 1952.19 A number of German-speaking migrants to North America had not intended to immigrate to Newfoundland, but stayed on the island because they found their skills as mechanics, engineers, watchmakers, or bakers in demand, despite the country’s high unemployment. Walter Voss left

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Germany in 1925 at the age of twenty-six on the sailing vessel Paul with a load of salt for A.E. Hickman Company. After first working for Hickman in the Ford service, he found subsequent employment with the Highway Department in St John’s as truck driver, foreman, and superintendent. He married a Newfoundlander in 1928, was naturalized two years later, and after 1931 settled as a motor mechanic in Grand Falls. In 1929 Jacob Mertens, aged thirty-seven, abandoned his wife and son in Aachen for a job as a motor mechanic in Corner Brook. Stuttgart-native Rudolph Klopfer had emigrated to Canada in 1929, but was offered a job as a baker at the Glynmill Inn in Corner Brook. He became a British subject in 1934 and sent for his German girlfriend from Kirchheim-on-the-Neckar to marry her two years later. By the 1930s the paper mills in Grand Falls and Corner Brook employed at least one identifiable German technician each – Gustav Thiele (alias Alfred Lee) and Eugene Kurber22 respectively – and other Newfoundland firms were actively looking for specialists in German-speaking Europe. Albert Monnier, a twenty-one-year-old German-speaking Swiss watchmaker, responded to an advertisement in the Swiss trade journal to take up a position with R.H. Trapnell Ltd in St John’s in 1931. In Newfoundland he did contract work for the breweries and the railways, became service manager for Trapnell’s, and opened his own business in 1950. He never gave up his Swiss citizenship. Three other Swiss who came with him returned home.21 As before the war, Canadians and Americans of German descent continued to contribute significantly to Newfoundland’s economic development after the war. One was John Stadler, a German-born engineer who, as general manager of the Newfoundland Pulp and Paper Company from 1923 to 1926, helped to launch the paper mill at Corner Brook Stadler was born in Bavaria in 1874, came to the United States to work for the Westinghouse Company in 1902, and the following year moved to Quebec, where he made a name for himself as a consulting engineer and manager with the aluminum, hydroelectric, and paper industries. After he left Newfoundland, he built paper mills in Quebec, the United States, and Europe. He died in Montreal in 1948.24 German American Walter E. Siebert, while visiting Newfoundland as a salesman in 1929, acquired claims to fluorspar (calcium fluoride) veins in St Lawrence. He had been born in New York in 1901 of an American-born mother and an Austrian-born father. As president of the St Lawrence Corporation of Newfoundland Ltd, Siebert in 1933 began to develop his claims into an expanding mining enterprise. Nowhere else in Canada was

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fluorspar being produced in any appreciable quantity at the time. The transformation of a poor fishing community into a well-organized and prosperous town was one result.25 Another German American, James P. Steinhauer, was manager of the St John’s Gas Company in the 1930s.26

brewmasters One area where the renewed transfer of German skills and techniques had a profound impact and was remembered by Newfoundlanders long after World War ii was beer brewing and consumption. As noted earlier, prior to 1933, Newfoundland beers were top-fermented, English-type ale and stout. They were bitter and differed considerably from the mellower, bottom-fermented, German-type lager beer favoured in the United States and Canada. During the nine years of prohibition in Newfoundland (1915–24), only so-called near-beer (a beverage not exceeding 2 per cent alcohol content) was available, and thereafter the choice of local brews seems to have been limited to either a low-alcohol English pale ale or strong, but bitter draft beers. All Newfoundland beer from the time of World War i was brewed by English or local brewmasters in two breweries (the Bennett and the Newfoundland brewing companies) designed on the English ale system. They had no quality standards or controls. Then virtually overnight in 1932 all Newfoundland breweries reintroduced and began brewing lager. German brewmasters were brought in to be in charge. Newfoundland’s first producer of Bavarian lager beer before World War i had been the Lindberg Brewing Company Ltd. The brewery disappeared before 1914 (see chapter 4).27 From 1932 on, brewmasters of German background were employed in uninterrupted succession until 1957. Their production of lager beer was indicative of Newfoundlanders’ switchover to the German beer tastes that had conquered the United States since the Civil War but had made little inroad into the enduring preferences for traditional English malt beverages in England, Ireland, and Canada.28 The German brewmasters deserve credit for the high quality still attributed to Newfoundland beers. Since the 1950s these beers, such as Blue Star, have won top international awards, and Newfoundlanders and visitors alike rate them highly.29 The influx of German brewmasters appears to have been triggered by Garrett Brownrigg’s decision in early 1932 to add a competitive modern brewery to his soft drink business. He thereby started an intense competition among Newfoundland’s three breweries for the best German-type and quality beer. Garrett, according to his son Pat (who was eighteen at the

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7.1 German blueprints for the Bavarian Brewery, St John’s, 1932. Courtesy Gerry Fagan.

time), “was that type who was always going for something.” He apparently made up his mind to go over to Munich, Germany, all by himself, “on the spur of the moment” and came back in the company of a German (with wife) named Brehm and a complete set of blueprints for a German lager plant (see illust 7.1). The Brehms boarded on Shaw Street, spoke little English, and after a month or two disappeared. The “Brownrigg Brewery,” as it was at first called, was erected on Leslie Street using Brownrigg’s German blueprint. All machinery, electrical motors, switches, brewing equipment, and even the lead paints for the tanks were imported from Germany. Some of the walls were 28 inches thick and insulated with cork, an unusual design in Newfoundland. “No wonder, Brownrigg went broke!” noted boiler engineer Ferd Hayward, who had helped install malt grinders shipped from Germany. At the three-quarter stage of construction, Brownrigg lost his brewery through foreclosure to wholesale merchant and entrepreneur Albert E. Hickman. The latter renamed it “Bavarian Brewery.” The label “Bavarian” was chosen, the brewery’s oldest surviving employee recalled in 1983, because it was synonymous with good brewing, with “tops for beer.”30 Hans Schneider was brewmaster until 1938. Recruited in Germany to supervise completion of the plant and experienced in plasterwork, he knew how to make super-hard, impervious concrete floors. A portly man always dressed in a grey suit, leather Knobelbecher boots, and a cap like a petty officer (known as “cheesecutters” in Newfoundland), Schneider impressed

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Newfoundlanders as a highly qualified German professional who knew his business and demanded efficiency from his staff. “He never wasted any time,” remembered a close acquaintance; “he was well educated and a good builder.”31 When impatient and mad, he would shout and roar in his native language. He had no patience with lazy employees and consequently had a big worker turnover. As was customary for brewmasters at the time, Schneider exercised total control over every aspect of the operation from purchasing the raw materials to marketing the finished product. In those days brewmasters were supreme, explained veteran employee Gil Sharpe; “their job called for authority.” With no refrigeration and minimal quality control, the quality of each brew depended on the brewmaster’s secret recipe and good brewing practices. Schneider made his rounds through the brewery regularly; “you could set your clock by it,” remembered apprentice Gerry Fagan. He even lived in the plant in an upstairs apartment with his German wife, Anita, and daughter, both of whom could barely speak English. Reputed to have been an excellent manager and brewer, Schneider, with his prize-winning formulas for Jockey Club and Dark Munich, made the Bavarian Newfoundland’s largest, wealthiest, most modern brewing operation. In an interview that appeared in the Evening Telegram of 14 July 1934, Schneider highlighted cleanliness and maturity as the essential criteria, not usually taken for granted, for ensuring the outstanding quality of his beer. In his opinion, cleanliness and maturity were the ideal slogans for the brewery’s products and also explained their popularity. “Good beer must mature for four months at least,” and the brewery premises and its beer have to be “spotlessly clean.” Each bit of machinery was regularly sterilized, and a special apparatus was used for cleaning rubber hoses. “This rule will be adhered to rigidly,” Schneider stressed, even if it meant the non-fulfillment of an order because the quality “must never vary.” He showed off his brewery’s machinery as “the latest and most up-to-date in the world” whose capacity of 100,000 gallons of fully matured beer could be stepped up as demand increased. With fifteen years’ managerial experience at the Quimes brewery in Argentina, the largest brewery in the world, he had confidence in his ability to brew and mature beer scientifically and produce a product second to none. In April 1938 Schneider was succeeded by Max Weber (also known as Carl Webber), an unsociable, stubborn, and belligerent man in his early sixties. Weber could barely speak English and had left his family in Germany. Himmel! (heavens!) used to be his response to any kind of personal question he was asked. He was isolated because he isolated himself.

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7.2 Brewmaster Jake Guehrig with his prize beer, 1940s. Courtesy Gil Sharpe.

His bad luck with a few batches of beer in late 1939 may have compelled the owners to dissociate themselves from him. Yet before the war his authority and value were such that when a local employee named Hiscock complained to Albert Hickman about Weber’s behaviour, Hickman turned the employee away with the reply: “I am afraid you have to get along with him. I can get another Hiscock anytime on Water Street, but I cannot get a Weber.”32 Weber subsequently died during internment. His fate after the outbreak of the war will be the subject of chapter 10. He was replaced by German American brewmasters, first Valentine (Val) Foltz and then, from 1946 until the 1950s, Jake Guehring (see illus. 7.2 and 7.3).33 The Bennett Brewing Company followed suit by engaging the services of a Mr. Scheuermann, “a thoroughly qualified masterbrewer of 20 years’ experience to remodel the entire plant.”34 Then in 1933 the brewery imported Hans Wich from Germany as its manager. In charge of Bennett’s

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7.3 Brewmaster Jake Guehrig with fellow workers at the Bavarian Brewery, St John’s, 1940s. Courtesy Gil Sharpe.

for a decade, he was the longest-serving German brewmaster in Newfoundland. An advertisement in the Evening Telegram of 27 November 1933 introduced Wich, “a Master Brewer of many years of experience in some of the best breweries of the world,” as the embodiment of “the forward march of events” and the “spirit of progressiveness.” With the announced improvements and modernizations, consumers were promised that Bennett’s plant would be able to manufacture outstanding lager beer. The advertisement found it necessary to assure the readers that “the sterilization of all bottles and containers is a feature in which the Bennett Brewing Company takes a just pride.” Brewery workers remember Wich as a short man with a cane, “as round as he was high, his face like a cherub, angelic and always smiling.” To Newfoundlanders he was “every bit a German.” He is said to have been strict, swore in German, and slept in a cold bedroom. A tireless worker, he started the day at 8 a.m. and fired people “with hands in their pockets.” Wearing a shapeless hat that made him look to former employee Gil Sharpe like a Swiss farmer, he used to go for walks with his “big German police dog Heidi,” whom he addressed in German.35 His apprentice recalls that “he walked all day Sunday, miles and miles and miles all by himself. Boy,

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did he ever walk!” Wich always wore “big boots with soles four inches thick so you could spot him a mile away.” Around September, he used to make a specially strong Christmas brew, only for friends and employees, not for sale. On Christmas Eve he would sing “Holy Night” in German with his friend Alo Gut. On the whole, however, he seems to have kept his distance from people. To Christmas wishes from his employees he is reported to have replied with a distant “Man, what do you want?” His German wife, Erna, could not speak English and was socially completely isolated. Alex Feaver remembered that she pronounced the word “pipe” like “peep.”36 After fifteen years she left just as much a German as when she came, although the couple had intended to stay in Newfoundland. Wich himself was naturalized in April 1939. As manager of the Bennett Brewery, Wich, like all the other brewmasters, was well paid. The brewmasters also earned extra money for producing beer above and beyond the contract, and the proceeds from the by-products went into their own pockets as well. Wich was well able to afford one of the fifty cars licensed in Newfoundland in the 1930s. For him, the car was more of a status symbol than a need. (Brewmaster Schneider even had a Ford Model A, unusual at the time.) Wich invested much of his capital on the island. He bought various properties in town “for nothing” and sold them later. Next to the brewery he built a house that intrigued visitors with its large hall, large bedrooms, and imported German floors. However, his attempt to buy shares in the company was foiled by the owners Bennett, McGraw, and Cashin. After the war, Wich decided to start his own brewery in Harbour Grace, but in less than a year he lost his investment. He left Newfoundland for a new position with Lieberman’s brewery in the Bronx, New York, where he produced the popular beer Rheingold.37 The Newfoundland Brewing Company recruited several German American brewmasters between the 1930s and 1957. Their names were Otto Scheffhauser, Allan Hann, Hank Frolich and Fritz Neumeister. They spoke “lots of German” in the brewery – Scheffhauser’s wife was German – and ordered German-style foods from Schneider’s in Canada. They were nonetheless more sociable and outgoing than their other fellow brewmasters from Germany. The Newfoundland Brewery brought in all new equipment and supplies from the United States. Whenever beer supplies, such as hops, were delivered by German American salesmen and consultants such as Herb Krässer and Dolf Ober, they would all celebrate with German songs, German food, and plenty of beer. Scheffhauser was a tall (six feet, six inches) 240–pound man who kept total control over everything in the brewery. The accountants would confer

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only with him, because he alone knew what went on in the brewery. Even the owners were reported to be scared of him and would not dare visit the brewery without his permission. Gerry Fagan remembered co-owner John R. O’Dea phoning Scheffhauser one day to ask if it would be all right to show the brewery to some friends. Scheffhauser replied, “No, I am busy today,” and hung up. Owners put up with this treatment as long as their beer sold well. Quality control was critical and was achieved by the brewmasters’ personal attention to such sensory details as touch, taste, smell, and sight. The conversion of starch into sugar, for instance, was tested by putting a sample on a seat and sitting on it. If it was tacky, the beer was okay. The pH was checked under light. Bacterial content was ascertained microscopically. To see “lots of them hockey sticks” in the microscope, Scheffhauser taught Fagan, meant “bad trouble” for the brew.38 Germans also came into Newfoundland as chemists in charge of related liquor enterprises. In the spring of 1933 considerable public discussion arose concerning the planned opening of a liquor distillery and bottlemaking plant which promised to hire “at least four hundred employees.” The company, formed in Canada and incorporated under the name Continental Distilleries Ltd, was chaired by A.E. Grauel and A.H. Ackers and prided itself on having a Dr Bruning from Berlin, Germany, as its manager and chief chemist. An initial output of 40,000 cases of whisky per month was anticipated, but the monthly demand was expected to exceed 100,000 cases within a short period. Until the completion of the large distillery, raw wine would be imported from Austria, rum from Brazil, and grain from Germany. The company also planned to buy large quantities of locally grown blueberries and other wild fruit to manufacture wines. The company’s chemist was confident about making excellent wines from these berries for marketing widely elsewhere. The promoters were sure such an enterprise would succeed considering the low production cost and favourable local demands,39 but the ambitious project seems to have folded in the summer of 1933. In the 1930s German brewmasters filled a real need in Newfoundland. There appeared to be no substitute for them. They were well paid and, on the whole, measured up to the expectations placed in them. Post–World War ii Newfoundlanders are still proud of the taste and quality of their local beer, which they consider superior to most mainland beers. But these brewmasters’ contributions remains an episode much remembered, if at all, for the antics of the unassimilable foreigners as for their services. Forbidden to have social contact with each other since they were competitors, they also remained socially isolated from their host society, especially those

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who came from Germany. Middle-class immigrants in a society without a middle class, they faced near-unsurmountable difficulties of adjustment. Since their skills and qualifications provided them with the opportunity of finding employment elsewhere – unlike the seamen who jumped ship or the Jewish retailers who faced discrimination in Europe and North America – they all left for greener pastures.

iron ore and the revival of trade Most German visitors and immigrants in the 1930s came in connection with the gradual re-establishment of the pre-war pattern of trade. That meant, generally speaking, Germany selling modern technology, such as turbines, and general merchandise to Newfoundland and in return buying its ores and lobster. An attempt in April 1919 to induce Germany to purchase dried salt cod from Newfoundland failed, despite severe German food shortages.40 Ore exports to Germany, however, resumed as early as 1920. That trade was as vital to Germany as it was to Newfoundland. On it depended not only the livelihood of Bell Island’s population of 8,000 and the families of 300 resident skilled workers from the mainland but also Germany’s large steel industry. The Treaty of Versailles had deprived Germany of two of its three previous fields of iron ore deposits. To compensate for this loss, it was eager to purchase even higher tonnages of Bell Island ore than before the war. Between 1921 and 1930, deliveries to Germany averaged some 58 per cent of the total ore shipments from Bell Island.41 By the mid-1920s the volume of iron ore imports from the Wabana mines had assumed such significance, one eminent study noted, that they had become one of the most important ore suppliers for the German iron industry. That study was undertaken by German mining engineer A. Hasebrink, who visited Bell Island in the summer of 1925. He travelled to Newfoundland from New York via Boston to Sydney by train and from there with an ore boat of the Dominion Iron and Steel Company to Bell Island. He examined in detail the area’s geological structure and geomorphology, the various forms of ore deposits, the chemical composition of the ore, the estimated reserves of ore, and every detail of the mining operation itself. The study became the chief reference for German researchers dealing with any aspect of Newfoundland geography or ore deposits for decades to come.42 Largely as a result of the ore trade, Germany became Newfoundland’s fourth largest trading partner (after Canada, the United States, and Britain)

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in 1930–31. In return for its imports of Wabana iron ore as well as lead and zinc ores from Buchans, Germany exported machinery and consumer articles to Newfoundland. The Bell Island iron ore mines at Wabana, mismanaged and deeply indebted, changed hands three times in the 1920s. In 1930 two of the four mines closed. After 1931, however, the production and sale of Newfoundland iron ore came to depend even more on the German market than in the decade before. “Had it not been for the German market,” concluded mine historian Wendy Martin, “the Wabana mines might have folded altogether.”43 At first the Depression reduced ore consumption severely. Between 1934 and 1935 only one mine was working, and then only part-time, with Canada and Germany as the only customers. Then Hitler’s rearmament suddenly raised Germany’s appetite for Newfoundland iron ore. By 1938 all four Wabana mines had to be reactivated to keep up with that country’s unsatiable demand. Seventy-three per cent of the total tonnage of Bell Island ore mined in 1938 and the first eight months of 1939 was shipped to Germany.44 Newfoundland’s politicians would have preferred these shipments to go to the United Kingdom, but as an editorial in the Daily News of 31 October 1936 had put it, “British steelmasters go to Spain, North Africa, Scandinavia, anywhere but to the Empire’s storehouse of iron, an asset of incalculable value, that appears to be unappreciated.” In June 1939 German interests were reportedly planning even more ambitious mining developments. They proposed to reopen a lead mine abandoned for sixty-six years at La Manche in Placentia Bay. Ore samples were already being collected to be sent to Germany. If the mill tests proved satisfactory, the German interests were planning to erect a mill at the property. There was “every possibility” of this happening, rejoiced the Daily News on 3 June 1939; “it would be welcome news for residents of Placentia Bay particularly, and for the country as a whole.” The significance of the German trade to the island’s economy, especially in terms of employment at the mines, was such that the Newfoundland and British governments, in view of the growing exchange difficulties in the 1930s, allowed Germany to dump rolled oats and other consumer goods on the Newfoundland market.45 Significant for Newfoundland’s long-term development was the import of German technology in the form of Voith turbines for three newly built hydroelectric-power stations at Seal Cove (Conception Bay) in 1927, Lawn (Burin Peninsula) in 1929, and Pierre Brook (Witless Bay) in 1931. While the Lawn turbine was a relatively small, 250–horsepower Francis type for a 500-horsepower generating station,46 the other two turbines were gigan-

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7.4 Alo Gut, 1939. Courtesy Nora Good.

tic. At Seal Cove the Voith turbine generated 3,400 of a total of 4,900horsepower capacity, and at Pierre Brook the entire power came from the 4,500-horsepower Voith turbine. The Lawn station supplied power to the St. Lawrence fluorspar mines and the Pierre Brook station to the Bell Island mines.47 Voith got the business not only because of its low bid. The deal was facilitated by the proven quality of the turbines Newfoundland had acquired before the war from the J.M. Voith company of Heidenheim, Germany, for its Petty Harbour and Victoria power stations (see chapter 3), as well for the uninterrupted service the company was able to provide by technicians sent even during the war from its branches in the United States and Latin America. Iron ore was a catalyst for the general revival of German-Newfoundland trade in the 1930s that also brought other German business, as well as new immigrants, to the island. One of them was twenty-one-year-old Aloysius Gut, known locally as Alo (see illus. 7.4), who arrived in St John’s from Hamburg with his father, Julius Gut, in October 1930. The child of a wellto-do representative of the German chemical concern Bayer, Alo was born in Tsinanfu, China, and raised in Bombay, India, where his father was stationed until August 1914. They came to Newfoundland as representatives

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of the Hamburg firm of Paatz, Gut and Company, of which Julius Gut was a partner and whose agent in Newfoundland since the late 1920s had been F.G. House and Company. In 1932 Alo Gut, in association with James and Alexander Baird, launched his own business of general imports from all parts of Europe in the building housing the St John’s Board of Trade. Alo became unemployed after the death of Julius Gut in 1934 when the Gut companies folded in connection with the collapse of the Dresdner Bank.48 Nonetheless, he loved nature so much that he stayed on the island, according to his widow, Nora, née Woods, a Newfoundlander. They married in 1946 despite the opposition of his family in Germany.49 The business of Gut and Company was taken up by the Hamburg trading house of Schiebeler and Company, which exported lobster to Germany. The lowering in 1930 of the German duty of $1.25 per can on Newfoundland lobster to 25 cents per can meant that virtually all Newfoundland lobsters found a market in Germany at a higher price than could be obtained elsewhere. The duty had been lowered because Newfoundland admitted German goods at the same rate of duty as British goods, whereas Canada gave Britain a preference over Germany of one-third lower duty.50 Mostly on orders from retailers in St John’s and the outports, Schiebeler imported a wide variety of German manufactured goods from cement and tools to pots and pans, brewing equipment, and cameras. From about 1929, it had a branch office with a permanent representative in St John’s. The first local branch manager, Walter Biehl, was replaced in 1938 by Alfred H. Roeske, a Hamburg native brought to Newfoundland from China. Roeske had left Germany in 1931 to spent three years as the department manager of a Danish firm in Canton, China, and two years as manager for a GermanChinese firm in Hong Kong. Biehl and Roeske are remembered for their ability to undercut anybody by using the exchange rate to their advantage.51

tourists The lists of incoming and outgoing passengers published in the local press in the 1930s contain a strikingly high percentage of German names. The heavy traffic of German freight vessels loading iron ore, pulpwood, and other raw materials, in particular, brought a constant stream of German visitors to Newfoundland. Sometimes the news items disclose their identity and purpose. For example, on 31 August 1931 the Daily News noted the visit to Wabana of Mr O. Schasse from the Flottmann company of Munich, manufacturers of mining machinery. On 12 September 1932 the paper featured the arrival of Professors H. Schrepfer (see chapter 8) and E. Rosenau

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from the University of Frankfurt-am-Main on an ore boat, their sevenweek trip along the coasts and in the interior for geographic and geological research, and their return on an ore boat. On 1 March 1933 Otto Kreisler from Germany was reported patenting his “process for making pulp and fibrous materials” in Newfoundland. Harold Bicher of Germany was noted leaving Bell Island on 21 October 1933 to tour industrial centres of the mainland. The desertion of seven crewmen (six Germans and one Austrian) from their ship loading pulpwood at Nipper’s Harbour formed the topic of an article on 19 July 1935 in the Evening Telegram. On 16 August 1938 two more German seamen were reported to have been charged with desertion from ships at Botwood and Corner Brook. One of them was Jewish and pleaded persecution by his ship’s anti-Semitic crew. German visitors did not come only by sea but in the 1930s for the first time also by air since Newfoundland was a necessary refuelling stop for pioneering transatlantic flights. The first German aviator to cross the Atlantic on a non-stop flight was Hermann Köhl, a German World War i pilot. In April 1928 he took off from Dublin in a W 33L Junkers monoplane with two companions, one of them Baron Günther von Huenefeld. Blinded by snow and fog and running out of fuel – he had expected to reach New York City twelve hours earlier – Köhl crash-landed his singleengine Bremen D-1167 on Greenly Island in the Strait of Belle Isle.52 In August 1930 another German plane on its way from Greenland to New York was forced to land in Cartwright, Labrador. Highlighted by the press as a “German flying boat,” it was piloted by Captain Gronau, who was accompanied by a co-pilot, wireless operator, and mechanic, all members of a German flying school that had sponsored this flight.53 On its return flight in 1932, the “flying boat,” this time identified as a Dornier do-x seaplane, scheduled a refuelling stop in Newfoundland again. The Daily News (20 May 1932) reported that three hundred cars and nearly 1,500 people awaited this marvel of German technology, the largest heavierthan-air plane built by that time, “in biting easterly wind.” They had to go home disappointed because the plane was forced to land late that day at Dildo instead. The next day, however, the crowds returned to the landing site in even larger numbers – reporters counted “fully 5,000 people” – by car, bus, and train to see “the world’s biggest flying boat.” The parade of “eager sightseers” began before daylight. A special thirteen-car train left St John’s early in the morning to take a thousand people to Holyrood. This time their patience was rewarded. Those who saw this “most unusual of flying machines,” made of an aluminum alloy, were struck by its resemblance to a whale. Its huge passenger cabin was divided into four compartments, each

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seating eight persons on either side for a total of sixty-four. The do-x had three decks with the cockpit on top and the gas tanks below the passenger cabin. Powered by twelve propeller engines arranged in tandem pairs, the seaplane consumed two hundred gallons of fuel per hour. Small cockpits next to every engine pair were manned by six engineers monitoring the engines’ performance in flight. The reporters noted with surprise that one of the pilots was a “small and slight” woman and that all of the fourteen German crew members spoke “more or less English.”54 An even more unusual German flying machine was the Zeppelin-type airship Hindenburg, whose crossings over the island in 1936 and 1937 Newfoundlanders eagerly awaited and discussed. The Hindenburg was a spectacular sight. It was the length of three football fields with a luxurious dining room, lounges, and staterooms, and with a gigantic swastika painted on its tail fins. People were reported rushing unto rooftops and using binoculars to catch a glimpse of airship passengers looking down. The first overflight was observed in Corner Brook on 4 June 1936. The second sighting was on 5 July. On its way to Germany from New York, the airliner, according to the press, “flew remarkably slow and was seen by thousands of citizens.” As it hovered over Mount Pearl for a few minutes, passengers could be clearly made out on board.55 On 15 August the Evening Telegram reported the airship passing over Flower’s Cove “so low that identification numbers were discernible.” Five days later it was seen over Cape Race and on 19 September again over St John’s.56 The Evening Telegram reported the last Hindenburg visits on 9 November 1936 and 6 May 1937. The latter was the airship’s last trip. That same day it was destroyed by fire on landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey.

the german consulate The revival of commercial relations with German-speaking Europe was accompanied by German and Austrian endeavours to reopen consulates in Newfoundland. The difficulties of re-establishing consular relations became apparent when undertakings in 1925 to reopen a German consulate in St John’s failed. Early that year merchant-politician Albert Edward Hickman had either initiated his appointment as consul for Germany or consented to accept it. Hickman, a wholesale merchant with diversified business interests, the chairman of the board of numerous local enterprises, and a former president of the St John’s Board of Trade, was also consul general for Greece and Panama. He had had a checkered polit-

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ical career as a former cabinet minister, prime minister for one month in May 1924, and then leader of the Opposition. In April 1925 Hickman received the approval of the German government and was to be provisionally recognized in the Newfoundland Gazette as consul of Germany pending receipt of the King’s Exequatur (which was signed on 17 October 1925). Then, totally unexpectedly by the authorities, Hickman suddenly and inexplicably changed his mind. On 24 August 1925, a few days before the Gazette was to announce his appointment as acting German consul, he posted a notice in the Evening Telegram declaring “for the benefit of those who are interested commercially, or otherwise, with the Republic of Germany ... that I am not the German Consul for Newfoundland and do not intend to accept that post.” Three written requests to Hickman from the colonial secretary in St John’s to explain his abrupt revocation failed to elicit a response, and the appointment never took effect.57 Not until 1929 did the German ambassador in London finally succeed in having a consul for Germany appointed in Newfoundland. He was Norwegian-born Captain Olaf Olson, director of the Hawke’s Bay Trading Company, consul for Sweden, and vice-consul for Finland and Latvia. Barely installed as German consul, however, he tendered his resignation. According to his successor, Olson was “very, very upset about the abuse people heaped on him.”58 At the same time Austria also appointed a consul for Newfoundland who, however, never resided in St John’s. He was Ludwig Kleinwächter, recognized in February 1930 by the governor general of Canada as consul general for Austria in Ottawa with jurisdiction also for Newfoundland.59 With the annexation of Austria by the Third Reich in 1938, the British government considered the exequatur of Austrian consuls to have expired and urged Britain’s dominions and colonies to recognize the protection of former Austrian nationals by the German diplomatic and consular representatives.60 The successor to Olaf Olson as German consul was Robert S. Furlong (1904–96). His appointment and some of his consular activities between 1930 and 1939 can be reconstructed thanks to pertinent documentation found among his posthumous papers,61 as well as from a personal interview with him in 1983. Although Furlong would end his career as chief justice of the Newfoundland Supreme Court from 1959 to 1979, in 1929 he was a young solicitor admitted to the bar only three years earlier and short of clients. His quest for some lucrative business made him focus on Canadian mortgage corporations that might be interested in extending their operations to Newfoundland. “Do you know of any such corpora-

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tion,” Furlong wrote his Montreal friend E.M. Renouf, “to see whether some connections would not be to our mutual benefit.” But Renouf, a publisher with close ties to the German consulate general in Montreal, replied on 1 November with a different kind of connection – that of German consul in Newfoundland. Would Robert care to be nominated? There would be no remuneration except the honour and prestige of holding such an office. “I shall be only too pleased to accept the office,” replied Furlong, “if the Consulate General should think fit to make the appointment.” Since Germany had no embassy in Canada, the German consulate general in Montreal, whose jurisdiction extended to Newfoundland, was under the aegis of the German ambassador in London. After barely two months and requiring only a photograph, the Montreal consulate general had word from Berlin that Furlong’s appointment had been approved. Official confirmation did not come through for another fourteen months, and only after Furlong had threatened to accept a commission as consul for Czechoslovakia instead. Robert Furlong’s appointment as “Consul of the German Reich at St John’s” seemed only the beginning of more troubles to follow. Not knowing a word of German, he asked his superiors whether any general instructions as to the conduct of the consulate could be issued in English. He also worried about recovering his consular expenses from fees charged for official acts, as prescribed in the regulations, if a portion of these fees had to be remitted to the consulate general in Montreal. On the first point, his superiors in Montreal and London tried to comply. But some material and correspondence in German continued to arrive, as well as German visitors and tourists with little knowledge of English. Reluctantly, Furlong therefore embarked on a crash course in German at his own expense. To this end he ordered from the Linguaphone Language Institute in London sixteen German conversational records at the steep price of £6 16s. How much progress, if any, he made in this endeavour cannot be determined. Concerning his consular expenses, Furlong wrote to the secretary of the German embassy in London in March 1931, “I am still at a loss to understand from what sources [these] ... are to be met. They will not be unduly heavy but the correspondence is considerable and the items for postage and stationery are alone worthy of consideration, whilst clerical work and translation must also be paid for, and is being paid for out of my own pocket.” And he took this occasion to propose a strategy for increasing the number of official consular transactions that would in turn increase the number of fees he could charge and compensate him for his financial outlay. Since iron ore was shipped in large quantities to Germany, was it

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“not possible for the shippers to be required to have the necessary documents verified by this office?” Such verification, he added, was necessary with other commodities consigned to German ports. Deep down, Furlong hoped all along to make a fortune from German ships, as he admitted in 1983. Unfortunately, the ore carriers turned out to be almost all Norwegian vessels discharging in Rotterdam. The only German ship that ever paid Furlong a fee was the Christoph von Doornum. On her last trip she was prevented from leaving Botwood as war appeared imminent, and her crew was interned (see chapter 10). As consul, Furlong had to devote much of his time to receiving visitors from Germany: tourists, journalists, scientists, and business people. He recalled the visits of Hans Schrepfer and Colin Ross (see chapter 8), the latter accompanied by his wife and small son. Fluent English-speakers, they all had tea with Furlong and went around town with him. Ross, though appearing physically unattractive, struck Furlong as “a man of obviously considerable intellectual ability.” Young Ross, with a Scottish first name like his father, wore a kilt in the tartan of the Ross clan. They had maintained an interest in Scottish roots, Ross told the curious Furlong, because great-grandfather Ross was a physician from Scotland who had settled in Germany. The constant coming and going of Germans throughout the 1930s, some of them Nazi officials acting as if they were giving directions, increasingly irked Furlong. Local Germans, especially business-people, also claimed his time. Some of them, under the guise of commission merchants, opened businesses and offices on Water Street. One of those coming to Furlong for advice and help was the manager of Paatz, Gut and Company in the Board of Trade building when his Hamburg firm went bankrupt after the Dresdner Bank collapsed during the Depression. Another one was Walter Biehl, manager of Schiebeler and Company, who became a good friend of Furlong. Most of Furlong’s consular correspondence, he recalled in 1983, dealt with people looking for trading activities in Newfoundland. Some official inquiries concerned economic development projects such as the construction of the power plant at Pierre Brook. In this case Furlong’s reply enabled German turbine manufacturer Voith to place a successful bid. Furlong seems to have charged no fees for answering queries from Germany for information concerning the addresses of friends and relatives missing in Newfoundland. A request by Hans von Feldmann from Bremen for genealogical data regarding St John’s residents Phoebe Feldmann and her two daughters Margarethe and Stella May entailed personal communications by Furlong of the persons in question and correspondence. In

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addition, he offered his services as facilitator for ongoing contacts between the parties in Bremen and St John’s. Another letter, from one Meta Stein from the Berlin area, wanted to know whether her father, Robert Carl Fritz Bernhard Stein, was still alive. She knew that he had emigrated to St John’s in the years 1878–80, but did not seem to have learned that he had started another family with children in Newfoundland and had died in 1914 (see chapter 4). Since she lived in poverty after losing her business during the Depression, Meta Stein wondered whether her father in Newfoundland had left her any assets to ease her plight. Furlong’s reply is not known. The German consul found his most distasteful tasks to be registering German nationals for military service and invalidating passports of German Jews in accordance with decrees issued by the Nazi regime. The call on German nationals to register with the German consul appeared in the local press on 28 May 1938 at the request of the German government. In accordance with a German law of 3 February 1938, Germans living abroad were to have their status cleared and their liability for military and labour services in Germany determined. The local consul was authorized to accept applications for temporary or complete exemptions from the draft, provided supporting documentation was enclosed. Those failing to register could be deprived of their German nationality and become stateless. Aiming at “avoiding or limiting [the] number likely to become stateless,” Newfoundland Commissioner for Justice L.E. Emerson considered legislation compelling resident Germans to comply with this call. He abandoned this course of action, however, on the advice of the dominions secretary. The latter urged the Governor of Newfoundland to follow British practice and allow aliens affected by the German law complete freedom to comply with it or not.62 The local German consul was also charged with the responsibility of substituting German passports for Austrian ones because the latter were declared invalid after 31 December 1938. Another task was to confiscate all passports belonging to Jews of German or Austrian nationality by the end of October that year. A German decree of 7 October declared all passports belonging to German Jews invalid and required holders of such passports living abroad to surrender them to the local German representative. The decree declared failure to surrender such a passport within a two-week period a punishable offence. For travel purposes, authorities in Germany issued Jews a new passport with a large “J” stamped in red ink on the front page that entitled them to exit Germany but not to return unless granted a special return visa.63

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German refugee Max Katz (whose experience will be discussed in chapters 9 and 11) was not aware of this decree when he asked Consul Furlong in November 1938 to have his and his family’s German passports renewed upon their expiration. Katz had left Germany for Newfoundland in April 1937 and arrived in St John’s the following March with his wife and two sons to assume the position of rabbi for the local Hebrew congregation. Upon learning of Katz’s request, German Consul General Erich Windels directed Furlong to send him the passports of the Katz family, allegedly to determine “whether new passports are necessary or whether the passports can be extended,” but in reality to retain them for good. Furthermore, he wanted to “know confidentially whether Rev. Max Katz, during his stay at St John’s has refrained from anti-German remarks or activities.” Furlong sent in the passports on 15 December 1938, twice repeating his request that they be either renewed or extended. Katz, he affirmed, had “scrupulously avoided any political activities” in St John’s and had not been known to make any anti-German remarks. Furthermore, Furlong had learned that Katz never had engaged in any political activities in Germany and that “his record as a German patriot must be considered to be unblemished. During the Great War, he saw active service with the Infanterie Lieb Regiment of Munich and was in the front line from June 1916 to August 1918. He has been decorated with the Iron Cross, 2nd class, the Bavarian Military Decoration with Crown and Sword, 3rd class, and with Austrian and Hungarian decorations. From what I know of this man, I believe him to be a loyal and sincere German citizen, and recommend that all his passport privileges be extended.” But Furlong confiscated their passports, Katz declared to the Newfoundland Constabulary in October 1940, without ever renewing or returning them.64 In his 1983 interview Furlong claimed to have resigned as consul for Germany in 1938 in protest over the policies of the Nazi regime.65 However, neither his official letter of resignation, dated 31 January 1939, nor his brief proposal of 19 January to resign contain a hint of such a motive. Instead, the 31 January letter lists increasing work pressure and a local appointment as reasons. It was “with the greatest reluctance” that he resigned from work he considered “of considerable interest,” he wrote the consul general and assured him, “I shall be very glad to continue to serve” in the way of local information. The St John’s Evening Telegram (4 April 1939) and government records document that he acted as consul until March 1939. Thereafter his duties were carried out by Erich Windels, the German consul general for Canada in Ottawa, who had no plans to find a local

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successor.66 One of Windels’s last acts as consul general for Newfoundland was to protest in June 1939 to the Newfoundland government about the planned showing of the film Confessions of a Nazi Spy. The film, then running in Toronto and Montreal, constituted in Windels’s opinion, “antiGerman propaganda of the worst kind ... calculated to inflame the public against Germany and German nationals.” This effect was evident to Windels from its press reviews. His request, however, that the Newfoundland Board of Censors prevent the showing of the film was rejected. “There is no legislation in Newfoundland,” replied Commissioner Emerson, “under which the showing of such a film could be prohibited on the grounds which you describe.”67

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8 “Backwoodsmen of the sea”

Germans Look at Newfoundland between the World Wars The tragedy for the Newfoundland fishermen was that the fish supply did not diminish and force them to adopt timely changes. Colin Ross, Zwischen U.S.A. und dem Pol, 1934

The revival of trade, tourism, and consular links in the 1930s also reawakened German scholarly interest in Newfoundland after the war. This led to the articulation of more comprehensive and diversified German perceptions of Newfoundland, its people, and its culture. Instrumental in shaping the image that German-speaking readers developed of Newfoundland were, in particular, the prolific travel literature from the pen of Colin Ross and the scholarly publications of Hans Schrepfer.

colin ross The first and most widely read post-war portrait came from the pen of Colin Ross (1885–1945). Ross visited Newfoundland and Labrador in 1933 and published his impressions in 1934 in his widely read book Zwischen U.S.A und dem Pol (Between usa and the pole). Despite his Scottish ancestry and intimate familiarity with the United States, the Viennese-born Ross was proud of his German identity and convictions. A compulsive globe-trotting travel writer, he published his observations and experiences of foreign cultures in some two dozen best-selling books. His astute analyses showed him to be an admirer of these cultures and an opponent of narrow racism and militarist imperialism. Although his books openly paraded Nazi sympathies even before Hitler’s assumption of power, Ross did not join the Nazi Party until October 1941. The misguided belief that Nazi rule would enable Germans again to take pride in their identity was

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one of the reasons for his suicide in 1945. What appears to have attracted Ross to National Socialism was its uncompromising quest for Germany’s lost power, an attraction he shared with his friend Karl Haushofer, the founder of geopolitics.1 Ross’s keen awareness of the importance of geopolitics is apparent from the beginning of his book. So is his knowledge of the historical context. In his perspective, Newfoundland had once played a pivotal role in the French and British conquest of North America, a geopolitical fact obscured by the island’s later insignificance. Better remembered was the role that the island’s cod and fishermen had played in supplying the “impulse, means, and opportunities” for Britain’s rise from a third- or fourth-rate agricultural state to a world power. Britain had been able to annex peacefully the sixteenth-century “international cod republic,” governed annually by the commander of the first ship to reach the fishing grounds. Ross saw elements of this tradition preserved until the nineteenth century in the late and sparse settlement of the island, neglect of agriculture, and reliance of the population exclusively on the fishery for its livelihood. According to Ross, the continued abundance of cod, as he himself witnessed in 1933, encouraged the preservation of fishing methods, curing techniques, and an outport lifestyle unchanged since the days of Martin Luther’s Reformation. The ubiquity of sprawling flakes for drying fish made visitors aware of this narrowly based economy from the moment they entered St John’s harbour. These flakes were the “most grotesque pile structures climbing up the cliffs, scaffoldings, and primitive straw and reedcovered huts, as one would expect to find in the South Sea, Siam, and Burma but never in a country inhabited by Europeans.”2 Ross found it astonishing that even with the salting and curing of cod, their staple product, the Newfoundland fishermen did not modernize their antiquated ways, regardless of dropping fish prices and loss of markets to Iceland and Norway. The effect of their poor diet was clearly visible in their physique. “The tragedy for the Newfoundland fishermen was that the fish supply did not diminish and force them to adopt timely changes.” Fixation on the fishery, Ross continued, also entailed neglect of the island’s interior and its resources until very recently. It took an Englishman to open the unexplored interior in 1905 and start utilizing its resources for the production of paper. Ross visited Corner Brook and rated its huge factory complex of steel and glass “one of the most modern, largest, and magnificent paper mills in the world.” Suddenly Newfoundland had become aware of the value of riches in the interior – lead, zinc, copper, iron, and coal – whose earlier exploration fishing interests had prevented.

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Although the island had all the ingredients for an iron and steel industry – coal, iron ore, and limestone – in close proximity and near the coast, Ross could explain its absence only by Canadian control of Newfoundland’s finances. When the world’s largest iron ore deposits were discovered on Bell Island, the Nova Scotia Steel Company bought the entire island for $120,000. Newfoundlanders had to content themselves working in their mines for Canadian employers, and in their woods and paper mills for British and American ones. Thus, despite the existence of large mineral resources, Ross found Newfoundland’s living standard to be lower than that of any other Western country. He could not understand why Newfoundland was importing virtually all its vegetables and other foodstuffs when most of its land was still undeveloped wilderness. Ross believed that Newfoundland could be entirely self-sufficient if it would encourage agricultural production in addition to moderate industrialization. Furthermore, self-sufficiency would bolster the nascent national sentiment manifested by the growing urban middle and professional classes, secondary schools, and new university. But Britain had aborted the evolution towards national sovereignty by its sudden withdrawal of dominion status and parliamentary democracy, allegedly on the grounds of fiscal corruption. In reality, Ross believed, Britain would not have assumed the considerable financial responsibility for this old colony had there not been weightier, marine-strategic reasons. Newfoundland’s drift away from the mother country, its aversion to joining Canada, and the possibility of an American annexation of this “diving board across the Atlantic” allegedly forced the hand of Britain. The island’s dominant geopolitical position, considered irrelevant in the nineteenth century, was regaining its significance with the development of new communication technologies. This shift explained Britain’s eagerness to reassert its control over Newfoundland, while prepared to let go of Canada, Australia, South Africa, and even India to consolidate the empire, Ross speculated. The world’s largest and most important cable station and indispensable refuelling stop for all transatlantic air traffic to come seemed worth defending against whatever challenge might arise in the North Atlantic. Ross gave the gist of his argument a timely new twist in an article for the Kölnische Zeitung of 17 December 1933 that he headlined “Newfoundland gets a dictator.” Why was the presumed irreversible evolution towards self-government in the Commonwealth, which the British liked to present to other nations as the model road to freedom, not valid for Newfoundland? Why was Newfoundland going in the opposite direction and accepting an even more autocratic form of government than the thirteen

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American colonies had before their Declaration of Independence? Was not the proposed assumption of legislative and executive powers by a governor with an advisory commission of six appointees “dictatorship in its purest form,” Ross wondered. To be sure, the trigger for this radical change was the dominion’s financial collapse. Ross attributed this collapse to political corruption fostered by unrestrained liberalism, foreign ownership of natural resources, and abject poverty among the majority of the population. Despite the island’s immense wealth of natural resources, he insisted, “nowhere do white men live so shabbily and primitively as in Newfoundland.” All this, however, did not completely explain to Ross the underlying, marine-strategic reasons for Britain’s intervention. The alternative to that intervention would have been the intervention of Canada or the United States, each of which had a clear strategic interest in the island. But Newfoundlanders would rather have their freedom temporarily suspended by Britain than lose it forever to Canada. Ross found it quite likely that Britain would fortify Newfoundland in the future as an air and naval base controlling the North Atlantic. “But who knows,” he concluded, “perhaps a national dictator will arise who will end all previous mismanagement.” On 5 January 1940 the St John’s Evening Telegram quoted from a review of Ross’s book Zwischen U.S.A. und dem Pol that had appeared in the American monthly Magazine Digest. The review projected an image of Ross with which he has remained widely identified in North America. The reason he had visited Newfoundland, the article suggested, was to look for places where the German people and German interests could expand. Otherwise his attention to the strategic position of Newfoundland as a sea fortress flanking the routes of North Atlantic traffic would make little sense. Despite its wrong contentions – “in true Nazi propagandist style” – of possible war between the United States and Britain and of the dominions drifting away from the mother country, Ross’s book is credited with shrewdly observing that “this wooded island with its innumerable harbours lost in forests, rocks and hills, is a powerful natural fortification. A pair of batteries placed in the woods invisible to fliers, and the most powerful fleet could be driven off, while from its hidden harbours airplanes and small battleships could dominate all ocean movement.” It was noted that the same Ross had toured the United States with expensive photographic equipment and taken pictures of “highly specialized industrial plants.” The article seemed to concur with the US Senate Committee on Un-American Activities that Ross was in reality a German spy and German secret-service agent; he should therefore be prevented from ever again setting foot on North American soil.

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hans schrepfer Germany’s foremost authority on Newfoundland, Hans Schrepfer (1897–1967), however, in 1936 credited Ross with being a gifted observer whose perspective had considerable depth. A geography professor at the University of Frankfurt am Main and an expert on Finland, Schrepfer turned his attention to Newfoundland in 1932 when he spent seven weeks traversing the island to collect data for studies published four years later. These represented the most detailed German description of the geomorphology, as well as of the economic and historical geography, of the island for decades to come. They also established Schrepfer’s reputation as Germany’s expert on the geography of Newfoundland. When he conducted his fieldwork, the scholarly study of Newfoundland geography was still in its infancy. He found the interior of the island inaccurately mapped as late as 1933 and the entire area south and southeast of Red Indian Lake “even less known than central Africa.” W.E. Cormack’s well-publicized Narrative of a Journey across the Island of Newfoundland in 1822 was still the only exploration of the entire interior to date, and the 1913 publication La géographie de Terre-Neuve, by the French scholar Robert Perret, the only authoritative geography of Newfoundland. Schrepfer’s work, as articulated in his reports of 1936,3 expanded on foundations laid by Ross and Bruno Dietrich.4 It focused on the dichotomy of Newfoundland’s economic space, that is, an ocean-oriented coastal space and a land-based interior one, whose uneven evolution Schrepfer viewed as a unique global phenomenon. In the contrast between the two spaces, he saw the island’s geographic leitmotif, which manifested itself in everything from its morphology and climate to its history of settlement, utilization of resources, and unbalanced state of research. Drawing largely on available English-language sources, Schrepfer examined the entire spectrum of geographic aspects, from the geomorphological and flora characteristics to a discussion of the natural resources, history of settlement, and lifestyle. The fishing settlements represented to him typical expressions of the island’s primitive culture; they all looked alike, were functionally pragmatic, and lacking a sense of beauty. The flakes reminded Schrepfer, like Ross, of exotic images of Austral-Asiatic settlements, and the dirty stops and junctions along the trans-insular railway, of the Wild West. The amphitheatre-like location of St John’s, with its numerous churches and flat-roofed large buildings projected in his eyes the character of a southern style of settlement onto a Nordic-harsh scenery. The city left a contrasting

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impression with its electric streetcars and pulsating downtown business life, the slums at each end of Water Street, the “numerous stately villas hidden between beautiful gardens,” and the clashing appearance in the streets of the island’s richest and poorest inhabitants. Schrepfer dwelt on the strong contrast between the traditional fishing industry and what he termed the new economy, a notion he appears to have borrowed from J.R. Smallwood’s book The New Newfoundland (1931). History could be blamed for the hopeless obsolescence and decline of the fishery, but why did farming remain at such a primitive level and why in 1932 was it still “the most neglected branch of Newfoundland’s economy,” he wondered. After all, farming was a relatively successful sector of the economy of Canada’s maritime provinces and could be equally successful on the island’s west coast. “No doubt, Newfoundland should be able to feed not only its present population, but even a significantly larger one without any outside help,” Schrepfer reasoned, and he suggested that “the human prerequisites rather than the natural ones were lacking for this.”5 Against this background, the beginning of iron ore mining in 1895, the erection of paper mills in Grand Falls (1905) and Corner Brook (1923), and the mining of lead and zinc at Buchans (1927) marked “a veritable revolution. The treasures of the interior superseded the gifts of the sea.” The exploitation of the island’s natural inland resources was characterized by “generous investment of foreign capital and the most up-to-date machinery, and concentration on a few highly rationalized plants of gigantic size and enormous productivity.” This new economy shared only two characteristics with the old fishery: its entire production was destined for export, and its processing method amounted to a reckless exploitation of resources. Although Newfoundland had all the ingredients for refining industries, all its riches in minerals were exported unprocessed because the foreign capital so dictated. On the other hand, the new economy signified a generous opening of the interior with new settlements, roads, and trains. The Bell Island and Buchans mines captured Schrepfer’s particular attention, in part because of their German connections. The Wabana deposits of high-grade hematite he rated among the largest iron deposits in the world and many times larger than all German deposits combined. Wabana shipments to Germany were cheaper than the inland transport of German ore from Hesse to the Ruhr smelters, because the ore boats could be loaded directly next to the mines. Schrepfer visited the Buchans mine only three and a half years after its opening, and he was fascinated by this “oasis of modern technology and civilization in the middle of the wilderness.” Although the mining operation employed some 350 workers in 1932, its

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conversion of the raw ore into powdery concentrate was “so rationalized that in the processing plant only machines, and very few humans were needed.” That year the mine’s entire production of lead, zinc, and copper was shipped to Germany. Schrepfer had much praise for the layout of the company town with its movie theatre, well-equipped hospital, football field, tennis courts, and three churches. Its population of 1,100 lived in “neat, light-painted wooden houses, each surrounded by a garden, decorated with verandas, and furnished with electric light and running water. Indeed, an exemplary, clean workers’ settlement!”6 Next to Buchans, Schrepfer considered the new residential Townside district of Corner Brook to be Newfoundland’s most beautiful and most modern settlement. He referred to its neat and clean two-storey houses, away from the noise of the mill, protected by the peace of the forest, and equipped with every appliance and modern convenience imaginable, as “jewel boxes.” The large number of automobiles indicated a high standard of living and contrasted with the disorder, dirt, and chaotic layout of the town’s west and east ends. Schrepfer was fascinated by the state-of-the-art technologies and other outstanding characteristics of the paper mill: the dimensions of its buildings, its amazing productivity, and enormous consumption of raw materials; its total reliance on local raw materials and hence autarky of production; the high degree of rationalization as a result of the large-scale substitution of human labour with machines; and finally, the “marvellous clockwork-like” direction and organization of the production process, from the cutting of the trees to the shipping of the finished paper rolls. The huge capital investment in Corner Brook for Schrepfer augured far-reaching changes to come. It demonstrated not only the ways modern industries were created in a space that had still been wilderness a short while ago. It also put to rest the long-cultivated dream of an international division of labour between the industrial and the raw material– producing overseas countries.7 Schrepfer was equally impressed with the paper mill at Grand Falls, for example, its modern technology, production methods, and care for workers’ accommodation. Although the entire output of Grand Falls was destined for only one newspaper, the Daily Mail in London, the town remained relatively unaffected by the Depression. Schrepfer noticed the “surprisingly large” number of cars and high standard of living in the two company towns. Grand Falls, with its nicely kept-up one-family residences and “friendly gardens,” appeared to Schrepfer a “model social achievement” and Newfoundland’s only town manifesting a culture of its own, a result perhaps of its hidden location. An associated success story was the

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development of Botwood in the Bay of Exploits. The shipping of paper from Grand Falls, as well as lead and zinc concentrates from Buchans, had transformed Botwood overnight from a sawmill hamlet into Newfoundland’s largest transshipment port with huge storage sheds, two long piers, and electric elevators. The Newfoundland government, Schrepfer noted, had no forest management and lacked any conservation policy. While the export value of Newfoundland’s paper alone had surpassed that of its dried cod after 1928, this was achieved at the price of the relentless destruction of ever-larger areas of pulpwood. The paper companies were free to raid their immense forested concessions at will with no obligations to reforestation. This issue was symptomatic of the government’s attitude towards all national resources and of its bungling administration of the country’s affairs in general. Administrative incompetence, however, was only one of the causes responsible for the economic collapse of 1933, according to Schrepfer’s “impartial” inquiry. Another was Britain’s prohibition (without written permission) of settlement and the pursuit of trades other than fishing until 1811. And a third cause was the Newfoundlander himself and his inability to change the course of life forced upon him.8 Unlike Germans, Schrepfer contended, Newfoundlanders had no attachment to the land and its soil. Their temperament and outlook of a fishing people made them “daring and farsighted at sea, but helpless and narrowminded on land of which they know only the small cove of their native village.” Devoted to an economy of exploiting and harvesting, they preferred emigration to cultivating the soil. In their secluded bays and coves they were inaccessible to new incentives and, because of the lack of schools and outside contacts, prone to succumb to cultural retrogression. This manifested itself in illiteracy, bad manners, a low level of hygiene, poor clothing, primitive and dirty houses, and the bad habit of spitting. On the other hand, they were “good natured, friendly, absolutely honest, extremely helpful, and amiable.” Oriented totally towards fishing, they had failed in the exploration of the interior, which they had left to foreigners. These “have appropriated the natural wealth of the interior for the purpose of exploitation, and also furnished the majority of the directors and leading officials of these companies.” The local passivity in economic matters and problems amazed Schrepfer. “Folding one’s hands in one’s lap and waiting for the saviour” was the attitude he observed during the economic crisis in 1931, an attitude not too different from “oriental fatalism.” Small businesses in St John’s were in the hands of Jews, Syrians, and Chinese. Besides lacking economic drive, the

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Newfoundlander also lacked a sense for money and saving. Hard-earned money was spent fast, often on items of little use. Owning a car was the highest aspiration, although the lack of roads severely restricted the driving opportunities. Some habits of consumption and lifestyle were unmistakably borrowed from the United States. A certain laziness was quite manifest to Schrepfer, who observed “a lot of people spending their time doing nothing.” Newfoundland lacked the classes of farmers and artisans as foundations of its economy. All local products were exported; all goods essential for living had to be imported. The fatal consequences of this total dependence on the world economy laid the ground for the collapse of 1932.9 The current “disharmonious and unhappy economic structure” did not necessarily have to be that way, Schrepfer concluded. The development of agriculture and industry would make the country self-sufficient and independent of the ups and downs of the world economy. A different, “content,” economically autonomous Newfoundland was entirely imaginable: “a Newfoundland with a broad-based agrarian foundation, with systematic government forest management, with an indigenous heavy industry, with a sufficient production of consumer goods, with a developed communications network linking all parts of the island. Such a Newfoundland would not have to, decade after decade as in the past, let thousands of its children go to the United States and Canada because it has neither bread nor work for them; it could, on the contrary, even become a land of immigration.”10 Apart from their advocacy of economic autarky, Schrepfer’s publications of 1936 did not display any particular sympathies for geopolitics or National Socialism. But when he revisited his findings ten years later as World War ii was in its fourth year, Newfoundland’s geopolitical importance could no longer be ignored. In that year, he was bound to view the British and American impact in a more critical light. It is therefore not surprising that in his review article “Newfoundland and its waters,” published in a 1943 collection of contributions titled “Current problems of the New World,”11 Schrepfer came down more harshly on Britain as the main culprit for Newfoundland’s problems, of which the United States was eager to take advantage. The war had confirmed to Schrepfer the correctness of Colin Ross’s vision of Newfoundland’s marine strategical significance and made Britain’s failure to utilize its defensive potential appear even more incomprehensible. “No warship, no air plane, no troops were stationed there.” Instead, the United States’ establishment of naval and air force bases in

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1940 had in effect made the island economically, politically, and militarily an American protectorate. Only the future would show, Schrepfer reasoned, whether Newfoundland’s gradual alienation from the mother country had now become a permanent one. This was not the first time Britain had misjudged the value of the island, he continued.12 British policy in reality served the purpose of securing for British merchant venturers the exclusive right to ports and fish-drying places while keeping troublesome competitors at bay. The outlook of Newfoundlanders consequently became “seaward”; they remained “men of one idea, and that idea is fish.”13 Schrepfer adopted this metaphor of E.B. Shaw and J.D. Rogers14 to sketch an image of fishermen whose occupation had sadly deformed their minds, health, offspring, and lifestyle. Leading hidden, secluded existences in their 1,300 small outports, many with a population of no more than a dozen, Newfoundlanders often lacked the rudiments of medical care, hygiene, and education. Incest was widespread, and tradition was the only law they knew. Isolation turned them into “backwoodsmen of the sea,” lowered their intellectual demands to the level of a primitive people, and turned their lives into a “true Robinsonade,” without, however, Robinson Crusoe’s spirit of invention. Their methods of catching and processing fish reflected the fact that for them “the clock had stopped long ago.” What kept their livelihood going was the inexhaustible wealth of fish, which had not declined in 450 years. Fishing and curing still proceeded in exactly the same manner as described by the German observer T.A. Verkrüzen (see chapter 5) sixty years earlier, regardless of the loss of traditional markets to Norwegian and Icelandic competition. It did not seem to bother the fishermen that their backward methods left them only one-eighth of the total catches at the Grand Banks. They approached all economic issues with naïveté and passivity. The seasonal nature of their occupation had resulted in long months of “waiting for tomorrow,” a typical Newfoundland habit according to Shaw, as quoted by Schrepfer. Despite the shrinking export value of fish, Schrepfer quoted statistics showing that the fishery still provided a livelihood for at least fifteen times more Newfoundlanders than the burgeoning British, American, and Canadian-owned corporations then exploiting the resources of the interior. J.R. Smallwood’s The New Newfoundland, according to Schrepfer, was in error when it credited the appearance of these corporations with the beginning of a new, happy age with guaranteed permanent production and permanent employment. Smallwood had overlooked the fact that the foreign capital was not interested in carrying out a social mission and serving as Newfoundland’s benefactor. Its sole aspiration was the fastest amortization pos-

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sible of its investment and profit. Schrepfer went even further and called the new economy a “grandiose economy of exploitation ... a veritable looting.” The foreign corporations’ concern for modern housing was only for the labour they needed, not for the human beings. Indeed, Schrepfer summed up his new insights, “the foreign capital has not made Newfoundland richer and happier, but on the contrary, creamed off high profits, diminished the natural reserves of the island, and conjured up new problems and tensions.”15

heinz lehmann Schrepfer’s critical 1943 perspective on British colonial policy was shared in varying degrees by German geographers and historians in the Third Reich, especially during World War ii. One of these was the historian Heinz Lehmann (1907–85), author of a two-volume history of the German element in Canada and numerous articles on Canada, the United Kingdom, and the British Empire. In 1944 he published a sixteen-page commentary on Newfoundland in a slim volume on Canada and Newfoundland as part of a series of background books on foreign countries.16 It portrays Newfoundland’s political life as “one of the crassest examples of parliamentarydemocratic mismanagement.” Government had become the football of frequently changing parliamentary groupings who adopted the labels “conservative” and “liberal” while eager to distribute sinecures and patronage and to cultivate nepotism. Their educational level and economic plight prevented the majority of the population from participating in politics and encouraged the emergence of a type of professional politician who had only his own advantage in mind. For Lehmann, the apex in corrupt management was the deal that the government struck in 1900 (i.e., 1898)with entrepreneur (Robert Gillespie) Reid to finance construction of the railway link between St John’s and Port aux Basques. The deal assigned to Reid all the coal deposits, the railway itself, the post and telegraph services, the local shipping traffic, and the St John’s dock. The Newfoundland legislature, “always willing to accommodate the exploitative requests of the plutocracy,” did nothing to raise the living standard of the impoverished fishing population. The island’s only public library was not opened until 1936. The population was so poor, Lehmann maintained, that numerous women and children could not leave their houses during the winter months because they lacked shoes and appropriate clothes. The Commission of Government installed in 1933 had done little to alleviate the plight of the fishing population. It turned out to

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be primarily a trustee of British creditor interests and continued the giveaway of the country’s natural wealth to private corporations. The wartime portrayals of Newfoundland politics and society by Lehmann and Schrepfer may be categorized as borderline cases of Nazi propaganda. But their perspectives and the evidence supporting them were based almost entirely on English-language sources. Some of these, as the following example shows, were widely publicized in Newfoundland and in the United Kingdom before the war.

third reich media view newfoundland On 4 April 1939 the Observer’s Weekly of St John’s informed its readers: One night last week listeners who had tuned into the English news broadcast of the German short wave station were astounded to hear of the frightful conditions prevailing in the British colony of Newfoundland. The German announcer told of thousands of people starving on threepence a day and said, in effect, that before Britain criticized other countries, she would do well to mend her own fences. Listeners had to wait for the next morning’s paper to discover what it was all about. In it they found a synopsis of the first two articles about Newfoundland written by Morley Richards, the special investigator sent to this country by the London Daily Express. Richards, who got about a good bit while he was here, described the condition of one quarter of the people living on the dole, and an equal number earning insufficient wages. The people, he said, were living near the starvation line.

The Morley Richards report was discussed in the British parliament, and editorials in the British press “strongly condemned the shocking conditions reported to exist in Newfoundland,” which was labelled “an imperial slum.” The continuation of British assistance at the current rate was equivalent to passing the “death sentence” upon Newfoundland, the Observer’s Weekly quoted the London Evening Standard. An early brief summary of the Morley Richards report appeared in the German-language daily Posener Tageblatt of 28 March 1939, the newspaper of Poland’s German-speaking minority, under the headline “‘Blessings’ of English colonization.” A more detailed summary appeared in Deutscher Kolonial Dienst of 15 May 1939. It referred to people’s lack of clothes preventing them from their dwellings in the winter, the absence of compulsory education, the high rate of illiteracy and tuberculosis, and the drastic shrinking of Newfoundland’s foreign trade. Although “the majority of Newfoundlanders demanded participation in the government,” the article

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quoted Richards in conclusion, “there was no local government anywhere on the island.” For the Nazi propaganda machine, reports such as Morley Richards’s and the public uproar it generated were considered most welcome breaking news. Nazi-controlled German media during the Third Reich liked to feature and dwell on negative information about British colonial policy. The Morley Richards debate, not surprisingly, inspired articles in the German press about Newfoundland, which normally would have gotten very little media attention. On 5 April 1939 the Munich issue and on 14 April the Vienna issue of the Völkischer Beobachter, the official Nazi Party mouthpiece, carried identical fairly lengthy articles under the headlines “A dominion hungers: Newfoundland, a dark page of British colonial policy” and “A model chapter of British humanity,” written by the paper’s London correspondent Dr Theodor Böttiger. His aim was to summarize the highlights of the Morley Richards report which had appeared verbatim in five instalments of the Daily Express. This report, the correspondent claimed, was an illustration of “how indifference, administrative sloppiness, and human insufficiency had run a country into the ground whose resources are estimated to be worth 20 billion dollars.” One-quarter of the colony’s “tough, hardened, and fearless seafaring population” depended on welfare, which was not paid in cash but in groceries, at the value of 80 pfennig a day. Almost as many did not earn much beyond this rate. Many women and children could not leave their dwellings because they had no clothes to wear and walked around in their houses practically naked. Thousands lived on desolate rocks, hundreds of miles away from the nearest doctor. The lack of compulsory school attendance led to most children leaving school at age twelve or not attending school at all. Children from age ten on had to share prison with adult criminals and the main diet for babies was canned milk. Active tuberculosis was rampant, but there was no sanatorium for lung diseases. Then followed a detailed description of a welfare recipient’s three-and-ahalf-square-metre one-room accommodation and its primitive furnishings, which served simultaneously as a living room, kitchen, laundry room, and coal cellar. “I have seen the slums of London and Leeds and other cities,” the articles quotes Richards’s report, “but nowhere have I seen such misery.” It would not be difficult to end the misery with the help of a larger loan, a return to self-government, and the acquisition of a fishing fleet enabling Newfoundlanders to catch and process fresh fish, the article continued to quote Richards. But British loans went to Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Turkey, and China instead, in order to block the expansion of

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countries such as Germany not blessed with colonies, the article concluded. “Newfoundland may starve ... but why should British humanity care?” Morley Richards’s report, though sensational, was not the only source for Third Reich media attention of Newfoundland. On 21 March 1937 the Frankfurter Zeitung inferred from reports in the Manchester Guardian of a recent mass rally in St John’s, which had sent a petition to the king, that the Commission of Government had failed. Most of the island’s 1,300 settlements suffered from the severest poverty, malnourishment, and lack of education. Children were dressed in burlap because the fabric for making clothes was unaffordable. Although the Commission had managed to increase government revenues by more than half a million dollars, it had allowed the plight of the population to assume an “alarming character.” An energetic government should have been able to create new wealth and employment by finding some capital willing to explore the island’s rich mineral resources and to build roads. According to the article’s source of information, the people had good reason to lose their patience and accuse the Commission of incompetence. Similar island-wide mass demonstrations were the topic of Neues Wiener Tagblatt of 29 July 1939. Under the headline “State of emergency in Newfoundland” the paper reported recent protests from the growing numbers of unemployed against the low daily dole of three pence, which was mostly paid in kind. Not all Third Reich newspaper reports manifested a desire to exploit local discontent. Examples of articles aiming at a more general understanding of conditions or a less ideologically oriented presentation of facts can be found as late as 1937, 1939, 1940, and 1943. The first item, with the caption “Newfoundland, dominion out of service,” was published in the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten of 16 February 1937 as part of a series on changes in the British Empire. The author, with the initials “F.J.,” wondered whether Newfoundland was ever a viable dominion or even a real colony. Its history until recently revealed, he argued, that for centuries the “colonists” considered the offshore waters and not the land as their raison d’être. “The colony of Newfoundland had no more ground under its feet than water has wooden supports.” That was the dilemma of its statehood and economy. When the economic crisis struck and fish prices plummeted, the writer expounded, “the Newfoundlander looked around himself and realized that the sea had abandoned him while he had not yet inquired about the land.”17 A surprisingly apolitical analysis of “Newfoundland’s deteriorating economic condition,” written by a Montreal correspondent, appeared in the 29 July 1939 issue of Nachrichten für Außenhandel. The article addressed

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the challenges faced by the Commission of Government in view of the severe economic downturn in 1938 after the economy had appeared to improve through 1937, largely as a result of good markets for the paper and mining industries. The Commission was held accountable for this reversal by a public who had surrendered its political liberties reluctantly in return for prosperity. In reality, the article elaborated, the Commission had already accomplished significant improvements in many areas of life, including the civil service, health services, education, lower living costs, and public works. Gander airport and a road network were being built entirely with British capital. The 20 March 1940 issue of the same paper carried a similarly factual and objective report from a New York source on the completion of the transatlantic airport in Newfoundland.18 A final example of balanced factual media reporting at the height of the war was the essay “Newfoundland – the problem child of England,” published in Rheinische Landeszeitung on 6 August 1943. Triggered by statements by Canadian parliamentarians and their prime minister about the desirability of Newfoundland’s joining Canada, the article reviewed the island’s resources and then the historical background to the abolition of self-government in 1933 by Britain. By 1943 a new situation had arisen: the Americans had gained a foothold through the acquisition of naval bases, and the British-appointed Commission had managed to restore Newfoundland’s finances to the point where the local population demanded a return to responsible (that is, democratic) government. Britain, however, had declared its desire to have that issue shelved until after the war in order to, as the writer believed, ward off American designs to annex the island and expel the British. The final category of Third Reich media information about Newfoundland was war propaganda. A typical example is the article “Newfoundland – lost dominion,” which appeared in National-Zeitung on 25 May 1941. It claimed to be based on the experience of an American reporter who had witnessed the unloading of American troops at their new Newfoundland base. The American officers who inspected sites for bases had allegedly “become convinced that Newfoundland was the most depraved land with the most backward administration they had ever seen. Not even among the worst slums of New York and Chicago, the report stated, could such wretched, starving and sick, ragged and contaminated people be found. The average resident had sunk, physically and psychologically, to the lowest level attained by a European population anywhere in the world.” Americans had to be isolated from the locals because in the numerous city bars and places of entertainment the hygienic conditions defied all description.

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Innkeepers, for example, each night prepared a sort of homebrew in barrels that had not been cleaned in years and continued in a state of fermentation by the mixing of a mass of molasses and cheapest rum with a lot of water. This drink, sold for two cents, made even the strongest man so sick that it would cost a fortune to restore his health. The article reinforced its point by relating an alleged episode from the king’s visit to St John’s in the spring of 1938. A few hundred St John’s residents had received new clothes, shoes, stockings, and hats to impress the royal visitor. They were lined up carefully along the way to Government House, but displayed embarrassing behaviour when they learned that these clothes were lent them only for a few hours and had to be returned to the stores the next day. According to the report, the conduct of these irate residents allegedly forced the reception committee to drive the royal party at high speed from the ship’s landing place to Government House and return them to their ship after the dinner at an unknown nightly hour. Newfoundland revealed a chapter of British colonial administration that amounted to unscrupulous neglect of any orderly administration and to the priority of exploitation over colonization, the article declared categorically. The Americans coming to Newfoundland in 1940 were claiming to liberate the island from the pillaging committed by the “legally privileged defrauders” of the British administration. This, the article claimed to have extracted from the American report, seemed indeed a strange leitmotif for British-American cooperation on the island. The image of Newfoundland that the Third Reich media and also Colin Ross and Hans Schrepfer projected, whether they focused on economic prospects or social and cultural conditions, clearly held few appeals for Germans wanting to emigrate and settle in the New World. But it exerted a certain fascination on scientists of all kinds and adventurous tourists eager to explore a world that seemed to contrast so markedly with their urban, middle-class German environment.

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9 “We should first look to British stock”

Germans Deemed Undesirable? It was proposed to settle a colony of German Jews in Newfoundland, including 8 or 10 doctors, and backed by enough money to keep them for two years. But the President and Secretary of the Newfoundland Medical Association heard of it in time and were successful in stopping it. Dr N.S. Fraser, in Evening Telegram, 11 May 1934

the refugee issue Hitler’s assumption of power in Germany in 1933 created unprecedented masses of potential immigrants for Newfoundland in the form of refugees. In fact, the refugees knocking on Newfoundland’s door between 1934 and 1939 constituted the largest tide of immigrants desiring entry during any comparable period in the island’s history in more than a century. Political, religious, and racial persecution by the Nazi regime made Newfoundland and Labrador suddenly appear as an attractive refuge for thousands of German-speaking Jews and non-Jewish refugees from the Third Reich and countries occupied by or allied with it. Individually and in groups, they sought admission, and settlement proposals were advanced on their behalf. Because of its traditionally liberal refugee policy and low population density, Newfoundland was considered by many a more suitable haven for European refugees than places such as Shanghai, which took 20,000 refugees from Nazi persecution, and the Dominican Republic, which offered sanctuary to 100,000. Although the Immigration Act of 1926 denied admission to certain classes of European and Asian immigrants, Newfoundland’s reputation was nonetheless one of very liberal immigration laws. European immigrants had practically no restrictions as long as they were in good health and self-supporting.1 This reputation went back to Newfoundland’s Aliens

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Act of 1906, which contained one of the most generous refugee provisions in the world at the time. According to it, refugees from religious or political persecution were explicitly exempted from showing that they had the means to support themselves. This law was never repealed or amended. What refugees from the Third Reich did not know was that in the 1930s Newfoundland had begun to violate its own refugee law of 1906 by emulating the Canadian practice of excluding refugees from Nazi persecution. Proposals for Jewish and non-Jewish German group settlement were advanced in 1934, 1936, 1938, and 1939. The proposals envisaged spectacular economic possibilities for the refugees and entailed ambitious plans for the development of Newfoundland and Labrador. Some of the proposals may have been inspired by German promotional literature that portrayed Newfoundland as a country offering space, a favourable climate, undeveloped resources, and a myriad of challenges for economic development.2 Such promotional literature tended to paint a misleadingly rosy picture of settlement prospects while playing down the severity of the economic crisis in Newfoundland and the staggering problems confronting its new Commission of Government. At the same time as Adolf Hitler took power in Germany in 1933, the British and Canadian governments intervened to save Newfoundland from complete financial collapse. The price for their support was the suspension of democracy and the appointment by Britain of a government by commission for an undetermined period. In the Commission, composed of three British and three Newfoundland commissioners with a British governor presiding, the Newfoundlanders usually had the final say in policy decisions. They represented the interests of the local commercial and professional elite. The mandate of this Commission was to develop policies for Newfoundland’s immediate and long-range reconstruction. Although the Commission considered refugee settlement to be a possible instrument of socio-economic reform, in the end it rejected all the proposals and systematically refused admission to German refugees appealing for sanctuary. Most strata of Newfoundland urban society backed this policy of exclusion.3

proposals for refugee settlement The first proposal, made in March 1934, was for group settlement of German Jewish refugees. Its sponsor was the Jewish Colonization Association (in Yiddish, ica), an organization established by Baron de Hirsch in 1891 with headquarters in Paris and branches in Canada and other coun-

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tries. When early in 1934 the Canadian Jewish Congress began receiving appeals to help German Jews in distress, the secretary of the Canadian ica committee, Simon Belkin, was sent to St John’s.4 Belkin had assumed that the 1906 Aliens Act was still in effect and that no obstacles in principle stood in the way of persons seeking admission “to avoid persecution or punishment on religious or political grounds.” He quickly realized, however, that the Commission’s response would be guided by the fact that 25 per cent of the local population were receiving social assistance. After interviewing leading local personalities, Belkin carefully selected forty refugee families “who would be very useful to the country in its predicament and who would at no time become a public charge.”5 The refugee families would be placed at ica expense and would include the following: five doctors in outports currently without medical services, five doctors with two nurses each in five travelling clinics, two specialists for the Grace Hospital in St John’s, and dentists for Grand Falls and Corner Brook. Two German Jewish scientists would be employed at the Memorial University College, an idea welcomed by the president of the college, Professor A.G. Hatcher. Since only one modern poultry farm operated near St John’s and Belkin found farming conditions in the most deplorable state, he saw room for ten to fifteen new poultry farmers producing eggs and broilers, and engaging in truck farming on the side. The remaining refugees would come with capital to manufacture currently imported items, such as bedsprings, stoves, castings, toilet articles, brushes, paints, soaps, washing powders, fish meal, condensed milk, and flour.6 Sir John Hope Simpson, commissioner for natural resources and the most powerful and important of the six commissioners at the time, was moved by the idea of the travelling clinics and impressed on Belkin his willingness to be of assistance. In a memorandum prepared for the Commission’s deliberations, Hope Simpson brought out the positive aspects of the proposal and underlined the absence of any risk for the government. The Commission, however, was reluctant to endorse it and informed Belkin that it “could not see its way to accepting the proposal you made.” Although the Commission was not worried that the immigrants would become a charge on the state and conceded that Belkin’s foundation would perform a badly needed service in the outports, it decided “that at the present time it would not be desirable that we should allow immigration and settlement of any kind.” Evidently the chief influence at work to kill Belkin’s proposal came from the Newfoundland Medical Board, whose secretary-treasurer Belkin had interviewed. Word of the board’s opposition to this proposal infuriated

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outports, where the refugee doctors were anxiously hoped to fill vacancies. An angry letter from Burgeo to the local newspaper noted that the number of doctors had decreased by thirty-six since 1911 and wondered whether it was right for Newfoundland’s eighty-three doctors “to prevent thousands of other Newfoundlanders from receiving medical care.” The registrar of the Medical Board was publicly forced to admit that these doctors and professors would ultimately be left to fend for themselves, that they might leave their assigned places to seek practices where medical men were already established, and that the refugees would end up competing actively with local professional men. Furthermore, there was no adequate means “to check upon these German doctors’ qualifications.”7 The second proposal for group settlement of German Jewish refugees was initiated in March 1936 by Frank Banikhin, a member of the St John’s Jewish community and a close friend of Sir John Hope Simpson. Banikhin proposed to industrialize Newfoundland by settling skilled refugees in Labrador. A shipowner and world trader in various commodities, such as hides, metals, and fish, and with eighteen commercial establishments all over the island and in Labrador, he had business connections with Canada, the United States, and Germany. As an exporter of pit props to Germany, Banikhin had frequent dealings with German sea captains, who often returned from their voyages to the Labrador Lake Melville area with ore samples given to them by Natives and prospectors. The economic potential of Labrador and the possibility of exploring the deposits intrigued him.8 Banikhin had no personal connections with German Jews, but he knew that a high percentage of “skilled workmen, craftsmen, engineers, manufacturers, mechanics, etc,” were among the growing volume of refugees. He also knew that many Jewish agencies provided financial aid for their resettlement, his son later recalled. If a concession were given enabling Jewish immigrants to develop the water power of the Grand Falls (now called Churchill Falls) on the Hamilton (now called Churchill) River in Labrador, Banikhin suggested to Hope Simpson, it would be possible to organize a settlement in the vicinity financed entirely by international Jewish funds. There would thus be established in an area hitherto vacant “a manufacturing centre which might conceivably grow to proportions almost beyond belief.” Such a development would bring out “millions of dollars worth of hidden resources,” and it “would necessarily use up our unemployed population and would in addition provide a market for a great deal of our produces as it would be purely a manufacturing centre.” Banikhin expressed the conviction that if German Jews, who had a reputation for industrious-

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ness and self-reliance and a gift for manufacturing and invention, were brought to Labrador, “the results would be almost staggering.”9 In a memorandum to the Dominions Office in London, the governor of Newfoundland declared that the Commission would be prepared to give serious consideration to the settlement of German Jews in Labrador “on a considerable scale” on three conditions: first, that the British government raise no political objection; second, that it be endorsed by public opinion; and third, that no financial burden fall on the Newfoundland government.10 But two Newfoundland commissioners visiting the Dominions Office criticized the scheme on every conceivable ground. The project was abandoned after the Newfoundland expert in the Dominions Office, P.A. Clutterbuck, ridiculed it as “a brain wave of a local Jew who apparently wants to found a second Palestine in Labrador.” What would these Jewish settlers manufacture once they had the water-power rights? Clutterbuck characterized the project as “entirely visionary and unsubstantial, typical of those constantly put up in Newfoundland.”11 Other proposals for group settlement of refugees from the Third Reich experienced a similar fate. On 12 June 1936, A.L. Wurfbain, general secretary of the late League of Nations high commissioner for refugees from Germany, asked whether Newfoundland would accept, “for settlement on the land,” a small number of non-Jewish refugees from Germany. The Commission rejected this proposal outright, even though it was accompanied with an offer of financial support as the result of a successful special international appeal.12 A startling headline in the local press announced a major settlement plan at the beginning of March 1939: “Proposal to Place Refugees in Labrador; Provides for Admission of 5,000 Emigrants; $10,000 available.”13 It was reported that Henry Klapisch, a Jewish fish merchant from Seattle, had secured an option to purchase certain timber limits in the St Lewis Bay and Alexis Bay area as a preliminary to settlement. He was considering several proposals – one to export timber as well as to process it in a new furniture factory, another to set up a fish cannery, and a third one to transfer entirely new industries from Germany and Czechoslovakia. The development would rely heavily on Newfoundland labour and make St John’s its base for purchases and clearing. At least three large Jewish organizations in the United States were apparently prepared to fund the entire project. It was proposed to settle about 5,000 selected immigrants, adequately financed, during the first year and increase the number year by year as the settlement developed. No more was heard of Klapisch’s refugee scheme thereafter.14

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Simultaneously, Newfoundland’s commissioner of finance since April 1937, John H. Penson, was quietly pursuing a strategy aimed at bringing some economically beneficial refugee settlement to fruition. Penson was interested in proposals for the establishment of secondary industries and wondered whether “advantage could not be gained” from the collection of large funds in the United States and elsewhere for the settlement of Jewish emigrants from Germany. In a confidential approach of 6 February 1939 to the Dominions Office, however, he attached five conditions to such settlement: the industry must be established in a thinly populated area; it must not compete with existing industries; it must be self-supporting; it should give employment not only to the refugees but also, directly and indirectly, to Newfoundlanders; and it obtained start-up capital for the factory and for employee housing. Penson proposed an initial quota of 1,000 families. The Dominions Office took a dim view of Penson’s terms and anticipated nothing but problems for refugee industries under such conditions. “Settlement in a new country is difficult enough in itself, harder still for foreign refugees,” one official commented. “To couple it with banishment to a remote district would make it virtually impracticable from the outset.” Concerning funding, the official feared, it might be “resented by the Newfoundlanders who might be expected to claim that if any United Kingdom money is to be spent in the Island it should be spent on them and not on aliens.”15 The outbreak of war closed the door to further proposals for group settlement of refugees from the Third Reich. As an epilogue, it is of interest to note that as late as July 1940 a community of 289 German Hutterites in Britain approached the Dominions Office. They asked to have their request conveyed to the government of Newfoundland that they be permitted to send out two representatives to examine local conditions and to discuss the possibility of settling in Newfoundland. They stated that their fellow groups in Canada and the United States would finance their settlement. Reputed to be a law-abiding and industrious religious community, they were engaged in agriculture and local industries and also did educational work. The British Ministry of Agriculture spoke highly of their farm work. As Christian pacifist refugees from Nazi oppression, they had been exempted from internment in Britain. Suffering from the hostility of their English neighbours, they were seeking a place to settle overseas. The governor of Newfoundland did not recommend the visit of a Hutterite representative because “hostility to which community [was] subjected in United Kingdom would almost certainly be experienced here probably in marked degree.”16

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sanctuary denied Beginning in the summer of 1938, increasing sharply in January 1939, and continuing until after the outbreak of the war, individual inquiries and applications for visas forwarded by British consular officers poured into St John’s from actual and prospective German-speaking refugees in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and other countries. In the end, fewer than a dozen refugees were allowed to enter. Newfoundland’s record thus appears to vie with that of Canada. The latter’s admission of fewer than 4,000 refugees by the end of 1939 bestowed on that richly endowed and sparsely populated country the distinction of being “the worst of all possible refugee receiving states” and of thus sharing some of the responsibility for the fate of Europe’s Jews in the Third Reich.17 Under the state of law existing in Newfoundland until the mid-1930s, an immigrant was defined as undesirable if he did not possess or was unable to obtain the means to support himself and any dependants in an adequate manner. In addition, admission was denied to lunatics, idiots, or those who, owing to disease or infirmity, would likely become a charge upon the colony.18 In order to cope with the growing tide of refugee applications, the Commission decided to ignore the legal distinction between immigrants and refugees and exclude all immigrants judged to belong to a politically, economically, or racially undesirable class.19 Adequate control of immigration, the Commission decided, would be provided by a visa granted by a British consul, but only after an entry permit had been issued in St John’s.20 Since the summer of 1938, a holder of a German or an Austrian passport would be granted a visa for temporary visit only if a document for valid return was held and if good reason for a visit could be shown. As of 7 October 1938, “non-Aryans” in Germany no longer held valid return documents. Their German passports had a large “J” in red ink stamped on the front page and were valid for return to Germany only with a special endorsement that was no longer granted. “Non-Aryan” holders of valid German passports residing outside Germany were required to hand them to the local passport authority for confiscation. Refugees from the Third Reich had thus become ineligible for a British visa, and access to Newfoundland was formally barred to them.21 Nevertheless, personal inquiries and applications from actual and prospective refugees in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and other countries for visas forwarded by British consular officials continued to pour into St John’s. Most of the applicants appeared to

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be highly qualified professionals and skilled workers. Among those who petitioned for temporary or permanent admission were not only individuals inside the Third Reich whose lives were in imminent danger but also refugees who had found temporary admission to another country. Typical of the rather arbitrary criteria of asylum rejection is the case of Erich Gruenberg. His application was forwarded by Dominions Secretary MacDonald on 17 January 1939. A former accountant in the Berlin bank of Alfred Freund, Gruenberg stated that he had been forced during the last months to work on roads and other construction sites in Berlin and that the police had ordered him recently to “leave my home and country in the shortest period.” Enclosing two certificates of conduct from his former employer and the police, as well as assurances of sufficient funds available from a friend in Stockholm for landing and subsistence, he asked for urgent consideration that he and his wife be allowed to reside in Newfoundland while his application for an American visa was being processed. On 8 February 1939 the Newfoundland Department of Home Affairs received a telegram with a voucher for a prepaid reply from Gruenberg in Berlin: “Urge application M 651/5 in awaiting cable answer. Have to depart immediately. Please send permit.” One week later the department bluntly cabled back: “No application received. Regret permits for residency in Newfoundland cannot be granted.”22 Foreign-born seamen, who had traditionally found asylum on the island after deserting from ships docked in Newfoundland, were now deported without much ado. In mid-July 1938 two eighteen-year-old sailors deserted from two different German freight vessels, one in Botwood and the other in Corner Brook. One of the seamen, Johann Miltzon, was ordered to be sent back by the next German ore boat leaving Bell Island. The other, Hendrich Rozany (or Haranzy), was granted a temporary permit “subject to deportation if and when ordered” because the local Jewish congregation interceded on his behalf and offered a bond guaranteeing that he would not become a charge on the colony. The Danzig-born seaman claimed that he had been very harshly treated by the ship’s crew and was in fear of his life because he belonged “to the race persecuted by the Nazis.” He is alleged to have left Newfoundland in February 1939 as a stowaway on one of the ore boats.23 The only refugees from central Europe whose admission to Newfoundland prior to the outbreak of the war can be confirmed were Rabbi Max Katz with his family of three, seven German and Austrian refugee doctors who were recruited to serve as nurses in secluded fishing outports for which no one else could be found, and one nurse employed by the International Grenfell Association in St Anthony. Rabbi Katz had left Germany in

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April 1937 to look for a position in the United States. In Montreal he was referred to the congregation in St John’s, where he arrived on 31 August for a three-week trial period. The St John’s Jewish congregation provided Katz with the security of a three-year (later five-year) contract, enabling him to travel to Germany in October 1937 so he could rescue his wife and two sons. They arrived in Newfoundland in March 1938. In St John’s his and his family’s passports were confiscated by the German consul on behalf of the German consulate general in Ottawa and not replaced. Katz was not fluent in English, and his background and training did not suit the local situation. His wartime experience will be related in chapter 11.24 Since November 1938 the Commission had been exploring the possibility of using a few refugee doctors as nurses for its district services. The shortage of trained personnel was seriously hampering plans to control tuberculosis and to initiate a program of midwifery training as part of a newly inaugurated health-care system to be dispensed by six new cottage hospitals and additional nursing stations across the island. Through the British Federation of University Women, the Newfoundland Department of Public Health was directed to the availability in London of female refugee physicians from Germany and Austria, ready for placement in the nursing services of countries of the empire. After his first encounter with them in London, the Newfoundland secretary for justice cabled the commissioners assuringly: “Type frequently hardly distinguishable from Aryan type. Various ages unmarried. Ready take any job.” In January 1939 the Commission decided to set up a committee of Newfoundlanders in London for the selection of “a suitable type of recruit” from among those available. It envisaged contracting refugee doctors for nursing services only and forbidding them from representing themselves as doctors or practising as such. As officials were apprehensive of adverse public reaction, it was thought prudent not “to bring any considerable number of these people here at any one time” but to get them to the country in small numbers, “say one or two together.” In this fashion and through the mediation of the German Jewish Refugee Committee in London, seven German refugee doctors, six Jewish and one non-Jewish, were brought to Newfoundland in 1939. They were employed by the Department of Public Health on three-year contracts in cottage hospitals and outport nursing stations across the island.25 Newfoundland reluctantly hired the seven refugee physicians for outport nursing duties because they were the only qualified persons available in 1939. The Department of Public Health would have preferred trained English or Newfoundland nurses had they been obtainable. Similarly,

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Rabbi Katz and his family were not admitted because they were refugees; they were sponsored by the St John’s Jewish congregation because it could find no English or Canadian rabbi. Of Newfoundland’s one dozen refugees by the end of 1939, none was offered sanctuary because he or she was a refugee, regardless of other merits. The appointed commissioners were free to opt for policies they considered beneficial for the country. They were not accountable to any electorate. Prodded by the three Newfoundland commissioners, who represented the interests of the local business and professional elite, the government opted for a policy of exclusion. This policy prevented Newfoundland from acquiring a German-speaking community numbering hundreds, if not thousands, including numerous enterprising, highly skilled, and professional people. The cultural, social, and economic impact they would have had is unimaginable.

desirable versus undesirable germans It may appear paradoxical that at the time when German Jews and nonJewish refugees were denied sanctuary in Newfoundland, other Germans continued to be welcomed as visitors, commercial agents, managers, and residents. Indeed, as documented in chapter 7, business connections, scientific contacts, and tourism reached an extent in the 1930s that justified the reappointment, after a twenty-year lapse, of a German consul in St John’s. What prompted Newfoundland to view some Germans as desirable while rejecting others as undesirable? Local newspapers give some insight into the nature of this dichotomous image. In them Newfoundlanders reported their observations of German society’s responses to the rise of Hitler and commented on the refugee problem he created. Some played down the Nazi racial persecution and German anti-Semitism they witnessed; others highlighted it. Generally speaking, however, these observations and comments brought out the stark contrast between the positive image of Germans – whether pro-Nazi or anti-Nazi – propagated by a small minority of educated Newfoundlanders and the blatant prejudice and nativism vented in some anonymous articles against Germans as refugees. It took twelve years from the end of World War i for post-war Germany and Germans to become the topic of a public lecture. The event was scheduled symbolically for Armistice Day, 9 November 1931, and was to be held in the Memorial University College auditorium to accommodate a large crowd. The invitation posted in the Daily News reassured the public that “no one here is in a position to speak more authoritatively on ‘Germany, her downfall and her hope’ than Mr. J.L. Paton, President of Memorial

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University College.” His lecture was to cover every conceivable angle of interest and, to enhance the atmosphere, “appropriate German music will feature the programme.”26 As was expected, the auditorium was “packed beyond capacity.” The event took on the character of an elaborate ritual; flowers even decorated the platform. “The soul of Germany,” as the Evening Telegram review put it, was interpreted in music by two local musicians in songs, piano, and cello solos by Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven. Vice-president A.G. Hatcher introduced the speaker, and Canon Bolt proposed a vote of thanks. Paton claimed special insights – “he knows his Germany and her point of view,” one reviewer asserted27 – since he had had close German contacts before the war and had visited the country the last time in 1922 with a hiking party of fifty English students. Accordingly, he rendered a very positive image of Germans, a compassionate judgment of Germany’s troubles, and a promising prospect for the country’s future. Paton opened his lecture by identifying the Treaty of Versailles, especially its war guilt clause, as the cause of many of Germany’s current problems. “It rankles and it rankles.” Nothing did more to foster bad feeling and endanger peace than this burning sense of injustice. Not only was the value of a treaty forcibly extorted questionable, Paton believed, but the war guilt clause in particular should have been revoked long ago. He reiterated his conviction that “in the light of what we know now, there is no one who is prepared to say that all the guilt [emphasis in the original] is to be laid on the shoulder of the German nation.” Since Germany lost much territory by the Treaty of Versailles, Paton considered its demand for the return of former German colonies justified as a necessary outlet for its surplus of educated, skilled – but unemployed – people. As examples, he pointed to the 20,000 jobless teachers in 1927 and unemployed German doctors without access to the millions of Africans needing medical care. This state of affairs explained to Paton the gains of Adolf Hitler in recent elections. In Hitler, “withal a man of great resolution, and a man of great bluster,” he saw the suppressed Prussian superiority complex finding a voice and a leader. Not surprisingly, Hitler had a great appeal among dissatisfied youth, although his “foamy rhetoric” lacked any constructive content or logic. The salvation of Germany, Paton was convinced, would be its education, outdoor outlook, and youth movement. Germany was one of the most educated nations – its adult-education enrolment was unequalled in the world – which would save the nation from communism or fascism. “Educated people are not permanently led away by slogans and captions and vehemence of language with a minimum of thought.” A detailed portrait of the youth movement formed the high point of the

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lecture. Tracing the movement’s history from the 1890s, it described the widespread and extensive hikes through rural Germany undertaken by millions of boys and girls on the most meagre fare. Paton expressed the highest regard for the lifestyle of these youths. Its impact on society was manifest in the inclusion of physical education in school curricula and the emancipation of women. For example, 90 per cent of German boys and girls were swimmers. Also, women, whose horizon had in the past been bounded by “Kirk, Kiddies, Klothes, and Kitchen,” had participated in this development as equals. The revolt of these youths against urbanization and meaningless conventions, their fight against the social evils of alcohol and nicotine, and their desire “to get to the bottom of things” was to Paton “a thing of wondrous promise.”28 Paton’s optimistic view of Germans and their country’s problems was not unusual. After Adolf Hitler assumed the chancellorship of Germany on 30 January 1933, Newfoundlanders were acutely aware that their own economic rehabilitation was closely linked to his ability to restore political and economic stability in Germany. Two editorials at the time of Hitler’s takeover expected his government to cope effectively with Germany’s multiple problems for the benefit of a growing market for Wabana ore.29 Even when the Nazi regime’s policies of anti-Semitism, attempts to control Austria, and rearmament became manifest and isolated Germany in the League of Nations, the Daily News still believed that Hitler was realizing he had made a mistake and would accept a satisfactory arrangement at the upcoming disarmament conference.30 In the Evening Telegram the Water Street Book Store promoted the sale of Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf “in uncensored complete unpurged edition” as late as 10 March 1939. Throughout the 1930s, Newfoundland visitors returning from Germany continued to project relatively positive perceptions of the Third Reich and the German people. On 20 April 1933 the Evening Telegram reported on Alfred McNamara’s return from a two-year study term, where he had acquired degrees qualifying him to practice optometry in St John’s. “In his whole two years in Germany,” he claimed, he “received nothing but kindness” and was delighted with his stay in the country. Up to the time he sailed from Bremen, he had “not seen or heard one case of atrocities against the Jews in Berlin.” Shortly before his return, he witnessed the one-day Nazi boycott of Jewish stores. He saw notices posted on Jewish store windows and handbills distributed reading, “If you are a German, don’t buy from the Jews.” But on that day, McNamara maintained, “the Nazi troopers with guns stood on guard outside all the Jewish stores to see that no property was

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damaged. At no time did I hear of any injuries received by any Jews nor were any hostile demonstrations against Jews held.” Instead, he went on, Jewish stores reopened the next day and were doing business as usual.31 Albert E. Hickman also returned from Europe around the same time and outlined his even more positive impressions at a Rotary luncheon. The German people were “fine people, enterprising and energetic,” the Daily News of 5 May 1933 quoted Hickman. In his opinion, the “recent Jewish outbreaks of which so much has been said” were confined to Berlin, “where the greater number of lawyers were Jews.” In Hamburg, for example, Hickman did not find a repetition of “the trouble.” As for Chancellor Adolf Hitler, Hickman maintained that the German people regarded him as “a very fine man and believe that he saved the country from revolution.” A number of prominent Newfoundlanders conveyed conflicting impressions after visits to Germany in 1938–39. Among them were Hickman, Alan G. Gillingham, O.L. Vardy, and C.E.A. Jeffery. The most insightful perspective was Memorial University College professor Gillingham’s Rotary address, which the Daily News published verbatim on 27 January 1939. He had spent every second summer in Germany since 1931 and had been teaching German, classics, and ancient history at the St John’s college since 1933. The impression of his first visit in the summer of 1931 was still vivid: “As a boy I had absorbed lively ideas of the barbarian huns from their atrocities in Belgium, butchering women and bayoneting children. It came as a rude shock to find them in their own country a kindly intellectual people, capable of happy family and peacefully disposed one to another. Inwardly however the people were troubled and uneasy in mind. The other nations had not disarmed as they had promised; the implacable French held the country as in a vice of steel; a proud people were forced to feel continued shame and humiliation. The Nazis were on their way to power.” Germany had a long history of disunity causing them, Gillingham believed, to submit to the Nazi yoke. On his second visit in 1933 he found most people quite indifferent to the Nazi movement, “thinking it was just another party in power.” The Berlin family with whom he stayed in 1935 and 1937 were “as loyal subjects as could be found,” yet were “deeply troubled in spirit.” From the husband he learned that “a fresh persecution of the Jews always served as a screen to divert the people’s attention from greater trouble.” The family’s older son, upon returning home from studies at Oxford and Columbia universities, suffered a nervous breakdown upon learning the true state of affairs in Germany. Their ten-year-old son was forced to attend Hitler Youth meetings. Most Germans, though, Gillingham gathered, saw in Hitler an idealist

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unaware of the persecution of the Jews and wanting only to promote peace, prevent civil war, and remove the injustices of the Versailles treaty. Germans generally, Gillingham was more than ever convinced in 1939, “are as peace loving as the English, as patriotic as the French, and as good, morally, as any other people.” He doubted that the English had a “monopoly on righteousness.” The German character and political naïveté, the speaker suggested, were aggravating the situation. Fundamentally uncertain and distrusting themselves, Germans tended to swing from one extreme to the other. They had long despised their own language – for example, Frederick the Great is known to have spoken German only to his horse – but now they were repeating the words “deutsch,” “Deutschland,” and “Grossdeutschland” ad nauseam as if to reassure themselves of their Germanity. The German, Gillingham noted perceptively, “wavers between the desire to conceal the fact that he is a German and the urge to proclaim the fact as boldly as possible.” This character trait was enhanced by the political ineptitude in the people. Instead of developing free institutions, Germans had relied on the dictum of their philosopher Hegel that force is the basis of the state and on Kant’s categorical imperative “duty for duty’s sake.” Gillingham was always careful to distinguish between the Nazi regime and the German people. In 1937 the speaker had been surprised to find the most lamentable public ignorance of the nature of the Nazi revolution and its doctrines. The great mass of the German people were “utterly innocent” of Nazi convictions. “Most Germans listen to the speeches of the Nazi leaders or read them in the press, not with enthusiasm, but with care, sorrow and resentment. The Nazis have forgotten too that their deeds speak louder than words.” In 1935 in Berlin Gillingham had attended a service of well-known Pastor Martin Niemoeller, an outspoken critic of the regime. “His church was always thronged” until 1938, when Niemoeller was silenced in a concentration camp, Gillingham recalled. The conflict was for the mastery of the German soul – the churches and German culture representing international fellowship and goodwill, on the one side, and “fanaticism, and prejudice, inflamed nationalism, hatred and intolerance of everything ‘unGerman,’”on the other. The Nazis proudly took credit for a return to pre-Christian paganism in culture and religion. Gillingham found in the one-thousand-year-old primitive national epic, the Nibelungenlied, the main characteristics of Nazi culture and behaviour, namely, “unusual violence and quarrelsomeness, loyalty to leader, treachery where there is no binding principle, readiness for war, sudden enthusiasm, quickness to take

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offence and retaliate, jealousy and vindictiveness.” These qualities were common to both government and party members, but it was Gillingham’s impression that they had not been instilled in the people. As early as January 1938 – that is, two months before Hitler occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia – Gillingham observed “true Germans” becoming increasingly alarmed as they realized their government’s true aim: not to right the peace settlement’s wrongs but to embark on a policy of conquest in eastern Europe. Why was Hitler not content with righting Germany’s wrongs and even fulfilling the age-old German dream of a Grossdeutschland with the Munich Agreement of September 1938? For the answer, Gillingham, like so many “thoughtful” Germans, turned to reading Mein Kampf, a book he had bought in 1933 but put away as dull and irrelevant at the time. It now became clear that this book revealed the road map to the future, namely, the brutal conquest of “living space” in Russia for a population of 250 million Germans. In a Europe that Hitler viewed as a jungle, the guiding principle for him would be the law of the jungle. It would be a strange irony of history, the speaker anticipated astutely, if the two totalitarian states, Russia and Germany, despite their extreme ideological differences, would “for the most primitive reasons propose to devour each other.” Enlightened Germans, “probably a majority of the population,” Gillingham concluded, dissociated themselves from the policies and practices of this government. Yet he also foresaw “the gravest danger that lack of political capacity, inability to provide an alternative government, and fear of civil war may lead this brave, intelligent, and industrious people to Armageddon, may bring woe and misery to all Europeans both Jew and gentile.” In July 1939 Rotarian A.E. Hickman stated that all Germans he had met recently, both Jews and Christians, were kind and subservient. They put up with the regime’s restrictions and regulations because they had never known freedom. “Almost every German is a spy, not necessarily a Government-paid spy, but ready to catch any word dropped against Hitler and report it.” The most unfortunate Germans were Jews born in Germany whose ancestors had lived there for a century or more. Hickman recounted the ordeals of an old Jewish acquaintance of his, who was peremptorily taken from his office after Kristallnacht and jailed. His house was ransacked, and his wife ordered to leave. In jail that Jewish friend witnessed the murder of fellow inmates. Released after six months, he was broken in health. Jews had to surrender 95 per cent of their property, and no lawyer would defend them. Hickman left no doubt that it was the “general opinion of Jewish people still living in Germany that in the event of war by Germany every Jew would forthwith be shot.”32

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Local broadcaster and journalist O.L. Vardy was impressed by the extent to which Nazi propaganda had brainwashed Germans. The only persons he found questioning official propaganda were people of forty years and older. “Youths from 20 to 25 hold down practically all the important positions and they believe that Hitler can do no wrong.” Vardy nevertheless concluded categorically that the German people would “rise as one man and sweep Hitler and his gang back to the oblivion whence they came” if they were free to judge the Führer’s policies.33 Evening Telegram editor C.E.A. Jeffery, on the other hand, appears to have witnessed nothing but “happy and contented” people on a visit to Vienna, where he tried to ascertain reactions to the Nazi regime. Passing most of his time in indoor and outdoor places of amusement and entertainment, Jeffery saw people enjoying full employment, spending money freely, and crowding cafés and beer or wine gardens, and he “never saw fitter or healthier looking children.” Although he reported observing plenty of uniformed officials in Vienna – police, sa, and ss men – the most disturbing experience Jeffery found worth recording was being the solitary occupant on the Royal Dutch Line flight to Vienna. The assertion that “on no occasion did I experience any unpleasantness” characterized his report.34

newfoundlanders perceive refugees from the third reich The surprisingly positive perceptions by all these prominent Newfoundlanders right up to the outbreak of World War ii contrasts with the increasingly harsh criticism of Nazi Germany’s policies by the entire Newfoundland press. The brutality of German anti-Semitic persecution was unequivocally condemned. The barbarism of Kristallnacht had so alienated public opinion in the democracies, was the consensus of the Evening Telegram (12 November 1938) and the Observer’s Weekly (29 November 1938), that there could be little common ground of understanding with the Nazi regime since “intolerance of differences of race, creed or colour finds no favour under the rule of democracy.” Indeed, “the German nation and the German people live by the laws of the savage,” concluded an analyst in the Evening Telegram of 23 June 1939. The strong anti-Nazi mood even manifested itself in direct action. Local youths threw lumps of coal at the freighter Bochum, one of three German ships entering the St John’s dry dock for repair in the spring of 1939. The youths encouraged sailors of other nationalities to defile the Bochum’s swastika flag (which had become

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the official national emblem of Germany), nearly causing an international incident and forcing the police to guard the ship all week while it was under repair.35 One would assume that the professed anti-Nazi stance of the Newfoundland media and the positive perceptions which prominent Newfoundlanders articulated of Germans would have combined to foster a welcoming attitude towards refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. Oddly, with two exceptions, the opposite was the case. One of these exceptions was the Daily News editorial of 1 November 1938. “Does all the world contain no land upon which refugees may be settled to work out their own salvation as pioneer communities?” wondered the editorial writer. “Some such tracts there must be,” he concluded. “Labrador might even be one of them.” In the 15 November 1938 issue one letter concluded that Newfoundland should not stand by and do nothing. “It is not often that Newfoundland is able to assist others. We think we have so little to offer. But we have the present of freedom ... And we need doctors badly.” The writer pointed out that Newfoundland, Canadian, English, and American doctors were very reluctant to accept the conditions of living in island outports, where everything was lacking, and that it should be possible to bring in German Jewish doctors and assign them to certain territories so they would not interfere with local doctors. “History has shown that any country which has extended ordinary rights to Jews has never lost by it.” Apart from these two items, newspaper editorials and letters to the editor objecting to Nazi refugees on the grounds of social class and adverse economic impact went hand in hand with the contention that these people constituted a threat to the ethnic identity of the host society and were useless castaways for any country. The week after Kristallnacht, the editor of the Evening Telegram (16 November 1938) voiced concern over the increase in the number of Newfoundland’s foreign-born (excluding natives of the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the dominions) from 731 in 1911 to 1,601 in 1935. Suggesting that most of the refugees, probably unskilled as well as penniless, would become a burden to any country accepting them, he urged a considerable stiffening of the immigration regulations to prevent the country from “being overrun by peoples who can not possibly be absorbed in the population.” When Newfoundland needed a larger population, advised one commentator in the Evening Telegram on 17 November 1938, “we should first look to British stock.” In the Daily News of 21 January 1939, someone characterized Newfoundland as “one of the few countries where the only bar to the ragtail and bobtail of the world is the cursory glance of

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officialdom.” The reason Newfoundland could not get any doctors but refugees to come, an anonymous writer in the Evening Telegram of 11 February 1939 charged, was that British immigrant doctors were not offered a living wage or the necessary equipment. Refugee doctors would be “followed by all their relations, good, bad and indifferent until we fail to remain predominantly British.” Newfoundlanders would, it was hoped, “strongly object to our country being the dumping ground of people who have been turned out of their own country.” A stinging editorial in the Evening Telegram of 7 July 1939 greeted the disembarkation in St John’s of three female German Jewish refugee doctors hired as nurses for fishing outports. The editor criticized the admission of these refugees on every conceivable ground. “The foreigners” were suspected of taking away jobs from eligible Newfoundlanders, of lacking proper qualifications as doctors and nurses, and of being spies entering the country under the guise of refugees. They were reproached for not being immigrants with the capital and skills necessary to establish a badly needed new industry or a rare trade that would not interfere with any local industries. The editorial warned: “Who vouches for the bona fides of these newcomers, and what steps are taken to prevent the entry of persons who in the capacity of doctors or nurses would have a great opportunity – in fact the best opportunity – to inculcate ideas inimical to the best interests of a British community?” These media perceptions reveal that in the 1930s German Jews, along with non-Jewish German refugees, were no longer ascribed the identity Newfoundlanders had formerly associated with Germans. In the climate of widespread anti-Semitism and economic depression in the Western world of the 1930s, German refugees were perceived as unassimilable Jews constituting a social and economic liability for the host society. Paradoxically, a German identity was reassigned to these unassimilable refugees in the eyes of the host society, however, when the war’s outbreak transformed all Germans into enemy aliens. No wonder Jewish refugees in Newfoundland were among the first ones to be accused of pro-Nazi sympathies, disloyalty, and subversion.

Recto Running Head

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10 “I had been loyal to the country”

Internment Operations and Experiences, 1939–1945 I always did abide by the laws of New Foundland, I had been loyal to the country to which I had come by my own free will, and I am at a loss to understand what the reasons could have been for my arrest and consequent internment ... I feel sure that I could disclaim any charge laid against me by persons unknown to me and for reasons also unknown to me ... A man of my age is not well fit for a long internment. Landed immigrant F.W. Kothe, aged fifty-three, 1942

World War ii turned Newfoundland’s residents of German-speaking background into enemy aliens for the second time within the lifespan of one generation. Again they were suspected of being real or potential spies, this time labelled Nazi fifth columnists. Again the suspicions were unfounded and they were helplessly exposed to persecution as scapegoats. The World War ii enemy alien trauma can only be fully appreciated against the background of public attitudes and government policies in Newfoundland, especially since local newspapers and government records provide the chief sources of information. Judged by the number and tone of views expressed in the media, public opinion appeared as vociferous and uncompromising in demanding radical measures against enemy aliens of every description as in World War i. The intensity of hostility in World War ii may, in part, be attributable to the fear of a German attack on the island. The development of modern technology, in combination with Hitler’s quest for world domination, brought the war closer to the shores of Newfoundland than in World War i. Civilian casualties from submarine raids on coastal shipping made a German landing a more realistic expectation. For almost six years the fear of a German naval and air attack kept the island’s population in suspense.

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Added to this concern was the fear of a world-embracing fifth column facilitating Nazi subversion and aggression everywhere. The allegedly wellorganized fifth column was a political factor of considerable weight in the Western world from 1938 to 1941 because it seemed to explain Nazi Germany’s stunning initial military successes. In reality, it was a hoax carefully cultivated by the Nazi Party.1 The fear was intensified by the memory of World War i, when wholesale arrest, internment, and deportation of Newfoundland’s Germans had been found necessary. Why should similar treatment not be even more imperative when Germans were viewed everywhere as fifth columnists serving the Third Reich in its quest for world power? As early as 1 September 1939, the Newfoundland Commission of Government passed the Defence Act and a series of defence regulations conferring upon the governor-in-commission extensive powers to make regulations even exceeding those of the War Measures Act of 1914. They included power to control the landing, residence, movement, and deportation of aliens, as well as measures to prevent “espionage, sabotage, signalling, etc.,” and enemy propaganda; to impose censorship, to control firearms, imports and exports, foodstuffs, and prices, and so on. A Trading with the Enemy Act and a Customs (War Powers) Act followed on 3 September 1939 and an Enemy Property Act on 12 September. This emergency legislation provided the legal basis for police registration, expulsion, deportation, internment, and relocation of aliens and for arrest and confiscation of property of enemy agent suspects, often on the scantiest of evidence.2 Calls for drastic measures against suspicious aliens, although insistent and frequent at times, did not, however, represent a unanimous public opinion as in World War i. Comments and letters in the newspapers revealed the existence of a small minority of informed and level-headed Newfoundlanders warning of witch hunts and blind xenophobia. The Commission of Government cast its nets wide in checking out all denunciations alleging collaboration with or sympathy for the enemy. But, although not reluctant to expel, deport, and denaturalize, the Commission resisted pressures for mass internment. Nevertheless, Newfoundland’s internment operations during World War ii were quite elaborate and extensive. Among those interned were not only enemy nationals such as Germans, Italians, and Japanese but also nationals from countries allied with Germany, such as Finland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Vichy France, as well as citizens from occupied countries such as Norway, Denmark, and Greece. The Newfoundland government even planned to intern Jewish refugees. Only a handful of the

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internees were local residents. Instead, most were seamen removed from ships. For the internment of Germans and Italians, two camps were built – in Pleasantville near St John’s and in Victoria near Carbonear. Other internees were kept in a number of buildings in St John’s until they could be either deported or transferred to Canadian camps.

the seizure of the

CHRISTOPH VON DOORNUM

The story of the World War ii internment experience begins eight days before the outbreak of war on 3 September 1939, when, in expectation of hostilities, twenty-five German seamen with their ship were ordered detained in Newfoundland. Their steamship, the Christoph von Doornum, was at Botwood loading lead-zinc concentrates from the Buchans Mining Company for Antwerp. Registered by Fisser and van Doornum of Emden, Germany, the ship had been purchased in 1937 from William Cory and Sons Ltd of London, England. The latter had provided a £63,000 loan with which the German owners financed the deal. The loan was secured by a deed of mortgage of which one-third was paid off by August 1939, the rest to follow in fixed instalments. Fearing the imminence of war, the mortgagees arranged for the vessel to be arrested and held in Botwood in order to enforce the mortgage terms. On Friday, 25 August 1939, when at sea about twenty miles from Botwood, the ship had received a code message from Germany advising all German shipping to go to sea or some neutral port and await further orders. The captain, however, decided to dock at Botwood and load at once in the hope of getting away by Monday morning, 28 August. According to entries in the ship’s German diary and the testimonies of Captain Wilhelm Joesting and Head Constable Andrew Humber, police officers boarded the ship and stationed a guard on board as soon as loading was completed and the workmen had left on 26 August at 11:30 p.m. A special police force of ten constables from St John’s, Grand Falls, and Botwood had been assembled to prevent the ship from getting away before war broke out. The ship’s radio station was closed and sealed on 1 September by the customs and immigration officer. The captain claimed that members of the crew were kept confined to Botwood. They were not allowed to travel to St John’s in search of assistance to free the ship or to leave the country. The head constable testified that three members of the crew (including Kurt Konopka) had deserted, were recaptured, and were kept confined on board their ship on 29 August. On 3 September the local head constable gave orders to his ten officers to seize the ship, arrest the captain and crew, haul down the German flag, and hoist the Union Jack.3

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The ship, first placed under the management of the Newfoundland Railway4 and subsequently chartered by the Newfoundland government to Bowater’s Newfoundland Pulp and Paper Mills, Ltd, was renamed the Empire Commerce. On one of her trips from Corner Brook to England in 1940 she was torpedoed and beached. To recover the sums they had advanced to the German owners, in September 1940 the mortgagees of the Christoph von Doornum went to the Supreme Court of Newfoundland, sitting as a court of prize, where they unsuccessfully challenged the right of the Crown to condemn the ship in prize.5 The action was publicized as the first case in the history of a British prize court in which the position of a mortgagee who had taken possession had been argued.6 William Cory and Sons withdrew an appeal to the Privy Council when the Commission government received a $260,000 insurance payment for the loss of the ship and in May 1941 quietly agreed to pay the bounty due the mortgagees.7 The arrested crew of the Christoph von Doornum provided Newfoundland with its first prisoners of war and marked the beginning of internment operations. The crew consisted of twenty-five Germans, two Dutchmen, one Lithuanian, and one Irishman. The youngest of the German pows was fifteen, the oldest was sixty-three. Among the arrested enemy aliens was also one Yugoslavian who had been held in jail in Grand Falls after he had deserted from the ss Konsul Henderick Fisser at Botwood in August 1939. The thirty merchant seamen were sent under the guard of six policemen to St John’s on 5 September in a special railway car attached to a freight train. At the Waterford Bridge near the city limits they were “detrained” and conveyed in two of the fire department’s hose trucks to temporary internment facilities in the ymca building at the other end of the city. At the Y, which was housed on the first floor of the King George v Seamen’s Institute on Water Street, they were held as distressed seamen. For eight weeks, that is until the construction of a new internment camp at Pleasantville, they were not allowed to leave the building. The German internees’ only outdoor exercise during this time was an occasional sixmile walk around Bally Haly on the outskirts of the city, where a five-man guard brought them in a large firetruck. The non-German crew of the Christoph von Doornum were at first detained together with the Germans, but after complaining against their illegal confinement, they were repatriated to Halifax, New York, and Liverpool between 15 and 26 September 1939.8 At the outbreak of the war, the Newfoundland government would have preferred to transfer its enemy alien detainees to England for internment.

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“It will be both costly and inconvenient to detain these during the war ... We have not sufficient Germans here to justify internment camp,” Governor Sir Humphrey Walwyn cabled the secretary of state for dominion affairs on 3 September 1939. During the first week of September, however, the British government did not contemplate a general internment of enemy aliens as in World War i, but instead permitted 2,000 Germans to leave the country before 9 September. Only aliens considered dangerous were arrested, some as early as 1 September, and tribunals were set up to place all enemy aliens in one of three categories – “A” to be interned, “B” not interned but subject to restrictions, and “C” to remain at liberty. By midOctober that year the tribunals had interned fewer than 300, and by the end of October only 600 of the 74,000 persons over sixteen registered as German citizens in Britain.9 In view of this situation and in anticipation of the necessity to intern more enemy aliens, the Commission of Government decided to build its own camp in Newfoundland. However, as late as December 1939, the commissioner for justice still commented sympathetically on an American aide-mémoire of 4 October proposing repatriation of innocent civilian internees through neutral countries instead of following the World War i practice of interning them as reprisals.10 The need for securer, more adequate detention facilities was driven home by the escape from ymca quarters on 11 October 1939 of the Christoph von Doornum’s oiler Ernst Munch, aged twenty-five, and the bosun Walter Knabe, aged forty-three. The search for the two escapees was a widely publicized event. With the help of the British vice-consul in St Pierre, it was even extended to the Italian ship Dea Mazella, which had left St John’s for St Pierre on the day of the escape. Observer’s Weekly of 17 October reported that all police officers on the Avalon Peninsula were “keeping their ears to the ground for reports of any suspicious characters.” A squad of seven policemen, including some on motorcycle, found the Germans two days later walking towards the city from Kilbride. After their recapture, the escapees were confined to the Penitentiary.11 Unknown to the police at the time and indicative of the laxity of security was a simultaneous attempt by the captain and some of his officers to stowaway on the Dea Mazella. According to Joesting’s admission one year later, he had walked from his confinement through an unguarded open door onto Water Street on 10 October 1939, visited the nearby Italian ship to discuss his plans with the captain, and after a forty-minute absence from the ymca building, reentered it the same way he had left without detection. The Munch-Knabe escape the next day apparently foiled the getaway planned by the captain.12

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interned german residents In the weeks following the outbreak of the war, four local German residents were added to the interned crew of the Doornum. These were Frederick W. Kothe, Max Weber, alias Carl Webber, Jacob Mertens, and Alfred H. Roeske. Kothe had been suspected of spying for Nazi Germany since May 1939 because he had appealed to the German consulate general in Montreal for financial help to avoid deportation. A former shareholder of the White Bay Development Company, he had lost his source of income in the spring of 1938. Although he applied for naturalization in the summer of 1939, Kothe was threatened with deportation because he was unable to pay for his accommodation and hospital treatment of a physically disabling World War i injury. In addition, he was denounced to the police by his sister’s business competitor, the manager of the Woodstock Hotel in Topsail, for occasionally calling on the captain and crew of German vessels loading iron ore at Bell Island. The informer was “of the opinion that this man is a spy, and is being paid by the German Government for his services.” Kothe had come to Newfoundland in 1926 to join his sister, Mrs Bertha Holland, who had been associated with the Seaview Hotel in Topsail since 1893, first as a housekeeper and then as proprietor (see chapters 4 and 7). Although she was appointed president of the Women’s Patriotic Association at Topsail in early December 1939, her brother was simultaneously interned as a spy suspect. Kothe complained that he had been given neither reasons for his arrest and internment nor any opportunity to refute accusations made against him.13 Weber, aged fifty-four, was brought from Germany in April 1938 as a brewmaster for the Bavarian Brewery Ltd (see chapter 7). On 8 September the following year an employee of the Royal Stores, whom Weber had invited to the brewery once in July, denounced Weber on the basis of that single encounter. Weber was a “true Nazi” perfectly capable of putting a poisonous chemical in beer as Germans had allegedly done in Belgium during World War i. The informer “stressed the fact that a German would stop at nothing.”14 The brewery manager, A.E. Hickman, at first backed his brewmaster, but then became worried that his customers might lose their taste for beer brewed by a German. The pretext for firing Weber in early November 1939 was a bad batch of beer needing “to be condemned.” At the same time Hickman informed the constabulary that he had fired Weber because he could no longer trust him (see illus. 10.1).15 Mertens, a forty-eight-year-old mechanic and resident of Corner Brook for ten years, was interned partially in response to the objections of “high

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10.1 Interned enemy aliens Frederick W. Kothe, Alfred H. Roeske, and Max Weber. Registry of Aliens, St John’s 1940. Courtesy panl.

officials” of the Bowater Company about “why this German is allowed to roam around Corner Brook at will,” and partially for his own safety. The Corner Brook district inspector had reported to his superiors in St John’s that he knew of local men threatening to kill Mertens if any persons were killed in an air raid on England or Paris. “I have no reason to doubt that this threat will be carried out.”16 Alfred H. Roeske, aged thirty-three, prided himself on being the only member of the Nazi Party in Newfoundland. In May 1939 he was overheard expressing himself to the effect that “Hitler should be in Newfoundland to remove people from the dole.” He boasted that he had joined the Nazi Party in April 1933 in Canton, China, where he had spent three years as a department manager of a Danish firm. After six years’ residence in China, Roeske returned to Germany in August 1937 for a brief vacation and to undergo two months’ training in the Army Reserve. In April 1938 he was sent to Newfoundland to replace Walter Biehl as branch manager of the Hamburg trading house Schiebeler and Company. Not having left the island since his arrival in St John’s, Roeske denied any attempts in Newfoundland to form a Nazi branch, act as an agent for the German government, or make propaganda for it. On 10 September, while on an outing with two local women, he was arrested as an enemy alien; he was interned in the ymca quarters the next day.17 The Newfoundland assets of Schiebeler and Company were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Schiebeler had had an office in St John’s for about ten years, buying lobster for the German market and importing a variety of manufactured goods from Germany, most of them on order from merchants in St John’s and in the outports. The firm rented premises

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from Harris and Hiscock Ltd on 167 Water Street and was selling large quantities of cement and timepieces. In September 1939, delivery orders on hand included cases of cutlery, earthenware, hops, sandpaper, zippers, ironware, paper labels, clothespins, cellophane, window glass, bottles, brushes, enamelware, buttons, and steel drums. Roeske’s firm had few liabilities. Most of its assets consisted of $8,400 worth of accounts receivable. From internment, Roeske willingly assisted government inspector N.C. Crewe in drawing up a comprehensive account of the company’s assets as well as pricing merchandise to be sold and auctioned off. He was anxious to see his firm’s operations liquidated in an orderly and businesslike manner, and to this end, he cooperated with the appointed trustee, manufacturer’s agent E.E. Knight. By April 1941, after completing transactions entered into between Schiebeler and Newfoundland customers, collecting debts due, and disposing of the company’s merchandise and property, Knight was able to pass over $10,000 in proceeds to the custodian of enemy property.18

pleasantville camp On 1 November 1939 all twenty-nine of Newfoundland’s enemy alien internees were moved to the new Pleasantville camp (near the present Canadian Legion building). The campgrounds, measuring 150 feet by 150 feet, were enclosed with a barbed wire fence and contained prisoners’ quarters that measured 95 feet by 19 feet. The toilet was in a detached outhouse inside the fenced area (see illus. 10.2). Conditions inside the camp were too cramped to allow for physical exercise, and so starting in January 1940, escorts brought small detachments of internees at a time for exercise outside the campgrounds. Opposite the enclosure’s main gate was a guardhouse nearly one-third the size of the internees’ quarters. Two sentry boxes, one on each of two diagonally opposite corners outside the fence, were placed so that each sentry could watch two fence sides from his box. According to the guard orders, sentries were authorized to shoot any prisoner if necessary to prevent escape. The camp was guarded by three ncos and twelve constables and a relief of one nco and four men, all on eighthour duties. All prisoners were checked three times every eight hours at irregular intervals. They were ordered to retire at 10 p.m., rise at 7:30 a.m., and have their beds made and rooms cleaned by 8 a.m. At all times at least two ncos and eight constables were on duty. On 26 February 1940 the Home Defence Force assumed the duty of guarding the camp. The initial authority for the camp order came from the British “Regulations for the Maintenance of Discipline among Prisoners of War,” issued by the War

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10.2 Site plan for Pleasantville internment camp, 1939. Courtesy panl.

Office on 6 September 1939 for the United Kingdom, India, Newfoundland, Burma, and the colonial empire and based on the Geneva Convention of 1929. They were mailed from Downing Street on 28 September.19 One day after their move to the new camp, the internees presented a fourteen-point request, signed by Josting, Mertens, and Roeske, to the chief of police. Topping the list was a request for treatment as interned civilians instead of as prisoners of war, that is, to have the 10 p.m. closing hour cancelled and to be permitted to read newspapers and books. Most of the other demands concerned their comfort and safety. They included noninterference by the guards at night, an unlocked building as a fire-safety measure at night, free access to the toilet, construction of a separate washroom with several washstands and a shower bath, seating accommodation in the dining room for all internees at one time, clothing for the cold season, toilet paper, soap, toothpaste, laundry tubs, clotheslines, musical instruments, playing cards, tobacco, and so on. Except for changing their pow status, shifting of the closing hour to 11 p.m., and non-disturbance by

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the guards at night, most of the requests were met.20 For the Newfoundland Constabulary, the running of an internment camp was a new experience, and it took some time for everything to be properly organized and functioning. Among Newfoundlanders the Pleasantville camp was known as the “concentration camp.”21 From the day of its opening, it attracted a steady flow of curious spectators, and in November 1939 as many as seventy-five people were counted at one time standing outside the fence viewing the camp. The Daily News of 27 November mentioned that one of the Golden Coaches was running numbers of people back and forth. In the Observer’s Weekly of 28 November, “Trinculo,” probably a pseudonym for Albert Perlin, “was impressed by the number of people who stood around the fence as if they were looking on at some circus side show ... The gawking did not seem necessary or right.” He regretted that on a bright, sunny day, when the prisoners in their cramped quarters might have wished to stay as long as possible outdoors, they had to chose between going out to be “gazed at by hundreds of curious eyes” and remaining inside. Criticizing the location of the camp, Trinculo exhorted his readers not to allow the “misdeeds of the Nazi gang” in Germany to “be visited in the least way upon any Germans who happen to be our prisoners.” Not all, however, were attracted to the camp because of the spectacle of interned Germans. Some Newfoundlanders noted with misgivings that people came to talk to the internees.22 Professor Allan G. Gillingham, who continued to offer German language classes at Memorial University College throughout the war, repeatedly requested and received permission to visit the camp with his German class. His objective was to expose his students to native German-speakers and, as he explained to the Department of Justice, to cheer up the prisoners, “who after all are fellow human beings in an unfortunate situation.” By distinguishing between “the natural good that is in the majority in all lands” and the misdeeds of the Nazi gang, Trinculo and Gillingham echoed a sentiment among a small educated minority in Newfoundland23 which contrasted favourably with the views of the majority at the time and with the undifferentiated attitude manifested by the media in World War i. The authorities tried to make life in the camp as bearable as possible under the circumstances. They were in part motivated by the fear that complaints reaching Germany from internees might affect the treatment of British and Commonwealth pows in Germany. In mid-November 1939 the commissioner for justice arranged with the Dominions Office for the transfer to England of the fifteen-year-old crew member of the Doornum for

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possible repatriation to Germany. In England, however, this boy ended up in another internment camp. In January 1940 a sixty-three-year-old internee of the Doornum crew was encouraged to apply for repatriation. Another matter that appeared satisfactory was the camp diet. The printed camp menu issued in 1939 indicated that the internees were eating no worse and probably better than the average Newfoundlander. Reasonable requests from improvements of the camp diet were met, including the provision of German-type bread. In 1940 the menu was upgraded to that received by members of the Newfoundland militia. Magazines and daily newspapers were available for the internees to read. At Christmas 1939, the internees were treated to a special dinner, movie, visitors from the community, gifts, and entertainment. Professor Gillingham’s German class distributed candy, fruit, tobaccos, cigarettes, and various games. Thereafter they entertained the inmates with gramophone records of a number of old German folk songs. The citizens’ group and the inmates joined in singing the songs. Short addresses were given by Professor Gillingham and Captain Joesting on behalf of the inmates, and musical selections played by the camp orchestra, consisting of accordions and mouth organs. Through the sergeant on duty, the captain thanked the Department of Justice for allowing these social visits on Christmas Eve. “They will never forget the kindness shown them by the group of citizens, and requested me to ask,” reported Sergeant Case, “if it is possible for them to arrange future visits by the same group, i.e., once a month.” Secretary for Justice G.B. Summers scribbled on the margin: “I see no valid objections to this request. Perhaps not once a month, but, at any rate, from time to time.” The records of Department of Justice indicate, however, that of a total of thirteen occasions between December 1939 and November 1940 no more than twenty-six visitors (fourteen of whom were church ministers and officials) entered the camp, apart from Professor Gillingham’s evening class.24 The internees’ uncertainty over their status as well as personal incompatibilities caused chronic disciplinary problems during the first three months of internment operations. Knabe and Joesting protested in separate letters of 7 September and 12 November 1939 that their detention was illegal. They claimed that they were prevented from seeking neutral territory since they were arrested before the declaration of war while loading a cargo of ore destined for Belgium. One day in late November 1939 a handpainted inscription had to be taken down from over the bedroom door. It read “be true to the fuehrer who protects his people – death to the informer” and had a large picture of Adolf Hitler above it. A camp

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inspection by Commissioner and Secretary for Justice Summers in midJanuary 1940 revealed that the internees had refused responsibility for cleaning the camp and shovelling snow inside the fence, that security was inadequate, and that there were no official channels for complaints.

the geneva convention Before the Pleasantville camp opened, Governor Walwyn had requested advice from London on the treatment and discipline of interned enemy aliens. The dominions secretary, Anthony Eden, cabled on 2 November 1939 that “there is no convention or treaty governing treatment and discipline of interned enemy aliens.” For guidance Eden forwarded a copy of the British “Orders for Internment Camps,” issued by the War Office in September 1938. It was received in St John’s on 23 November 1939. The district inspector of the Newfoundland Constabulary believed he had remedied the disciplinary problem with the appointment on 19 January 1940 of Joesting as camp supervisor responsible for discipline in the camp and the posting of orders that disobeying the guards would make the prisoners liable to punishment. The new camp rules were translated into German by Roeske. They were adapted from the British “Orders for Internment Camps.” Newfoundland’s treatment of captured German merchant seamen was thus modelled on that of Britain. “Although they are in the broad sense prisoners of war,” the dominions secretary explained in June 1940, “practical reasons prevent application to them of all the provisions of the 1929 Prisoners of War Convention.” Extracts in German from articles 27, 34, and 45 of the convention (referring only to obligations of pows, not their rights) were posted in German in the camp on 3 June. It was not until May 1942 that the United Kingdom and Canada decided to confer full pow status according to article 48 of the 1929 Geneva Convention on interned merchant seamen.25 Appealing to international law, Captain Joesting on 22 January refused to obey and pass on an order from the guards to shovel snow around the fence on the inside. He argued that he could not pass on an order which he himself considered improper. Joesting and other internees believed that as civil internees, they were not supposed to do any work other than keep the camp clean. Knabe, Kuehne, Weber, Mertens, and two others declared their willingness to abide by international law “if is read to me in black-andwhite” (Knabe). A concern expressed by most internees was that work imposed on them might bring them into conflict with German laws after their return. Internee Kuehne wondered why the crew of the Doornum

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were apprehended eight days before the outbreak of war, but he received no answer from the government official. Matters were complicated by the refusal of Knabe to recognize the captain as supervisor of the camp. Knabe refused to accept anyone or anything but international law, and he made numerous complaints regarding the running of the camp and the quality of the food. He apparently had been continually opposing the captain since their internment and on one occasion had threatened him with a knife.26 The government considered the erosion of discipline serious enough to conduct a court martial at the camp on 25 January 1939, presided over by Secretary for Justice G.B. Summers. Here the captain was told that “privileges far in excess of International Law have been afforded you,” and article 6 of the Hague Convention was quoted as stating that “the state may outline the labour of prisoners of war according to the rank; their tasks shall not be excessive or shall have nothing to do with military operations.” The other internees were given to understand that it was for the administrators of the camp to decide and “not for you” (emphasis in the original), whether orders were in accordance with international law or not. Secretary Summers explained that there was no international law to which all countries agreed, only treaties between countries as to how prisoners were to be treated. “You are under the same rules as men in an army, and disobedience and insubordination will be treated as they would be in the army ... International law permits any measure necessary to enforce obedience to orders. You will have no privileges while you refuse to obey orders. You will, if necessary, be transferred to the Penitentiary, and any other measures necessary to obtain obedience will be taken.” Summers stressed that Newfoundland had granted concessions and privileges not mentioned in any treaty and would continue to do so as long as the internees cooperated without argument. In return for promises by all to comply with future orders, no punishment was imposed.27 The interned Doornum crew’s relatives in Germany, who claimed to have received no replies to their letters to St John’s, caused the Swiss legation in London (which represented Germany’s interests) to inquire in June 1940 about the well-being of captain and crew and whether they had been placed on a footing of equality with pows. On 3 August 1940 the consul general of Switzerland in Montreal sent a similar inquiry to the Commission of Government. Governor Walwyn replied to London on 8 June 1939 that letters had been despatched since January and received since March “with only such delay as is necessary to have translations made and censorship inspection.” He characterized the health of the prisoners and their accommodation as excellent. “They fare on the same basis as the Militia and

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Police with (for your information) exception of certain luxuries such as table sauces, etc.” In his reply to Montreal on 13 August 1940, the commissioner for justice and defence furnished a list of names and descriptions of the German internees and asked the Swiss consul general to make the arrangements necessary for the repatriation of sixty-three-year-old Doornum crew member Karl Zinser via Canada. The internment camp in Newfoundland, the commissioner contended, was especially built in a good location and would hold “without discomfort” at least forty-seven prisoners. The buildings, “of the ordinary hutment type,” were well heated and supplied with two shower baths and water sewerage. The prisoners allegedly enjoyed the benefits of the same diet and health care from the same medical officer as the members of the Newfoundland Militia who guarded them. Regular physical checkups and dental care were provided, and no illness had occurred so far. As for Newfoundland’s observation of the Geneva Convention concerning enemy prisoners, the commissioner pointed to the unrestricted permit held by the local representative of the International Red Cross, Dr Cluny Macpherson, to visit the camp with an interpreter whenever he wished.28 Postal communications from Britain with persons residing or detained in enemy territory were officially resumed effective 12 January 1940, according to a circular telegram from the dominions secretary in London.29 The available evidence indicates that most of the internees had no contact with relatives and friends in Germany prior to March that year. The International Red Cross in Geneva had approached the government of Newfoundland through the Canadian minister of national defence in Ottawa as early as October 1939 for the names and addresses of the Doornum crew arrested at Botwood.30 Whether and when Geneva received a reply is not known. The local representative of the Red Cross did not visit the camp until 27 April 1940. The internees’ German-language mail was translated in 1939 by Alfred McNamara and in 1940 by Professor Allan Gillingham for censorship inspection by the assistant secretary for justice, H.G. Puddester. Copies of the translations kept in the files of the Department of Justice indicate that letters from Germany were received at the camp from March 1940. In a letter of 17 April Captain Joesting informed the owner of his ship about how it was seized in Botwood eight days before the declaration of war. He revealed that Bosun Knabe and Steward Zinser were holding him personally responsible for their captivity and were threatening to bring the case to court in Germany after the war, claiming wages and compensation for the whole time. Simultaneously, Joesting handed the vis-

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iting representative of the International Red Cross a similar letter for transmission to Geneva in which he held Newfoundland fully responsible for all damages, loss of wages, and time arising from his unlawful internment. He implied that he would have been able to depart and prevent internment before the outbreak of the war had the ship not been illegally detained on 25 August. The Department of Justice attached an explanation that the ship was retained in accordance with the practice of international law.31

camp diversions “You ask what we are doing here,” Joesting wrote his son in May 1940 in a censored passage. “Being bored, bored and bored, likewise waiting, waiting and waiting ... We get up between 7 and 8. Breakfast is at 8. Then we get hungry or play some game or other. We have lunch at 12. Then we rest from our exertions until 3 p.m., we call it ‘nerve resting,’ from 3 to 5 we do as in the forenoon, sometimes we also spare our nerves in the meantime. At 5 o’clock we have tea. After that we do the same as before, and 10 or 11 p.m. after the day’s exertion we collapse in exhaustion and we rest our nerves until next morning.” In July 1940 Joesting wrote that he was going swimming in the lake near the camp almost every day. Roeske in a letter of April 1940 to his wife compared his situation with that of the “poor tigers” of the Hamburg Hagenbeck Zoo, which they used to watch pacing behind the bars of their cages from one side to the other. For Otto Boerger in mid-October 1940, “the days go by here, with their little cares, but the hardest part of it is being in captivity especially when we are innocent.” Although the food and the accommodation were “good considering conditions in the country,” Otto Boerger confessed that he “would much rather be in the foremost line than endure the wearing away of a prison.”32 The personal letters to their families back home contained frequent assurances that the internees had not been led astray by hostile influences. Boredom and scarcity of news actually strengthened the internees’ faith in Nazi Germany’s cause. Many of them fantasized about the dawn of a glorious age and envied those privileged to participate. The only source of news in the camp, apart from letters, was the local daily paper delivered to the camp in the morning. Roeske read it out in German every day because only ten of the internees could read English. After learning of the “liberation” of former German territories “from the Polish yoke” and of the swift German occupation of Denmark and Norway – which Captain Joesting characterized to his brother in Hamburg as “a lightning action that gladdens the heart” – Roeske conveyed to his wife the collective sentiment that

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10.3 Bone carved by Kurt Konopka in Pleasantville internment camp, dedicated “to Clara Gillingham in remembrance of Christmas 1939.” Courtesy Dr Allan Gillingham.

10.4 Tray carved by Kurt Konopka in Pleasantville internment camp, 1940. Courtesy Rev. E.C. Knowles.

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“we are all waiting for a quick decisive victory of our German troops – and then peace.” He envied his brother for being able to “help in the great fight for freedom of our German people” as a soldier, “while I sit around here completely aimless.” In May 1940 Roeske was alleged to have told one of the guards on sentry duty: “Keep the box warm, I’ll be up there some day.” Rumours abounded that Roeske had been so loud in his remarks against the Allies that some of the other internees gave him a beating. On the other hand, he also stated most emphatically that “the Newfoundlanders are very nice chaps, even now in wartime,” and that the internees could not complain of the treatment in the camp.33 Throughout 1940 the internees occupied themselves with playing cards and soccer and throwing horseshoes. Some also made model ships and bottle ships and carved sculptures from bones as gifts for Professor Gillingham and the church minister and for sale to the guards (see illus. 10.3 and 10.4). In May 1940 the commissioner for justice proposed that the internees be induced to cultivate the area surrounding the camp. Since under international law the men could not be compelled to work without pay, they were given two incentives to volunteer. First, they could use the produce (beets, carrots, radishes, potatoes, turnips, and cabbage) to add variety to their diet and, second, they could purchase tobacco rations and reading material from the proceeds of the garden surplus. The project never got off the ground. Concerned about the inability of most internees to read English and the unavailability of any German books in local libraries, the authorities considered ordering a supply of German novels from Canada. Roeske had been receiving issues of Life magazine since January 1940 from his friend F.W. Spannagel in New York. In June that year the censor was astonished to learn that an advertisement had appeared in the Sunday issue of the New York German-language Staats-Zeitung und Herold of 26 May 1940 drawing attention to the internment of Germans unable to read English in Pleasantville camp and asking for gifts of German books to be sent via the International Red Cross, attention Dr C. Macpherson, St John’s. The Justice Department was at a loss to explain how the advertisement had been placed and how information about the camp had reached New York. During the fall several packages of gifts and German reading materials arrived in the camp in response to the advertisement.34 A concerted attack against boredom was launched at the beginning of the winter season 1940 when the internees, under the guidance of First Engineer Boerger of the Doornum, started courses of instruction in German, English, mathematics, and topics of general interest. Local authorities supplied the requisite materials, such as exercise books, pencils,

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rulers, and compasses, but the internees lacked textbooks. In November Roeske wrote to the National Socialist German Labour Front, Overseas Division, Berlin, with a request to “place at our disposal suitable books for these courses of instruction. Perhaps also a textbook on introduction to bookkeeping, as we would like to add this subject.” Indicating that the internees had received a number of books from the Evangelical Relief Service for Interned and War Prisoners in Berlin and also from the German Seamen’s Mission in Hoboken, New Jersey, and had a camp library of some fifty German books, Roeske wrote that they would like more books and would be grateful for any reading material. Kurt Kroehnert confirmed that “we occupy ourselves with reading, we have received some books from the German Red Cross and some from America.”35 Christmas 1940, according to a detailed report by Roeske to his wife, was brightened by gifts from a number of local people and by a Christmas service conducted by United Church minister Knowles in German with the help of Professor Gillingham. We had a very pleasant afternoon with him and the three fellow-clergymen who came with him. Brueckner and Koehler, the ministers of the German Seamen’s Mission in Hoboken, N.J., who had sent us parcels quite frequently, sent us $25 which they had received for us from the German deaconness in Brooklyn. With that were bought apples, oranges and tobacco for Xmas. Furthermore, they had got our names ... and passed them on to their friends who then sent us parcels. Yesterday I got a nice Xmas parcel from a family by the name of Stadlmayr in Hoboken, – tobacco, pastry, chocolate, soap, etc. I was very pleased. The Seamen’s pastor Saul in Phila. sent us some more parcels. I had cigarettes from Miss Conroy and then, what was very pleasant, a number of us including myself each received from the Hapag/Lloyd agency in New York $4, and the others are to get the same amount. All in all, from a material point of view we were again well and generously treated, but above all else is the joy of knowing that here in our prison at the end of the world we still have friends and are not wholly deserted.36

Captain Joesting’s and oiler Ernst Munch’s attempt to escape through a hole they cut in the fence in the night of 14 October 1940 provided some diversion from the dullness of the internment routine and brought to light interesting details of camp life. “I took the offensive as it grew too boring for me. But they caught me again after 48 hours” was Joesting’s terse comment on his escape in a letter written to a fellow German internee in Canada who had been arrested as captain of another ship owned by Fisser and van Doornum of Emden, Germany. Joesting and Munch admitted that

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they had always plotted to get away. Their plan was to board a Spanish or Portuguese ship at Placentia or row in a small boat from there to the nearby French island of St Pierre. The official investigation following the escape attempt revealed that Knabe had escaped in October 1939 in order to spoil a simultaneous attempt by his captain. He did not want the captain to escape internment because he had allegedly disobeyed orders from the German High Command by entering the port of Botwood instead of going to sea, and thus had brought about the crew’s internment. His own escape in October 1939, Knabe had correctly anticipated, would bring about a closer supervision of the internees. During the summer of 1940, however, security had slackened again. Internees were no longer checked during the night and were allowed to stay up after their 11 p.m. curfew. One of them, who for a hobby made bone carvings and sold them to members of the Militia over the fence, kept tools at night contrary to regulations. The escapees’ declared motive for their breakout was to escape the degrading conditions of internment and try to get home to Germany. Joesting stated that although the camp was far too small for the internees, two kitchens were maintained by the Militia, one for the guards and one for the inmates. The guards got a much better breakfast and tea. Before the Militia took over, the food was allegedly the same for guards and internees. Joesting and Munch declared they would continue to avail themselves of every opportunity to escape.37 One sombre voice in the Daily News tried to stem the rising anger of citizens who thought that the Germans interned in Pleasantville had not deserved to be treated like lords and should be “executed or tortured” for escape attempts. At a time when fifth-column hysteria was rampant, a long letter signed E.B. Meaney, Barnes Place, City, set forth the reasons for not punishing escaping enemy aliens. Quoting an article in the Financial Post, Meaney argued that, according to the terms of the 1929 Geneva Convention, pows were not guilty of a crime in trying to escape. On the contrary, it was their duty. They could not be disciplined with reprisals. Their living conditions, medical care, and so on must be equal to those of the troops in the detaining country. They must be enabled to correspond with their families. They could not be compelled to work, and the terms of their employment must be those defined by the statutes of the locality. Corporal punishment and collective penalties are prohibited and pows could not be locked up in civil prisons. pows were in no sense criminals and were to be treated “as we would wish our own boys to be treated in Germany.” The letter pointed out that the American government, which

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oversaw the observance of the Geneva Convention in Germany, reported with regard to Commonwealth pows that “the Germans are carrying out this convention to the letter and therefore the British government is keenly desirous that its terms shall be rigidly enforced in Canada.”38

interned italians Italy’s entry into the war added new complications to Newfoundland’s internment operations. The seizure of the Italian steamer Dea Mazella, which was known to arrive in St John’s regularly with salt and take fish directly to Italy, was planned seven weeks in advance. In April 1940 the Department of Justice requested the Militia to make arrangements for “doubling up” either in the internment camp or of some of the militia in one of its barracks to accommodate an additional expected fifteen or twenty internees. On 10 June that year, the day of Italy’s declaration of war, nine Italian merchant seamen from three different ships were added to the twenty-eight German occupants of the Pleasantville camp. Eight of the Italians were removed from ships in Botwood and Bell Island, and one was a hospitalized seaman whom the Dea Mazella had left behind in St John’s. Although some of the Italians spoke German, the combination of boredom, inflexible daily routine, and lack of space characterizing camp life in Pleasantville, ensured that cultural and ideological differences between the two groups quickly escalated into rows. The dining room, which, according to Joesting, could seat only twenty-seven of the twenty-eight Germans, was hopelessly inadequate for thirty-seven internees. The local representative of the International Red Cross, whose attention had been drawn to this situation in November 1940, recommended to the Newfoundland commissioner for justice two sittings at meals. The Italians, furthermore, stated that they would very much prefer to be separate from the Germans and requested, in vain, to do their own cooking.39 After the escape attempt of Captain Joesting, a fifty-seven-year-old Italian second officer was appointed camp head. Thereafter the Germans, one Italian complained to Sergeant Cahill, were repeatedly harassing the Italians about religion and other matters. When a Roman Catholic priest called at the camp to say mass and all the Italians attended, some Germans allegedly sneered that only uneducated people would adhere to such nonsense. The Italians resented the Germans’ attitude, which “brought about an atmosphere of hatred and unrest amongst them.” The Italians proposed that they be removed from the camp to the Penitentiary in St John’s, “where they would be quite willing to go and remain until the end of the

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war.” The problem was solved when Canada agreed to accommodate the nine Italians at Camp Petawawa, Ontario, with Newfoundland assuming responsibility for transportation and maintenance. They left on 23 November 1940.40 The tensions between the Germans and Italians at Pleasantville had even come to the attention of the New York Times, which on 26 November carried a United Press despatch of the previous day commenting that “the Newfoundland Government decided to-day to separate interned Germans and Italian soldiers because of fights caused by German sneers at their Axis Partner’s war effort ... The Italians will be sent to Canadian camps to avoid expense of providing separate quarters there.”

abandoned in the petawawa and fredericton camps The Italians’ trouble with Germans did not end with their transfer to Camp Petawawa, nor did the responsibility of the Newfoundland government for its internees in Canadian camps. From Petawawa three of the nine Italians sent pleas to the authorities for a hearing to be released. “My suffering in Petawawa is the fascist and Nazist people bad and fanatical,” Espedito Picciolo complained in March 1942. “I defended my pro-democratic sentiments, and was called an English spy and pro-British. Please I ask if is possible ... to continue to navigate or send me on a farm ... or put me in jail, but please take me away from this fanatical fascists and nazists crowd.” The Newfoundland commissioner for justice, L.E. Emerson, left the fate of the Italians to be decided by the Canadian authorities and made it clear “that we do not wish them to be returned to Newfoundland if they are released.” In January 1945 former Newfoundland internee Luigi Esposito, characterized by the Camp Petawawa commandant as “a very good worker and an anti-Nazi,” was still being held in Canadian internment and applying for his release.41 Camp life in Pleasantville deteriorated in December 1940 as the campground became muddy and, because of the lack of waterproof shoes, unusable for outdoor exercises. Several internees fell ill with flu, ulcers, and other stomach trouble. Some of the last was blamed on swallowing unchewed food because of the camp dentist’s excessive extraction of teeth. On 21 December Governor Walwyn requested Canada to take over the twenty-eight remaining German internees on the same terms as the Italians; that is, Newfoundland would bear the cost of transportation and maintenance and retain responsibility for detention or release. The Canadian government refused to agree until 31 December, when the future of

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the Victoria, Newfoundland, camp had been finalized.42 Newfoundland’s German internees departed on 13 January 1941 for the Petawawa and Fredericton internment camps. Among the transferred internees was also sixty-five-year-old Carl Zinser, who was still waiting to be repatriated. Doornum fireman Erich Lendzian and brewer Max Weber died after their arrival in the Fredericton internment camp in 1941. Since none of these transfers had been given the opportunity to object to their internment in Canada, a legal question arose in 1942 – would they be eligible for the same hearing by the Canadian Advisory Committee on Restriction and Detention with a view to their possible release as those detained by the Canadian government itself? Kothe, who had applied for citizenship papers in Newfoundland in July 1939, wrote to Canadian minister of justice Louis St Laurent in July 1942 that “I always did abide by the laws of New Foundland, that I had been loyal to the country to which I had come by my own free will and that I am at a loss to understand what the reasons could have been for my arrest and consequent internment ... I feel sure that I could disclaim any charge laid against me by persons unknown to me and for reasons also unknown to me.” Since “a man of my age is not well fit for a long internment,” Kothe requested a hearing before one of the Canadian advisory committees and permission to return to his relatives in Newfoundland. Commissioner Emerson was opposed to a hearing for the Germans, “even if it were possible to have one in Canada.” On the other hand, he was sympathetic to a hearing for the Italians as long as it was not held in Newfoundland, “even if we had the machinery set up for that purpose.”43 In November 1942 the commissioner of justice was asked how he desired to act on an application by Roeske and Mertens to the Swiss consulate general in Montreal for repatriation to Germany. “I have to say,” the Newfoundland secretary for justice advised the high commissioner for Canada in St John’s, “that it is unlikely that the case of Roeske would receive favorable consideration. This man is suspected of having acted as an unofficial consul for Germany in Newfoundland and to have collected a large amount of information as to the country which might be valuable to the enemy if he were allowed to return home. The same considerations do not apply in respect of Mertens.” The Newfoundland government nevertheless approved the inclusion of Kothe, Mertens, and Roeske among two hundred German civilians in Canada who were sailing for England in November 1944 to be held there pending agreement for another civilian exchange with Germany. They had to sign formal undertakings not to bear arms during the current war.44

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Three of the internees died after their transfer to Canada. The first was Max Weber, fifty-six years old. His cause of death was mastoiditis with brain abscess while at Fredericton in October 1941. In April the previous year he had petitioned in vain for his release on the basis of information transmitted through the Red Cross that no one over fifty was interned in Germany or was supposed to be interned in the British colonies. The censor delayed Weber’s letter of that April to his wife in Germany on the grounds of its being “generally objectionable.” In it Weber complained that in Pleasantville camp no regard was paid to the social standing and education of individuals and that a university-educated brewmaster such as he had to do the same physical work as any ordinary working man. Until his death he had tried unsuccessfully to have his $5,000 deposit at the Newfoundland Savings Bank released to him and to gain permission to emigrate to Argentina or Mexico, where friends were arranging for him to take over a brewery. With regard to notifying Weber’s relatives in Germany of his death, the Newfoundland assistant secretary of justice advised the representative of the International Red Cross not to mention Weber’s financial affairs, since his $5,000 deposit was not to be released to them and would be transferred to the custodian of enemy property.45 Doornum sailor Kurt Kroehnert died in Canadian internment in September 1943. Kurt Konopka, the bone carver of the Doornum crew, died in January 1945 in Ontario. The remaining Doornum crew members remained interned until the end of the war, although, as Commissioner Emerson admitted in January 1945, “practically all the men concerned were here accidentally, on board foreign ships, in our ports at the outbreak of the war.” The commissioner of justice washed his hands of any responsibility by taking the position in January 1945 that, as per understanding of 15 June 1943 with respect to Japanese and Finnish internees held for Newfoundland by Canada, the Canadian government should be considered as having been given plenary authority to pass upon the question of the release, repatriation, or other treatment of all the internees held on behalf of Newfoundland. The Newfoundland government’s attempt in 1944 (with regard to funeral expenses for Kurt Kroehnert) to devolve also responsibility for maintenance costs of its former internees on Canada, however, failed.46

victoria camp In mid-June 1940 Newfoundland became party to another, British-initiated internment scheme that remained stillborn. Hastily improvised following the evacuation of Dunkirk, the scheme envisaged the relocation of

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some 1,000 German Jewish refugees of Britain’s 72,000 civilian internees to a camp to be constructed, maintained, and guarded at British expense near Victoria, Carbonear. The planned relocation of these refugees was triggered by a fifth-column panic that had temporarily gained such wide currency and respectability in Britain that most of the country’s 22,000 civilian internees were considered a security risk. Even Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria were suspected of being willing to aid and abet the enemy in the event of an invasion and hence viewed as “potentially dangerous.” Churchill thought he had evidence of the existence of 20,000 German Nazis in England, and the British public demanded that all of Britain’s refugees from German-speaking and German-occupied Europe be put in “concentration camps.” Ironically, the great majority of those interned in makeshift camps in May and June 1940 were Jewish refugees.47 In the first days of June 1940, the British government was becoming desperate to “export” interned aliens and prisoners of war to places remote from the British Isles out of fear that they might collaborate with German aircraft or parachute troops, readers of the Evening Telegram of 4 June were able to learn. Canada was to take 8,000, Australia 9,000, and Newfoundland 2,000 of Britain’s internees; Canada ended up receiving a total of 7,492 (including 2,284 Jewish refugees) and Australia 2,732. A letter in the Daily News of 29 June by C.F. Garland suggested that British internees would be welcome in Newfoundland: “We have plenty of space to accommodate hundreds of thousands.” Proposing that Newfoundland help to relieve congestion in the British Isles by taking large numbers of interned aliens, prisoners of war, refugees, and evacuees, the writer claimed to have the support of a large number of citizens. He suggested that many islands could be utilized for that purpose, provided the British government would pay for all the expenses incurred. Random Island, for instance, could accommodate 50,000 interned aliens. The prisoners would create a lot of trade, jobs, and profits for Newfoundland. “There are so many angles to advantage they become more evident with thinking about the scheme.” On 18 June Governor Walwyn was prepared to receive 1,000 internees in two weeks’ time, provided that a sufficient number of tents and wooden floors were sent ahead of them. However, the luxury liner Arandora Star, which was supposed to bring 50 tons of tentage to Newfoundland and then continue with its cargo of Italian internees to Canada, was torpedoed off the Irish coast on 29 June and sank with heavy loss of life. Since Victoria

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camp was still under construction, the shipload of 982 internees destined to arrive on 10 July on the former Polish luxury liner Sobieski 48 had to be rerouted to Canada instead. The Sobieski departed from England as planned on 4 July and reached Quebec on 15 July. On its way to Canada the ship entered St John’s harbour for three hours (allegedly for repairs) without docking or allowing anyone to disembark and without identifying the port to its passengers. By September 1940 the deportation of internees from Britain was discontinued. The British government now proposed another scheme for the half-finished Victoria camp, namely, its utilization as a pow camp for 1,000 captured enemy airmen. England already had some 850 captured enemy airmen, and the total was increasing daily, the secretary of state for dominion affairs explained on 27 September. The British government considered it desirable to move them overseas. However, the Canadian-American Permanent Joint Board of Defence turned thumbs down on this scheme and warned Governor Walwyn on 9 October “that incarceration of German prisoners in Newfoundland would present a serious military hazard which might jeopardize the defence scheme for Newfoundland which the Board is now preparing and thus menace the safety of Canada and the United States.” pjbd members feared in particular that German forces might be prepared to take grave risks to liberate captured airmen and might make the island subject to attacks against which the neutral United States might find it difficult to intervene. A third scheme proposed on 12 October 1940 by the dominions secretary for the utilization of Victoria camp was also vetoed by the Canadian government and the pjbd. According to it, the 1,000 enemy airmen intended for Newfoundland would be diverted to Canada; that country in turn would send 1,000 of its interned merchant seamen to Newfoundland. Governor Walwyn eagerly seized upon the proposal and was confident that the Canadian government might perhaps be able to object to naval seamen but not to merchant seamen. The camp, he wrote to London and Ottawa, was not visible from the sea and was approachable only by one road four miles long, which for five months could be kept passable only by a snowplow. The presence of Allied land and sea forces and the vicinity of two airports would make an enemy raid “so hazardous that we can hardly imagine Germany undertaking it for Merchant seamen.”49 Victoria camp was ready for occupancy on 15 November 1940. The Dominions Office hoped in vain that the camp might be taken over by the

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United States or Canadian military forces stationed on the island. In June 1941 British Fleet orders to intern as enemy aliens up to two hundred Frenchmen off French vessels fishing on the Grand Banks were made contingent on the opening up of the Victoria camp at Carbonear, the provision of military guards, and the consideration of costs.50 But the camp was never used for anything. In the spring of 1943 it was sold and dismantled. Today a memorial plaque at Victoria, Carbonear, marks the camp site (see illus. 10.5).51

internment of foreign seamen The basis for Newfoundland’s detention of nationals from a variety of nonGerman countries was suspicion of pro-German sympathies and so-called fifth-column (espionage) activities. As in World War i, Newfoundland not only confined or interned from the beginning of the war persons of enemy nationality and birth, but it also detained and expelled persons associated in any way with an enemy country. That policy included, in particular, citizens from countries allied with or occupied by Germany. The Newfoundland government specifically declared it “extremely undesirable that Finns, Roumanians, Hungarians, Bulgarians and other enemy aliens of nationalities which Canada does not intern, should be permitted to enter.”52 Newfoundland thus defined enemy alienism in much broader terms than Canada. In September 1940 the Newfoundland authorities, “for various reasons,” began systematically to remove Danish, Greek, and French seamen from foreign vessels docked in Newfoundland ports and to detain them in the Penitentiary and other local facilities. In the first three cases the arrest had to be retroactively legalized by claiming authority under Regulation 15 of the Newfoundland defence regulations of September 1939. According to this regulation, any person subject to deportation could be detained at the discretion of the chief commissioner of immigration.53 It was not until June 1941 that a British Fleet order called for Dutch, Belgian, Danish, Norwegian, Polish, and French vessels not in the service of the Allies to be seized and the crews to be interned at the discretion of the Newfoundland government.54 This order was followed by a British government request not to permit such nationals on merchant vessels on the transatlantic service with Britain. They were to be either deported or transferred to the North American coastal trade. Assignment to these pro-Allied ships or deportation, however, was not always possible or viewed as desirable. Internment was seen as the alternative.

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10.5 Site plan of Victoria internment camp, Newfoundland, 1940. Courtesy panl.

Government records identify the following arrests of foreign seamen to be deported: twelve Danes in September 1940; twenty Greeks and fifty-five French in October 1940; and twenty-seven Finns, two Romanians, one Frenchman, and one Japanese national in December 1941.55 There were probably others. Their period of detention varied; some were kept as long as eighteen months in such makeshift facilities as police barracks, the Penitentiary, the West End Fire Hall, the Sudbury Building, and the Caribou Hut. Of the thirty foreign seamen held in the West End Fire Hall at the beginning of 1942, most had complied with orders to sign on pro-Allied

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ships by August 1943. Four Finns were accused of pro-Nazi sympathies and kept under arrest. The charge of pro-Nazi sympathies against Walter Ekholm, captain of the Finnish vessel Oddvar II, was based on the report of a constable who visited the Atlantic Tavern in St John’s. According to this report and an attached memo by the registrar of aliens, the captain was overheard remarking under “the effects of beer” that the “Japs have made all the gains so far” and would later control the Pacific and that “Germany did not get a square deal in 1918” with regard to the Polish Corridor. The captain was also reported to have commented on the British Empire’s declaration of war on “little Finland [who] ... was only fighting for her liberty.” Last year the British had insisted that the Finns fight the Russians, but now their attitude was different, the captain explained to the registrar. Armed with this ambiguous evidence, the registrar of aliens concluded: “I feel safe on going on record to the effect that this man is proGerman. It must be remembered that Finland is at war against us, and therefore Finnish nationals cannot be expected to be loyal to the British Empire.”56 Together with one Japanese, the four Finns were taken to Canada for internment until August 1945.57 One of the Finns, the captain of the Oddvar II, had arrived in St John’s with his wife and four children. These dependents had to be left there alone for the duration of the war because Canada had no facilities for interning them.58 Reviewing all of the above cases in July 1945, the chief of the Newfoundland Constabulary felt compelled to note that these seamen were not really interned because there were no proper camps. Although the term “internment” was used officially, he explained, one should “regard the detention as protective custody pending the result of investigations.”59

plans to intern jewish refugees The final piece in the mosaic of World War ii internment operations in Newfoundland is exemplified by the experience of a female doctor admitted to Newfoundland in 1939. She was one of six Jewish refugee doctors the government recruited in London to work as nurses – not doctors – in outports with insufficient or no medical service. From the day of their arrival in Newfoundland, these refugees faced insurmountable difficulties adjusting to their stigmatization as enemy aliens and the resultant restrictions imposed on their freedom of movement. Austrian physician Lisbeth Redlich, a thirty-year-old adoptee of a Jewish

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family who had fled to England in 1938, was under continuous police surveillance and investigation as a suspected spy throughout her four years of service as a district nurse in six different locations. During her first service in the General Hospital, for example, sixteen members of the hospital staff offered signed statements to the police accusing her of sending light signals from her room, of defending Hitler, of admitting to being a spy, and of being friendly to three hospitalized German internees because she spoke German to them. These complaints were made despite the fact that in St John’s she lived with a Jewish family and was known by the police to have only Jewish contacts. Upon expiration of her contract, Redlich was therefore unsurprisingly desperate to return to England and resume medical work there. When she applied for travel documents in July 1942, L.E. Emerson, the commissioner for justice and defence, opposed her request. Instead of allowing her to go, he wanted her interned in Canada because of her alleged suspicious conduct. It was Emerson who, since his appointment to the Commission in 1937, had vetoed every plan and approach for offering sanctuary to Jewish refugees before the war. He represented the interests of the local business elite and was de facto head of the Newfoundland government. Redlich avoided arrest and internment only because Canada was in the process of releasing its last female internees at Kingston Penitentiary and declined to offer special accommodation for her. Canada, furthermore, had received no female refugees for internment from the United Kingdom in 1940 and hence considered Redlich’s internment undesirable, Canada’s high commissioner in St John’s, Charles J. Burchell, advised Emerson. Still, her application to leave was refused until December 1943, when it was finally granted on compassionate grounds because her mother was seriously ill.60 It may be of interest to note in this connection that in March 1944 Emerson replied to an inquiry by lawyer John G. Higgins that “during the present war the Newfoundland Government has not on any occasion interned enemy aliens of the female sex.”61 Redlich, to be sure, was the only female refugee in Newfoundland whose planned internment is documented. But the available evidence also suggests that internment and deportation were the direction into which the authorities were invariably driven by the growing espionage and sabotage paranoia. As an April 1942 report by Constable G. Coveyduck, which was endorsed by the Department of Justice, articulated, “all persons of enemy alien extract must be regarded as potential foes and, with the limited staff having to do with investigation of aliens, a constant check is practically impossible and, if

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adequate precaution is not taken, we could be faced with a small army overnight that could do much in the line of sabotage.”62 There was only one appropriate safeguard, Chief of Police P.J. O’Neill liked to reiterate to the secretary for justice: “Every German in the country should be interned.”63

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11 “Can the leopard change its spots?”

The Nazi Fifth-Column Experience, 1939–1945 The history of other subjugated peoples is that they were betrayed by naturalized citizens of some twenty years standing. Here it might be pertinent to ask: Can the leopard change its spots? Everyone knows the answer. Letter signed “Patriot,” in Daily News (St John’s), 28 May 1940 I have seen that some people are in sympathy with me while others are the very opposite. I feel very badly about this and there is nothing I can do about it. I feel that owing to the situation some person or persons may injure me or my family, and it is our wish that we be sent to St John’s and remain interned until the war is over. Rudolph Klopfer, naturalized resident of Corner Brook, 25 May 1940

When the British government declared war on 3 September 1939, Newfoundland was ready to meet perceived fifth columnists with a battery of emergency acts and regulations modelled on similar British and Canadian legislation. Defence Regulation 39 of 1 September 1939, for instance, declared anyone guilty of an offence who “is upon any railway, pier, wharf, bridge, viaduct or culvert, or loiters on or in any road or path or other place near a railway, pier, wharf, bridge, viaduct or culvert, with intent to do injury thereof.”1 According to Regulation 69, anyone might be guilty of an offence who “does any act of a nature which may be prejudicial to the public safety or the defence of the Island and is not specifically provided for in the foregoing Regulations.”2 Regulations 72 and 73 obliged Newfoundlanders to denounce suspects to the police and defined any act preparatory to the commission of a prohibited act to be punishable. Regulation 43, finally, permitted anyone authorized by the government to arrest suspects without warrant.

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Although designed to protect the Newfoundland home front, many of these provisions encouraged and legitimized the witch hunt for real and perceived enemy agents. The witch hunt seemed justified in light of the unrefuted assumption that during the Great War Newfoundland’s Germans and Austrians had been enemy agents. Since the names of those accused of and punished for disloyalty had never been cleared by any Newfoundland authority, the World War i German community was remembered for having harboured enemy agents and spies. Almost overnight, therefore, a minority of residents were again suspected of disloyalty and stigmatized as enemies within, including not only all local residents of German-speaking background but also a wide range of non-Germans associated directly or indirectly with the Third Reich The contrast between the reality of their situation and the public image will be highlighted through case studies of some representative individuals affected.

the impact of the fifth-column syndrome The appearance in the public eye of fellow residents operating as fifth columnists in Newfoundland evolved in stages in lockstep with the fear of war. The beginnings can be traced to the appeasement policy negotiated at Munich. It triggered the government’s first attempt in September 1938 to prepare an inventory of “certain foreign nationalities living in N.F.L.D.” in connection with the adoption of a defence scheme for Newfoundland. The best, however, the police could do “without arousing suspicion” was to come up with an inaccurate list of seventy individuals.3 The question “Could Germany Be Given Nfld.?” was raised in two articles in the Evening Telegram (22 and 23 November 1938) in connection with the “Munich Peace” and alerted Newfoundlanders to the possibility of their island serving as an ideal centre of operations for Germany in the Western Hemisphere. Concurrent newspaper articles noted that there were 12 million Germans living in the United States and 50,000 in Canada, that the size of the Auslandsorganisation, the world-wide organization of German Nazi fifth columnists, ran into the millions, and that a network of Nazis existed in Canada.4 When the roundup and deportation of Nazi agents in England was reported in April 1939, local observers wondered whether “the activities of Nazi agents in Newfoundland – there are some – should not also be kept under close observation.”5 In May 1939, fifty-year-old F.W. Kothe, unemployed and in debt, had the distinction of being the first German denounced as a spy for Hitler’s Germany because he had appealed to the German consulate general in

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Ottawa for financial help to avoid deportation.6 Two months later, German Jewish refugee nurses and doctors landing in Newfoundland were suspected of “ideas inimical to the best interests of a British community.”7 By August 1939 every movement of a German visitor, such as a Dr Muller who stepped ashore for six hours from the ss Townshend to take a few pictures of St John’s, were observed by the constabulary and reported to the Department of Justice.8 Immediately after the outbreak of war, St John’s residents were reported to be much agitated by the fact that German citizens professing to be Nazis were still at large.9 This was obviously a reference to Alfred Roeske, the only known member of the Nazi Party in Newfoundland, who was arrested on 10 September and interned. But apart from three other local Germans (see chapter 10), no other residents were interned – the police found most of the accusations against them to be without foundation. The Department of Justice was confident that systematic police surveillance of aliens would be able to detect any subversive activity. Formal freedom, however, meant little for these suspects. Public agitation brought social ostracism and economic insecurity overnight, even for such long-time and well-known residents as Alo Gut and Rudolph Klopfer. Alo Gut, who had moved to St John’s in 1930, when he was twenty-five years old, was known to many Newfoundlanders as a completely apolitical German bachelor who loved nature so much that he stayed in Newfoundland against the will of his father (see illus. 7.4). The latter had had a business agency in St John’s. Gut used to have an excellent rapport with the neighbourhood boys of Robinson’s Hill where he boarded. “They admired him greatly for teaching them about the stars and other things,” his wife Nora later remembered. After the outbreak of the war, the boys suddenly refused to greet him and shunned his company. When pressed, one of them explained that “my dad and mom told me not to talk to you any more.” According to police reports, Gut was also denounced by several local businessmen living in the neighbourhood; they maintained that his actions warranted his immediate internment. The police found the accusations utterly baseless and characterized the accusers as “like a good many more citizens here in the city, who look upon Gut as a German, and in an off-handed way, express the opinion that he cannot be trusted.” Gut lost his job and was unable to pay his rent and board. He survived the six-year ordeal thanks to the McNamara family, who treated him as one of them because Dr Alfred McNamara had been a guest of Gut’s parents in Germany from 1930 to 1934 while studying optometry.10 Stuttgart native Rudolph Klopfer had emigrated to Canada in 1929 at

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the age of twenty and the following year was offered a job as a baker at the Glynmill Inn, Corner Brook. In this position he worked until 1939 and was issued an affidavit as “very capable and a good citizen.” A British subject since 1934, he sent for his girlfriend in Germany to marry her in 1936. They had one child. At the outbreak of the war his employer for nine and a half years asked him to resign because his presence at the inn was regarded with disapproval by some of the public. “I know a few people in Corner Brook but my friends are afraid to take me in,” Klopfer stated to the police. I have seen that some people are in sympathy with me while others are the very opposite. I feel very badly about this and there is nothing I can do about it. I feel that owing to the situation some person or persons may injure me or my family, and it is our wish that we be sent to St John’s and remain interned until the war is over. I do not wish that the Newfoundland government be put to any expense in connection with the transportation or our maintenance while we are interned as I will pay these expenses myself. My wife is so nervous that her and I request to go to St John’s and be interned and it will cost the Government nothing while we are there.

The chief of police in St John’s refused to accommodate Klopfer since he was a British subject and asked him to return to Corner Brook, where he remained under police surveillance. In Corner Brook every allusion of Klopfer’s to current events was reported to the police. On the strength of rumours that he was critical of the war effort, the president of the local veterans’ association urged that he be deported or kept in close confinement. According to the January 1942 report of the surveilling constable, Klopfer was unemployed and depressed. “All his money is going out and none is coming in, he is finding the situation pretty hard.” In 1943 Klopfer finally found employment at a Corner Brook bakery.11

the role of the media Evening Telegram editorials seem to have played no insignificant role in fuelling fifth-column apprehensions of Newfoundlanders when German troops invaded France in mid-May 1940, defeated that country in less than a month, and appeared to be set for an invasion of Britain. The signal for the new, uncompromising tone in the public debate over the treatment of enemy aliens was given in several editorials and comments on European events warning of the danger posed by the infiltration of refugees with fifth-column activity and the spirit of defeatism. The gist of the new alarm-

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ing message is wrapped up in the column “Enemy Within” of 23 May 1940 in which a local “analyst” approvingly quotes a speech by the Right Honiurable Lord Queensborough justifying mass internment of refugees in Britain: Let us remember that very large numbers of refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia were men of strong left-wing and almost Communist sympathies; we cannot rely on their loyalty to the country which has given them shelter. In addition to this it is well known that the Gestapo has planted its agents among the refugees and that many selfstyled exiles were and are, in fact, the paid secret agents of the Nazi power. Their work not only includes the obvious duties of espionage and sabotage, but the equally dangerous and infinitely less easily detectable work of spreading defeatism, preaching Nazi doctrines, and using revolutionary elements to weaken the Home Front ... In their own interests and in the interests of our own Country and People, all aliens whose antecedents and character are not beyond the slightest shadow of suspicion should be put under restraint or made subject to severe restrictions.

Unfavourably comparing Newfoundland’s lack of preparedness against acts of enemy aliens with Canada’s exemplary measures “against the enemy already within the gate,” the editorials in the Evening Telegram castigated the Newfoundland authorities for their lackadaisical attitude towards the dangers from within.12 The first echo of these inflammatory editorials appeared in a letter to the editor of the Daily News on 28 May 1940 demanding that it was high time to round up and intern all enemy aliens still at liberty in Newfoundland, “regardless of their being naturalized,” since “a leopard cannot change its spots.” In rapid succession several letters to the editor during June and July 1940, all signed with pseudonyms, demanded action. Most gave credit to the editor of the Evening Telegram for raising the alien issue. “These days you cannot say who is who and what is what and it is up to the people of this country to demand internment or deportation of those whose bona fide may be open to question,” remarked someone who signed with “Caution” in the Evening Telegram on 4 June. The next day “AntiGerman” complained to the Daily News that the internees in Pleasantville were being treated like lords, and provided with plenty of good food, sunshine, and rest. “Anti-German” considered it a terrible disgrace “that our own people, our own flesh and blood are on the dole, unhappy and starving, whilst our enemies within our gates are treated and cared for with the best.” Newfoundlanders were again living up to their reputation of being

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“too green to burn” by being physically active but mentally inert at a time when the whole empire was on guard, noted “Democrat” in the Evening Telegram of 5 July 1940. Was it a coincidence, the writer asked, why so many of the interned aliens had required treatment at the General Hospital, where they could converse with doctors of their own nationality in a language not understood by others in the ward? “Why are aliens so strategically placed throughout the country in positions where they have the best possible opportunity to gain information – and pass it on?” “Democrat,” on behalf of the people of Newfoundland, demanded “immediate, vigorous and effective action against the Fifth Column menace in this country.” The debate quickly assumed nativist overtones as the targets shifted from enemy aliens to aliens as such. In the Evening Telegram of 6 July a letter signed “Action Wanted” demanded to know why the Commission of Government had brought in so many aliens during the preceding eighteen months. “These aliens are still at large and being paid by a British Government. Why?” The writer was unhappy with the government’s standard answer that these individuals were harmless. Inspired by the measures reported to have been undertaken by other dominion governments, the writer concluded with the call: “Come along Newfoundlanders, see to it that your country gets rid of all aliens by internment or deportation.” A Newfoundlander who had just returned from Canada confirmed in the Daily News of 8 July that he had met many people here expressing, in view of events elsewhere, the greatest anxiety about aliens. He pointed out that in Canada the closest surveillance was being exercised over possible fifth columnists and that the most rigorous steps had been taken to ensure public safety. In the issue of 9 July “Six Anti-Aliens” declared their solidarity with the editor of the Evening Telegram for the stand he had taken against “aliens in our midst.” Drastic steps should be taken against aliens drawing “fat salaries” from the government to see that they “are put where they belong, namely in the internment camp along with their fellow countrymen where we are sure they can do no mischief.” On 30 May 1940, as partial blackout and headlight darkening regulations were ordered for St John’s, an Evening Telegram editorial created a minor sensation by revealing that a professor of German at the Memorial University College had issued an essay assignment on the topic “The Triumphant Entry of German Troops into London.” The editor found it impossible to take a lenient view of this matter and condemned “as strongly as possible the stupidity” and “callous indifference displayed ... as well as lack of judgement in imagining that such a task could be regarded as anything but abhorrent to the students of any school outside Germany.”

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Convinced it was expressing the sentiments of its readers and the general public, the Telegram publicly reprimanded the professor for offending the feelings of this loyal community and indicated that the authorities might take further action. The next day Professor Allan Gillingham apologized in the Daily News for adding to the public anxiety and explained that his assignment was meant to be humorous and was treated in a lighter vein by the students. Gillingham had spent four summers in Germany between 1931 and 1938, and he continued to teach German-language courses throughout the war. His views were already well known. For example, his published address on “Impressions in Germany” (see chapter 9), given to the St John’s Rotary Club on 27 January 1939, revealed his sympathy for the German people and his insights into the unpopularity of the Nazi regime’s antiSemitic measures. In April 1940 William J. Eaton, an employee of the Department of Public Works and a personal friend for many years of Mrs Gillingham, denounced Gillingham to the police for his alleged proGerman views after an argument at a private dinner party at the Eatons. Had Gillingham not been a native son of Newfoundland, a popular and respected faculty member of Memorial-University College since 1933, an adviser to the government, and a translator and assistant censor of German-language mail, the incident might well have triggered more forceful calls for his resignation.13 Throughout the summer and fall of 1940 the Evening Telegram kept stoking the fires of fifth-column hysteria by its news reporting and xenophobic editorial comments. Under headlines such as “The Quisling Factory” (17 July), “Canada Smashes at Fifth Column” (8 August), “Gestapo Mingle with Refugees” (29 August), the paper fed its readers a steady diet of news about alleged untrustworthiness of refugees, worldwide fifth-column activities, and the exemplary measures adopted against this evil in Britain and Canada. Editorials such as the one of 1 June 1940 titled “Intern or Deport” aimed at driving home an artificial and insidious distinction between loyal citizens of non-British stock, on the one hand, and “the German on the other hand although he or she has recently become naturalized.” Lumped together with “the German” were nationals of countries annexed by the Third Reich and “all strangers who have suddenly discovered that Newfoundland suits them as a place of residence.” With regard to refugees’ search for sanctuary, which the editorial “The Stranger Within” of 3 July tainted as “nefarious work” of fifth columnists, the door should be “shut and bolted against them.” By contrast, the Daily News, the Evening Telegram’s competitor and Newfoundland’s only other major

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daily newspaper, took a more realistic view of the danger from within and attempted to exert a moderating influence, even in the critical situation of May-June 1940. “It would be well to remember that we are all labouring under the strain of pent-up emotion,” the Daily News editor reminded his readers on 31 May 1940. “We must not allow it to lead us into ‘witchhunting.’ Nor must we see a spy in every bush or a traitor behind every foolish word or act.” With an estimated circulation of 20,000, the Evening Telegram was the most widely read Newfoundland paper at the time. Virtually all of its editorials were written by its editor, Charles E.A. Jeffery, the son of an Anglican priest who had immigrated from England in 1874. A former schoolteacher and headmaster of the Ex-Servicemen’s Rehabilitation School, Jeffery had a reputation among his co-workers for being stubborn, provocative, and righteous. He single-handedly determined the nativist editorial stance of his paper. It grew steadily in importance and size and was seen as, in the words of historian-politician A.B. Morine, “acquiring decided political influence.” Less popular was the more moderate viewpoint of his chief rival, Daily News editor John S. Currie, a former member of the Legislative Council and government, whom contemporary writer Harold Horwood portrayed as “almost painfully respectable.”14 The media campaign for drastic measures against suspected fifth columnists was accompanied by direct approaches to the governor from the public. The commissioners devoted considerable attention to a letter of 15 May 1940 from Mrs F.R. Emerson, writing as an active member of the Red Cross Society, who felt so strongly on the subject of home defence that she did not wish to advertise her proposals “for the information of the enemy in our midst.” Having watched the Nazi organization working “quickly, efficiently and relentlessly” in South America and frightened at the Nazi boast that they could take the enormous Republic of Colombia with the assistance of a battleship, she warned the Commission to plan for the moment when the Nazis, as they announced, would fly over Newfoundland. First, in an obvious reference to the half-dozen Jewish refugee doctors serving as nurses, Mrs Emerson urged “that every alien, male or female, no matter how long since he left his country, and all those, no matter what credentials they bring, who are arriving so easily and establishing themselves at such points of vantage, just before the Germans may make an aerial attack, be interned at once without exception, so that our efforts for defence may not be reported straight to Germany as they develop.” Secondly, she suggested that “all members of the nursing services be ready for active service here with cars and supplies accessible.” Governor Walwyn

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was impressed enough by Mrs Emerson’s fears to remind the commissioner for justice of the availability of the clb Camp at Topsail should the occasion arise.15

registration Despite massive public pressures, the commissioners did not bow to demands for large-scale internment or deportation of aliens. “Each case will be considered on its merits,” the Commission decided at its meeting of 17 May 1940. Even to consider mass internment and police surveillance of fifth-column suspects, the Commission had to face the awesome task of creating Newfoundland’s first systematic register of all “alien” residents as provided for in Defence Regulation 20 of 1 September 1939. The implementation of a comprehensive system of alien registration took almost a year and turned into a bureaucratic nightmare, partly because of the lack of a clear definition of what constituted an alien, or even an enemy alien, and partly because no reliable data existed about Newfoundland’s population of non-British origin. A confusing tendency to equate the retention of non-British cultural attributes with a lack of loyalty and to see an enemy alien within every native of a central or east European country proved to be a major obstacle to establishing equitable and effective registration and controls. As a result, not only German nationals became the subject of police surveillance and preventive measures, but also all kinds of related “aliens,” such as residents of neutral and annexed European countries. While refugees from Nazi persecution suffered most from unwarranted suspicion and the threat of internment, seamen from various other European countries, especially Finland, were systematically detained, interned, and deported (see chapter 10). Already in May 1939 the authorities found it impossible to obtain an accurate breakdown of the numbers and origins of foreigners residing in Newfoundland. On the eve of World War ii the constabulary counted 307 foreigners residing in Newfoundland. The 33 Germans were the fourth largest group after “Assyrians” (60), Chinese (52), Jews (39), and Americans (34). In addition, the commissioner for home affairs identified 10 Germans who had been naturalized since 1929. On 20 September 1939 the Criminal Investigation Bureau prepared a different list of 70 residents belonging to “certain foreign nationalities,” and on 8 November the chief of police submitted yet another list of 15 aliens of German nationality as a basis for registration and censorship. Each list contained gross errors. Because of the lack of accurate data, trained staff, and a clear policy on

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how to proceed, alien registration remained voluntary and incomplete until April 1940. In December 1939 and January 1940 alien registration was thrown into disarray when two steamships containing mostly passengers of enemy alien background in transit to Halifax and Boston stopped in St John’s. To the consternation of the chief of police, immigration officials allowed these nearly two hundred passengers to go on shore without police registration. As a result, John H. Penson, the commissioner responsible for immigration, with “much regret” had to acquiesce to the request of the commissioner for justice that, effective 19 February 1940 refugees from Germany and central Europe en route to the United States or Canada would no longer be permitted to go on shore in Newfoundland.16 The need to scrutinize incoming and departing passengers provided a major impulse to streamline and upgrade registration procedures. In February 1940 the staff of the Aliens Registration Office was doubled from two to four, a private phone connection was installed, and a new system of filing was introduced. By the end of March, the Registry of Aliens had recorded the history of 723 persons all over the island and Labrador. This number included British and non-British nationals entering the country who had been interviewed. In early April 1940 a “Notice to Aliens” posted in hotels and other public places announced compulsory registration for every resident alien with reference to Defence Regulation 21 of 1939. The effort was crowned with the identification of not only 375 non-naturalized residents but also 393 “aliens naturalized in Newfoundland from 1893 to date” (including 18 natives of Germany and 3 of Austria) and 14 “foreigners who appear to have adopted English names, naturalized since 1919.”17 Thus in helter-skelter fashion a broad spectrum of “aliens” were registered and subjected to police surveillance at the discretion of the chief of police or the Department of Justice. As a result of innuendos, the police maintained a file even on censorship staff member Professor Allan Gillingham and the English-born Louis Wigh, a student in Gillingham’s Germanlanguage class.18 Among other particulars, the registrees had to furnish their race, religion, birthplaces of each parent, date of commencement of residence in the island, purpose of visit to Newfoundland, and people with whom they associated. Similar data were required from all persons applying for admission into Newfoundland at the port of entry. The chief commissioner of immigration and the registrar of aliens noted that registrees were reluctant to provide information about their parents’ nationality and birthplace. Instructions issued to the outport stations in July 1940

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requested weekly reports about the movements of all aliens or strangers, “where they come from or went, the nature of their business and any other information which you can obtain.”19 Among the persons defined and registered as “German” and hence watched by the police as enemy alien suspects, the following categories may be distinguished: recent German immigrants, that is, all German-born immigrants who had arrived in the 1920s and 1930s, regardless of the extent to which they had adapted psychologically and culturally and had integrated into the local community; recent German Jewish immigrants; pre–World War i German- and Austrian-born immigrants, whether naturalized or not; Moravian missionaries in Labrador; foreign nationals of German descent; non-German suspects; Jewish refugees; and Jewish and non-Jewish refugee doctors and nurses. Recent German Immigrants The category of German immigrants arriving in the period between the two world wars was, next to those who arrived on the eve of World War ii, most suspect of fifth columnism and hence most watched by the police. In this category belonged immigrants such as Alo Gut, Hans Wich, Walter Voss, Rudolph and Martha Klopfer, Albert and Frieda Epstein, Edward Epstein, and Frederick Ottenheimer. One of this group, F.W. Kothe, was interned. Alo Gut, known as a most unassuming, outspoken anti-Hitler and pro-British German immigrant of 1930, was a frequent suspect, although he was born and raised in China, had applied for citizenship, and in March 1940 had volunteered unsuccessfully for enlistment in the Royal Artillery. From the outbreak of the war he had been placed under continuous police surveillance, having to report weekly and often daily to the Registry of Aliens. Because the authorities “could have a report on him every hour if need be,” they felt safe in granting him a day permit “on a very few occasions” to go hunting or fishing. The most serious threat to Gut came from a peremptory demand in March 1942 by the commanding general of the US Base Command that Gut be deported or interned on account of the suspicious actions ascertained by separate US investigations. “If Gut is permitted freedom of action,” US Major General G.C. Brant threatened, “this Headquarters will find it necessary to take steps to have the Defence workers with whom Gut is friendly discharged.” Gut’s background and outlook were too well known to the government for it to submit to this blackmail on the basis of what the Registry of Aliens considered “not a single tittle of evidence.” For the same reason Gut became

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the first German to have his application for naturalization approved at the end of the war.20 About Hans Wich, the naturalized fifty-year-old brewmaster employed at the Bennett brewery since 1933, and his wife, Erna, both natives of Germany, the August 1940 report of the weekly police surveillance stated: “I observed Hans Wich and his wife in the sitting room of their home during all this period. I have learned that Wich and his wife very seldom leave the privacy of their home and no person visits there.” Although identified to the police as an anti-Nazi friend of Gut, Wick was not sure whether his World War i service in the German army might be held against him. As in the case of brewmaster Weber of the Bavarian Brewing Company, Bennett’s may have been waiting for an excuse to get rid of Wich. Apparently city beer sales were declining because, as a St John’s resident remarked in 1942, “they won’t drink beer made by a German.” Most of Bennett’s beer was sold out of town to the military bases. In September 1942 Wich’s request for a raise was turned down by the board with the comment: “If you don’t like it you can tear up your contract, it will be the best thing for the Bennett Brewing Co.”21 Only Sir John Bennett’s personal intervention with the authorities, according to Bennett employee Tobias Macdonald, kept Wich from being sent to the “concentration camp.” 22 A more controversial case was that of forty-one-year-old mechanic Walter Voss from Windsor, who had come to Newfoundland in 1925 on a sail boat from Germany with a load of salt for the A.E. Hickman Company. After working as a Ford mechanic and truck driver with “Highroads” in St John’s, he became naturalized in 1930 and worked in a garage in Grand Falls and Windsor. In the summer and fall of 1940 some of his acquaintances informed on Voss. He had allegedly shown a German (swastika) flag on state occasions before the war and had allegedly expressed his sympathy for the Nazi cause. One of them testified remembering that in 1937 or 1938 on the train Voss boasted of having “mowed them down” as a World War i machine gunner. A few days later, on 8 June 1940, the Evening Telegram got wind of the testimony and under the headline “Is This True?” queried: “Is it correct that an enemy alien in one of the paper towns declared : ‘I mowed them down in the last war and I’ll mow them down again’?” Local residents referred to Voss as “a pure German.” They went to his garage to twit him about his background with remarks such as “Hello my good old German” and “A German is a German, supposing he is even in a bottle,” hoping to provoke him to utter pro-German sentiments. In July 1940 the Canadian officer commanding the Botwood Detachment learned

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of the rumours regarding Voss and alarmed Commissioner Emerson through the Department of National Defence in Ottawa. The Registry of Aliens, however, was unable to obtain irrefutable evidence for any of the allegations against Voss. In November 1941 the constabulary found Voss employed with the Atlas Construction Company at the naval base of Botwood. The superintendent considered Voss an exceptionally capable and efficient repairman and, because of the lack of qualified workers, wanted to retain him despite his questionable background. In January 1942, however, he was laid off because the majority of the men at Atlas “did not like the idea of working with a German.” Voss returned to Windsor, where the defence officer opened his office in part of Voss’s garage.23 Recent German Jewish Immigrants Albert Epstein, a naturalized merchant of German Jewish descent living at Bishop’s Falls, had built up an extensive dry goods and grocery business since his arrival in 1926. He hailed from the pre-1918 German territory of the Polish Corridor. His wife was a German gentile from the same district who had followed him in 1927. When Epstein was first brought to the attention of the Registry of Aliens in May 1940, his service in the Forestry Unit of the German forces in 1917 and 1918 was one of the few particulars noted. A message to Commissioner Emerson by the commander of the Canadian forces in October 1940 passed on local allegations that Epstein was “openly sympathetic with the Nazi cause,” partly because his wife had returned from Germany just before the outbreak of hostilities. Subsequent investigations revealed, however, that much of the suspicion surrounding the Epsteins was based on business grievances by people taken to court for unpaid debts and for high prices, “which is not only practiced by the Epsteins but by all the business houses in this section.” The strong grievances of some local people, the investigating constable noted, were due to the Epstein’s German nationality and not to disloyalty to the empire’s cause. The Epsteins were prominent “among the better class of people” and reputed to be quite active in the Women’s Patriotic Association. Their known strong hostility towards the Nazi regime did not appear to reduce the anti-German sentiments of some of their customers and neighbours. Weekly police reports from 1940 to 1942 indicate that a strict watch was kept on the Epsteins’ movements.24 Other naturalized German-born Jews who had arrived in Newfoundland in the 1920s or early 1930s, such as the merchants Edward Epstein

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(brother of Albert) of Buchans, Harry Hirsh Brenner of Corner Brook, and Fredrick William Ottenheimer of St John’s, do not seem to have been targets of the kind of anti-German sentiment to which Albert Epstein was exposed. Edward Epstein, who immigrated in 1924 but did not move to Buchans until 1939, was reported to have few friends in town and to confine himself solely to the running of his business. The diligent inquiries of the investigating constable were unable to discover “anything suspicious regarding him either in speech or action.” Brenner, who immigrated in 1927, declared that he had no relatives or friends living in Germany: “they are all my enemies there.” He was spoken of as a highly respected member of the Jewish congregation. Ottenheimer had immigrated in 1934 and had done everything possible to get his mother and sister out of Germany before succeeding in getting them to South Africa. Married to a Newfoundlander, he too had no relatives or friends left in Germany. Although these people, in addition to being naturalized citizens, were identified as actual or potential victims of Nazi persecution, the authorities classified and registered them as “aliens of enemy birth.” They therefore became subjects of police surveillance and, in cases such as Edward Epstein’s, of weekly police reports to the secretary of justice until 1942.25 Pre–World War I Immigrants In the category of aliens registered and surveilled by the police were also such long-established, loyal, and assimilated German-born residents as James Rickert, Alfred Lee, Otto Rusch, and Richard Korner. Starting in May 1940, these were brought to the attention of the Registry of Aliens as possible suspects. James Rickert, a sixty-three-year-old native of Danzig married to a Newfoundlander and a permanent resident of St John’s since 1895, had been a tugboat operator in St John’s harbour and then a watchman at the Newfoundland Foundry for fourteen years. He had not visited Germany since the age of thirteen and had assimilated so quickly and thoroughly that he had somehow eluded police detection even during World War i and never bothered to apply for naturalization. A weekly surveillance report of August 1940 revealed that his movements while on duty at the foundry were being carefully watched by the police. Similarly overlooked by the authorities in World War i had been Gustav Thiele, probably because he had adopted the alias of Alfred Lee and married a Newfoundlander. Lee had been employed with the A.N.D. Company in Botwood since 1911 and decided to become naturalized in May 1939. After being reported to the police in May 1940, he was put under strict surveillance

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because of rumours that he was spying on military convoys in Botwood.26 Rediscovered as a potential enemy alien was World War i internee Richard Korner. Deported to Canada in 1915, he had returned to Newfoundland in 1922, became naturalized a year later, and subsequently worked as a gardener on the farm of Sir Richard Squires. Otto Rusch also came under suspicion even though he had been exempted from internment during World War I on account of his bona fides. A sixty-eight-year-old retired Government House gardener and naturalized resident of forty-four years in Newfoundland, he had never visited Germany since his arrival. Nonetheless, the police found it necessary from the outbreak of the war to keep a close watch on his movements as a gardener for various citizens and on his social contacts. Even the German-born wives of Newfoundlanders and Englishmen, such as Anna Clarke, Bertha Holland, and Marie Hutchings (local residents for thirty-five, forty-seven, and forty-two years respectively), were not spared registration as aliens. A most curious case was that of George Ingerman from St John’s, the fifty-five-year-old Newfoundland-born son of a deceased German. The latter had immigrated in the early 1870s after which he lost all contact with Germany. The secretary for justice ordered that Ingerman and his family be added to the censorship suspect list after neighbours informed on them in September 1940. Some reported that gold of old German mintage had been found on Ingerman’s premises in 1932, while others claimed to have heard him expressing pro-German sentiments with a patient at the mental hospital.27 Moravian Missionaries Among the sixteen Moravian missionary staff at the four remaining stations in Labrador, the five Hettasch family members continued to be a concern to the governments of Newfoundland and Canada four years into the war. Paul Hettasch and his wife, both aged sixty-nine and stationed at Nain, were British subjects of German descent (Paul was born in South Africa, his wife in Germany). Residents of Labrador since 1898, they had been interned there during World War i. Paul was superintendent of the mission until his retirement in 1941. Their daughter Katie (aged thirty-two in 1940) was a teacher at the Nain mission school. Their twenty-five-yearold son Siegfried and his wife, a South American of Dutch-German descent, were missionaries in Hopedale. Although born in Labrador and thus British by birth, Katie and Siegfried were categorized as “pure German” and hence enemy aliens. The eleven other missionaries were of English

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descent. Paul, a typical product of the pre–World War i era, knew little of modern Germany, but spoke German at home, and listened to German radio broadcasts. Siegfried, although educated in Germany and England, apparently spoke poor English and annoyed many people on the coast by his preference for German when with his family. Since the families of Paul and Siegfried Hettasch shared quarters in Nain and Hopedale with English missionaries (Peacock and Harp) and their conduct appeared inoffensive, the Commission of Government at first did not plan to take any steps against the Moravians or their property. Police investigations and surveillance began only in response to representations from the rcmp and the departments of National Defence and External Affairs in Ottawa. Concern grew about semi-annual meteorological reports which, according to information obtained by a Canadian Flying Squadron cruising the harbours and inlets of Labrador in the summer of 1939, Paul Hettasch had been sending to Hamburg for some time. Ottawa was also concerned about alleged investment of German capital in a fishing operation on the Labrador coast for the purpose of aiding and abetting the enemy. Attention was, furthermore, drawn to a censored interview given to the Quebec Chronicle by a Colonel William Wood (identified as one of the Dominion’s leading historians). He focused on “German-speaking Labrador” as a springboard for any Hitler scheme to invade Canada. The Germanization of Labrador by Moravian missionaries since 1771, he argued, facilitated infiltration by fifth columnists and made it a natural base for German bombing raids into Canada. Flying over northern Quebec, which was without communication and observation posts, “bombers from Labrador might attack grain elevators at Winnipeg and Port Arthur after flights of 1,500 and 1,100 miles respectively and the Sault Ste. Marie canal after a 1,400 mile hop,” he pointed out. “Halifax is 750 miles from Labrador, Quebec 800, Montreal 900, Toronto 1,100, New York 1,200 and St John’s, Nfld., 1,400 ... The Germans, by trying such flights, would be only putting on a ‘big show’ because there would be little likelihood of their return to safety. But they could do some damage and there is a chance that they would make the attempt.”28 Wood’s elaborations were too outlandish to give Commissioner Emerson cause for alarm. About the only true statement in Wood’s interview, he replied to Undersecretary of State for External Affairs O.D. Skelton in Ottawa in July 1940, was that Moravian missionary work in Labrador had begun about 1770. In regard to fishing operations financed by Germans, Emerson thought it possible that a recent infusion of American funds into the Santa Cruz Oil Corporation, which had signed an agreement in 1938

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to carry out an experimental herring fishery off the Labrador coast, might be of German origin. Herring meal consigned to the Netherlands in November 1939 might find its way into Germany. The only activity that the Commission found justified any suspicion in July 1940 was the transmission of weather data to Hamburg by missionaries who might not be truly sympathetic to the Allied cause. If there was anything to be feared from the use of Labrador, in Emerson’s opinion, it would be the operation of a wireless transmitting set, a matter to be investigated by the local ranger. Emerson also ascertained that meteorological data from Nain had no longer been transmitted to the Deutsche Seewarte in Hamburg after 1934, only to Toronto. For three years the Labrador rangers were requested to look out for any suspicious moves on the part of the Hettasch family. Reports from four rangers in contact with the family since 1935 indicated that the missionaries’ initially open pro-German attitude became less pronounced when they received first-hand information about the Nazi regime from their children returning from Germany. In 1935 head schoolteacher Katie Hettasch was observed marching the Nain schoolchildren in “goose step” through the village, with Mr Hettasch sometimes at the head of the column, and the Inuit schoolchildren could relate more about Hitler than about the British royal family. Their actions changed in 1937 when the Hettaschs organized coronation celebrations and taught the children more British history. Young Siegfried Hettasch, upon returning to Labrador from Europe in 1938, angered his father by growing a Hitler-style moustache and expressing provocative pro-German sentiments, despite his negative experience with the Nazi regime. During the war Paul Hettasch was denounced for allegedly showing pictures of “King Hitler” to Inuit students, stating that he was confident the war would be over after the defeat of France, hoping for a peace in which Germany would not be beaten, and stating that he could not help feeling German in his bones. In September 1941 Ranger Bragg noted significantly that negative reports about the Hettaschs tended to originate from people who were not on friendly terms with the family. From his own observations he treated such reports as groundless and nothing but malicious gossip.29 After an exhaustive examination of all the available evidence, Defence Security Officer J.R.E. Guild in St John’s reported to the Newfoundland Department of Justice and the rcmp in 1943 that the Hettaschs held proAxis opinions and were weather experts but were not in a position to communicate their meteorological observations to Germany or to a submarine in the vicinity. In the interest of science, they should therefore be allowed

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to continue their weather observations. Guild concluded that, “although I realize that the presence of these enemy aliens in a small community of this kind must be very disturbing, my feeling is that it is unlikely they are engaged in espionage and that the worst consequences of their presence are the natural apprehensions they must excite and the adverse influence they at times of crisis exert on morale.”30 Although an official of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs warned of the difficulty of detecting shortwave transmissions from these remote stations to Germany, the government refused to take any drastic steps against the Moravian mission stations.31 Foreign Nationals of German Descent The question of what attributes constituted an enemy alien was brought to a head in July 1940, when the chief of police protested the admission by Customs and Immigration officials in Port aux Basques of an American citizen of German birth, Chas. Bruno Latendorf, as a tourist for two weeks. “Once and for all,” the chairman of the Board of Customs wanted to know, “are we to regard as prohibited aliens those persons who were born in enemy countries, or whose parents were born in enemy countries, and who have since become naturalized or have been born in a neutral country?” The secretary for justice saw no reason why such persons should not be regarded as prohibited but considered it prudent “that we do not publish any rule to this effect.” He realized the enforcement of such a policy would not be easy. This fact was evident from the refusal of the authorities to act on confidentially reported information to the chief of police identifying even the American consul, H.B. Quarton, and his wife as being of German descent.32 The case of German-born Anna Elizabeth Givens, a Chilean citizen and wife of the American chief electrical engineer with the Buchans Mining Company, R.C. Givens, proved that the government could not afford to be inflexible. According to her testimony, Mrs Givens had fled to Chile in 1935 after she had been jailed for refusing to join the Nazi Party as a schoolteacher. She married her husband in Chile and was permitted to enter the United States with him in 1939. After her husband was transferred to Buchans in April 1940, she intended to join him with her newborn baby. In spite of her credentials as an anti-Nazi refugee, she was at first refused permission to enter Newfoundland. However, the company protested energetically. Mr Givens gave notice of his intention to resign from his post in Buchans. In September 1940 the chief commissioner of

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Immigration reversed his decision because of the overriding necessity for maintaining unchecked the flow of concentrate exports. If the official policy of refusing admission to the wife of the engineer could be shown to react unfavourably upon production, the Chief Commissioner reasoned, “then we should have to depart from the narrow letter of the regulations whether we wished to do so or not.”33 Canadian and American skilled workers and tradesmen who began to arrive in large numbers beginning in 1941 in connection with the construction and maintenance of military bases in Newfoundland were also affected by the July 1940 definition of prohibited enemy aliens. The registration particulars of Austrian-born Canadian Max Stein, who arrived in February 1941 as an employee of the Atlas Construction Company at Gander, caused the secretary for justice to wonder whether this company was deliberately attempting to defy the prohibition regarding aliens of enemy birth or parentage. The president of Atlas explained that Stein had come to Canada in 1908, had been naturalized in 1911, had worked for his company since 1915 and was irreplaceable as a senior engineer on the airport contract. In view of the company’s strong stand, the secretary for justice grudgingly submitted that “it would hardly be practicable to ask this man to leave the country.”34 In future, however, no exceptions from the prohibition of aliens of German birth would be tolerated without prior sanction. This policy was demonstrated in the case of Sarsfield Fortune and his wife, where the definition of enemy alien was even extended to Swiss-born visitors. (It must be remembered that Switzerland was neutral in World War ii.) Fortune, a Canadian, was also employed with the Atlas Construction Company in Gander from May 1941 until he had to quit because of an accident in March 1942. When his Swiss-born wife, Frieda Mary Peter, tried to join him in September 1941, she was not allowed to come to Gander, and he had to arrange to meet her from time to time in Corner Brook. After his accident, Fortune wanted to stay with his wife in Newfoundland, but they were expelled by order of the chief commissioner of immigration.35 One Canadian of German descent employed by Atlas in Gander since October 1941 as a shovel operator was deported in January 1942 at the request of the rcaf. After only one day at work, Frederick Rubin Gretzinger, a thirty-two-year-old native of Canada whose parents had immigrated to Manitoba in 1900, caused unrest among his fellow workers with his defence of his German heritage. The rcaf was afraid serious trouble would develop unless the Newfoundland Department of Justice removed him into protective custody at once. “Since here I have heard men cursing

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on the Germans and running them down,” he told the investigating officer. “I picked up for the Germans. It seemed as if the remarks were directed to me ... I would rather starve to death than deny my German heritage.” Although it was known that he had spent considerable time in “psychopathic hospitals” in Canada, he was regarded a dangerous person at such an important place as Gander airport.36 The large numbers of Americans arriving during 1941 to work with US base contractors caused the Newfoundland Constabulary and the Department of Justice the greatest concerns because it was not clear to what extent the Bases Agreement exempted them from alien registration. By June 1941 Sergeant Mahoney estimated “that we have at least 7 or 8 hundred persons employed at the different bases,” and he thought Chief of Police O’Neill ought to know that most of them were naturalized Americans of Romanian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, and Belgian extraction. “These people, as you are aware, have not registered under Alien Registration Regulations. It is true that they are under the command of the base contractors, but I don’t see any assurance as to their loyalty. I suggest that it will be an insult to German intelligence to believe that such military operations are taking place without their knowledge.” O’Neill urged the Department of Justice to subject every person arriving in this country to Newfoundland’s alien regulations: “whether they are citizens of the United States or any other country should not be allowed to make any difference to us.” Registration, however, would be only a first step for O’Neill, for as far as he was concerned, “every German in the country should be interned.” After protracted interdepartmental arguments, the views of the Customs and Immigration Department prevailed that there was no point registering members of the US forces or employees under contract in connection with their bases because these persons could not be rejected by Newfoundland. “The United States is, I should assume, the most polyglot in the world. If, as I understand it, the United States are defending themselves by protecting us, it must be assumed that they are aware of the potential risk, and are prepared to accept it,” concluded Chairman C.E. Price of the Customs and Immigration Department.37 The case of fifty-two-year-old American brewmaster Valentine Foltz from Pennsylvania, who had been hired in July 1940 by the Bavarian Brewing Company as a replacement for the interned Max Weber, remained a headache for the authorities throughout the war. He arrived with a letter of recommendation from his employer, A.E. Hickman, but without a passport and did not reveal his ethnic background to the Registry of Aliens in

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Port aux Basques. He was reported by an informer in his brewery to be sending postal views of St John’s harbour and vicinity to friends in the United States. A police surveillance of his movements in December 1940 revealed nothing more than that he frequently visited different beer parlours by himself in order to observe how his particular brand of beer was being received by the public. Inspection of his mail with his family in the United States found it constantly centred around farming activities. This, however, appeared to the censor as “a cleverly conceived method of transmitting information through postal censorship” and triggered an inquiry with the Pennsylvania Detective Department. A reply from fbi director J. Edgar Hoover in August 1941 was most cooperative and disclosed that Foltz was an American-born farmer of German parentage who had an excellent reputation in the community for being an honest, peaceful, reliable, and trustworthy man without any subversive tendencies. In Newfoundland, however, he was henceforth “looked upon as a German,” and the Bavarian Brewing Company’s appointment of Foltz as a volunteer fire watcher in March 1942 was vetoed by the chief of police. In December 1944, while Foltz was visiting his family in the United States, the director of public prosecutions instructed the chief of police to initiate the prosecution of Foltz for failing to comply with the alien registration regulations in preparation for his expulsion. The outcome is not known.38 Non-German Suspects From the outset, the Newfoundland Department of Justice felt compelled to direct its attention to uncovering Nazi fifth columnists of non-German nationality and descent and tracing their connections to local residents of German background. Key suspects in the winter of 1939–40 were Jacob Voorhoeve, Julio and Maurice Metal, and Walter E. Sondheimer. The cases of the latter two, a Polish and an American Jew respectively, will be examined below. Voorhoeve, a Dutch native, had come to Newfoundland in 1929 as a twenty-four-year-old gardener for Sir Richard Squires. He prided himself on being able to trace his roots in Holland to 1492. He joined the local business of R.H.K. Cochius in 1932, and four years later with a partner, Albert Briand of St Pierre, he started a business under the name of Quality Supplies Ltd. Voorhoeve represented several Dutch, Czech, and German business agencies for such items as Emerson radios and Bata tires. In addition, he was the main shareholder of Albert Briand Fils, commission merchants and general store owners in St Pierre, as well as an agent for Dutch and German boats taking ore from Bell Island before the war. In

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these capacities Voorhoeve travelled frequently to Carbonear, Argentia, Grand Falls, and Corner Brook, where he employed three Newfoundlanders – Ronald Martin, Gregory Power, and Harry Dewling – as his agents. In the fall of 1940 he found it difficult to get his orders through from his various agencies, and his network of local and international business contacts became suspicious. He was accused of being a Nazi by one of his local representatives because he kept in touch with his former business partner Cochius in Canada (allegedly “regarding Nazi activities in that country”), he had taken many pictures of Newfoundland with an expensive camera, he had brought his family members and other foreigners to Newfoundland (he had procured the job of Government House gardener for fellow Dutchman John Pelder), he had been overheard speaking favourably of Hitler before the war, and he had been very friendly with all Germans in Newfoundland. The government investigations, which involved the American consul in St Pierre, were inconclusive. They revealed that, at the most, Voorhoeve was guilty by association with Briand, a known supporter of Vichy France. In December 1942, after the Free French had occupied St Pierre, Briand was caught in Ottawa attempting to phone the Japanese embassy at Washington. At Université Laval, which Briand had attended in early 1942, his closest friend appeared to have been the son of the local Vichy consul. Voorhoeve vigorously denied that he was ever associated with a Nazi party in this country or elsewhere and insisted that he had met a number of local Germans in connection with his business. “I have never been accused of being a Nazi spy,” he stated to the police in April 1941, “but I was called a German by a man who was drunk because I would not give him any money ... I took exception to the remark and we had a quarrel. I never at any time passed favourable remarks about Hitler or his progress ... I have always made an independent living here since I have been in this country and my income is derived solely from my business.”39 Voorhoeve’s claim that he had procured a job in Newfoundland for fellow Dutchman John Pelder put the latter automatically into the category of suspicious alien. Although thirty-two-year-old Pelder had worked as a gardener for several prominent Newfoundlanders since 1931, police surveillance on his activities begun in 1940. It was feared that from the greenhouse attached to Government House, Pelder might spy on meetings of government officials. However, the extent of his suspicious activities turned out to be confined to visiting Voorhoeve’s home and store, driving his car, and being “quite friendly” with him.40

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Jewish Refugees Refugees from the Third Reich were for the first time unambiguously categorized as enemy aliens by the Registry of Aliens on 13 May 1940. This action was in connection with mass internments in England, as well as in response to a circular from the Dominions Office of 17 May warning of enemy agents proceeding ostensibly as refugees. The Newfoundland public, furthermore, appeared to identify and treat refugees from the beginning as enemy nationals rather than as victims of Nazi persecution. Unlike in Britain and Canada, where refugees were recognized and treated as such from 1941–42 on, in Newfoundland they continued to be looked upon with suspicion throughout the war. The experience of being constantly suspected of collaboration with the Nazi regime, whose oppression they had fled, rendered their adjustment to the unanticipated social environment and living conditions in Newfoundland almost impossible. Most of them, if they were not expelled like Maurice Metal or Paul B. Wallheimer, seized the first opportunity that offered itself to leave for the United States, Canada, or Britain. The arrival on 19 December 1939 of New York financier Julio Metal and his secretary, Walter E. Sondheimer, with the intention of starting a new small industry at the invitation of Commissioner for Natural Resources Gorvin was followed by a flurry of rumours and suspicions. The party planned to set up Julio’s son, Maurice Metal, who arrived from England on 11 January 1940, as director of Terra Nova Development Company, a woodworking industry based on European cooperative principles. Before the Metals had a chance to identify themselves and their plans, the Evening Telegram on 3 February 1940 branded them as sympathizers with the Hitler regime. The rcmp, too, suspected these persons to be spies and on 7 February 1940 requested from Governor Walwyn a record of their activities since the party had travelled through New Brunswick and left a car with New York plates in Saint John. In Salmonier, where the Metals began logging operations, the Evening Telegram reported the people were asking: “Who is Mr. Metal? ... Is it true that he is a German? What does he intend doing at Salmonier?” The nature and purpose of “the Central European plan,” as the media termed the woodworking operation, seemed a mystery. The low wages paid to loggers by Metal made one editor wonder whether this operation could not have equally well been undertaken by Newfoundlanders. Metal replied in an open letter that he realized Newfoundlanders were suspicious at this time

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and that “I am not now nor have I ever been a German. Neither has my father or Mr. Sondheimer.” He explained that his company was experimenting with its own capital, that he paid the going rates, that no one was forced to work for him, and that his operations had reduced government relief payments to the districts.41 In the hope “that some evidence might be found to substantiate certain suspicions which the conduct of these gentlemen had aroused,” the Department of Justice ordered that the luggage Julio and Maurice Metal had stored in the Newfoundland Hotel be opened and voluminous correspondence contained in it be analyzed. The correspondence was in several languages and its translation required more than three months by two faculty members of Memorial University College. It contained evidence revealing the Metals’ hatred of Nazi Germany and its anti-Semitic policies. The government’s investigations also revealed that the Metals claimed Polish nationality and held Liechtenstein passports, while Sondheimer held an American passport but spoke English with a pronounced foreign accent. Maurice Metal had previously resided in London and was still corresponding with former Austrian entrepreneurs (Jakober and Company of Vienna) who had relocated to London. The Metals had ostensibly come to Newfoundland on the recommendation of New York resident Otto Grossman, an Austrian refugee interested in cooperative banking. Governor Walwyn was puzzled that they were well supplied with funds but appeared to have no definite plans. For him, their correspondence “dealt with numerous commercial ventures in various parts of the world in such terms as to create idea of facade to cover hidden activities.” The evidence suggested that the Metals were refugees from the Third Reich in search of a haven in the New World, but they had every reason not to expose their identity unduly. In the spring of 1940, Polish and Austrian refugees were suspect in the British Empire, and Canada’s director of immigration, C.F. Blair, went out of his way to prevent Jewish refugees from landing in Canada, either as immigrants or as transients to other countries such as Newfoundland. “Their conduct well supports the theory of masquerade,” Governor Walwyn summed up his apprehensions regarding the mystery surrounding these promoters. “Why, when the cause of suspicion can be removed, should the public be caused uneasiness by the presence of persons who come within such category?” an editorial entitled “Intern or Deport” in the 1 June 1940 issue of Evening Telegram wondered, and it advised: “The method of removal is simple. Intern those of whose sincerity there is doubt. Better still, give them notice to take themselves to the country from which they came within forty-eight hours.” The

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abrupt termination of the Metal experimental scheme and the departure of its principals in June 1940 under circumstances which remained equally mysterious to the public suggest that the government did heed this editor’s advice.42 Paul B. Wallheimer was a non-Jewish refugee married to a member of the Jewish Warburg family, well known in Hamburg. After his release from three weeks of maltreatment in a German concentration camp in the wake of Kristallnacht, he was admitted to Canada in early 1939. Newfoundland’s New Industries Committee, planning to develop a peat moss industry, recruited Wallheimer in the summer of 1939 as a peat technologist on a temporary contract and was intending, under an extended arrangement, to entrust him with the development of peat fuel. He was admitted to Newfoundland with a Canadian permit enabling him to return to Canada. His past affiliations were apparently unknown. In February 1940 a Canadian-born peat technologist denounced Wallheimer as a German spy. This person had earlier unsuccessfully applied for Wallheimer’s position in Newfoundland; he subsequently obtained employment with the censorship authorities in Ottawa. Canada’s director of immigration, C.F. Blair, identified Wallheimer as a German Jew and an enemy alien whom Newfoundland might not wish to keep; he thus did little to clear Wallheimer’s name. On the recommendations of the New Industries Committee, Wallheimer’s contract was cancelled on 11 April 1940 because of the “elements of doubt and uncertainty as regards the employment of a German subject.” The cancellation of his contract was tantamount to expulsion from Newfoundland.43 Even rabbis were not above the suspicion of collaborating with the country from whose persecution they had fled. Although Rabbi Max Katz and his family had had to surrender their passports for confiscation by the German consul after their arrival in St John’s in 1938, they were put under regular police surveillance as enemy aliens in August 1940, with a weekly report of their activities going to the Department of Justice. The surveillance seems to have been triggered by a personal letter from an acquaintance of Katz in the United States asking for a loan of $500 passage money to rescue a Jewish friend trapped in Holland. The letter was found on a St John’s street and turned over to the constabulary. Rabbi Katz and his wife became the subjects of a special alien report by the Newfoundland Constabulary before they were permitted to emigrate to the United States in December 1940.44 In September the following year another rabbi, named Haler, was denied permission to enter Newfoundland solely because he was of German extraction.45

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Refugee Doctors and Nurses Not surprisingly, the seven refugee doctors recruited by the Department of Public Health in the summer of 1939 experienced almost insurmountable difficulties in adjusting from the day of their arrival in Newfoundland. Their first experiences were typical of what was in store for them. Following their arrival in July 1939, the editor of the Evening Telegram went out of his way to expose the newcomers as undesirable foreigners and to accuse them of lacking proper qualifications as doctors and nurses, as well as of entering the country as spies under the guise of refugees. The medical establishment, as was to be expected, questioned their qualifications and competence as physicians, and officials of the Department of Public Health and the constabulary frequently denied them their earned titles of doctor. The chief of the Newfoundland Nursing Services, Miss Lilian Whiteside, who introduced them into their duties as district nurses for the outports, according to the recollections of one of the refugees, “never hid her conviction that we doctors were in many ways inferior to the regular nurses.”45 The published diary of district nurse Ilka Deutsch, a forty-one-year-old Jewish refugee physician from Prague contracted as a district nurse, affords unique insights into the experience of central European refugees during 1940. Deutsch was assigned to a station serving 1,200 souls in seven South Coast outports between Rencontre West and Cross Cove. Their only connection with one another and with the outside world was by boat. She was the only medical person along a twenty-five-mile coastline – the next cottage hospital was 100 miles away – and served also as dentist, veterinarian, social worker, first-aid teacher, librarian, and undertaker. In none of the seven outports for which she was responsible “was there a tree, a road, running water, or electricity. Drinking water was fetched in pails from a running creek. There were no toilets, not even outhouses and no sewers.” Of Rencontre West’s population of 25, 7 could read and write. School lasted for three months, and the teacher had the only batterypowered radio. In the community of Francois, with a population of 350, Deutsch recorded, “the people sit and do not do anything. Sometimes a clock ticks and life goes by.” The merchant determined who got the dole by making people sign blank receipts for goods that he distributed; he filled out the blanks at a later date. There was “abject poverty” and boredom everywhere, and Deutsch found it hard to comprehend how people managed to live and even bring up their babies with everything lacking. In nine months, she related, she went through three stages of adjustment. First, she was

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happy to learn that life was bearable though hard. Then came the realization “of the truly tragic background of the people around her; the lack of a future for them; the narrowness of their outlook on life, their ignorance, their suspicion of anything outside their confines.” She found these circumstances difficult to adapt to. But gradually she accepted things as they were, especially when she was assured of a visa to enter the United States. An integral part of Deutsch’s fifteen-month experience in Newfoundland was “the vicious talk about the nurses from Europe being spies.” Her colleague Erika Mohr, who was stationed in the adjacent district of Pushthrough, was suspected of smuggling money to Germany. She was accused of siding with the Germans and warned of the consequences. When the three refugee nurses from the South Coast went to St John’s on a four-day holiday in July 1940, rumours had it that they were being taken to jail on account of spying. The press intimated that the refugees had been distributed “at strategic points” and wondered how long they would be allowed to continue. Harmless sketches that Deutsch drew of outport scenes were rumoured to serve espionage purposes. They were confiscated by the constabulary and became the cause of an investigation by the Department of Justice. Despite her pleas later from the United States, they were not released until the end of the war. Deutsch was grateful she was able to leave in November 1940. Her experience as a district nurse seemed somehow unreal to her, far from paradise but no hell either. It was, as she summarized it, “life in a human dead end street, with no way out, with hardly any hope for betterment for those who live there.”47 Austrian Jewish refugee physician Josephine Maiwald, aged fortytwo and stationed at the South Coast Cottage Hospital in Burgeo, described her experience as a district nurse in Rencontre West to an American lawyer in Texas who applied for an American visa on her behalf in October 1941: You cannot imagine under what conditions and how hard I am working here. I acquired a phobia of the sea when I happened to come into a very squally sea and found myself confronted with danger of life, seeing four men had to work hard in order to prevent our dory from being shattered at a rock to which the waves were driving it. I did not believe we might come out safely. Ever since I tremble when I see a dory coming in, it might be a call. I simply can’t go out in such a small craft to the open sea. Everybody knows it is a rough bit of coast I have to cover in this district. I informed the Department and was expecting to be discharged. Instead I got an answer that they would not pay my wages as I stated my intention to neglect my duties and not to follow my professional call. They ordered me to stay and do

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my duties. If I left I should quit their service. Being an alien in the country I do not know whether they may be able to bring me in trouble if I leave in conflict.

The letter was intercepted and the Newfoundland Constabulary advised to have its suspicious contents referred to fbi director Hoover “for his usual co-operation in this connection.” In November 1940 Maiwald was transferred to St Bride’s, Cape Shore, where her refusal to visit a patient after 11 p.m. on a very stormy night and her protestation that she “would not go for the King of England” to visit persons after dark became the subject of the next police report.48 For corresponding with her husband, a retired professor living in Vienna, through an intermediary in Romania, Maiwald was put on the chief censor’s special list of suspects. The Registry of Aliens was particularly upset when in one of the censored letters to her husband she stated that she was “being hounded by the Doctor and Nurses of the Cottage Hospital, Burgeo, and spoke very unfavourably about the treatment afforded her generally by the people of this country.” She went on to say that the treatment she was receiving was “something similar to the treatment handed out in the German Concentration Camps.” During the summer of 1943 Maiwald considered it unreasonable to be refused permission by the Department of Justice to visit Grand Falls, the nearest town to her assigned station at Twillingate, after she had lost all her belongings in a fire. “After a year everybody will need to go to town to see a dentist, a hairdresser or to do some shopping for the winter even if he was not burnt out as I was,” she explained to the secretary for justice. In December that year her request for a transfer to Eastport, Bonavista Bay, where she hoped to share the company of fellow refugee physician Lisbeth Redlich, was similarly rejected. The chief of police saw no necessity for two foreign women doctors in that district and remarked: “We have in the past met with considerable difficulty in controlling Aliens in this country including Dr. Maiwald. They do not seem to be content at any place and wish to be moving from time to time.” Finally, Maiwald decided to plead gynecological trouble requiring attention by a woman doctor as the reason for visiting Eastport. The Department of Justice determined that it had no legal authority to forbid the visit. It even permitted her to take up there the post of her colleague Lisbeth Redlich, who was departing for England. However, Maiwald was allowed to proceed to Grand Falls for dental treatment only with prior approval of the secretary for justice and on condition that she report to the police daily. In July 1945 she was still waiting at Eastport for her American visa, probably with the sense of indignant impatience that her earlier petition to

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Commissioner Emerson suggests: “Austrians are regarded as friendly aliens in the U.S.A., in Great Britain and in Canada. From the U.S.A. I know they are enjoying the liberty of unrestricted free movement. Personally I am sure no sensible human being will really believe that I have any use for this country’s enemies who are my enemies first and foremost, and by whose guilt I am running astray without my well beloved husband, without anybody of my family for more than four years.”49 Austrian physician Lisbeth Redlich, the thirty-year-old adoptee of a Jewish family that had fled to England in 1938, was under continuous investigation as a prime spy suspect throughout her four years as a district nurse and intern in Newfoundland and Labrador. As we have seen in chapter 10, during her first term as an intern in the St John’s General Hospital, sixteen members of the hospital staff offered signed statements to the constabulary accusing her of sending light signals from her room in the Newfoundland Hotel, defending Hitler, admitting to being a spy, stealing official envelopes for her personal correspondence, and being friendly to three hospitalized German internees by talking German to them and paying their cigarette bills. From every station where she was transferred, complaints of her flouting, pro-Nazi sentiments reached St John’s.50 The authorities’ response to these denunciations is related in chapter 10. Austrian refugee physician Eric G. Wermuth, who had fled to London after release from his arrest by the Gestapo in 1938 at the age of twentyfour, was, like Redlich, received with the greatest suspicion at the various hospitals and public health stations to which he was assigned in Newfoundland. During his initial term as an intern in St John’s, he was accused of the same transgressions as Redlich. After his transfers, first to St Mary’s Bay and then to the Burin Peninsula, the people in these places viewed his mysterious trips into the country by day and night and the large pack of unknown contents he carried with him as evidence of spying. Among some of his former patients in St Joseph’s, Wermuth was remembered as an exceptionally dedicated doctor who would respond to calls from the remotest places in any weather. He was greatly concerned over the aspersions made against his loyalty, especially in the columns of the local press, and was advised by his superiors not to enter into a public controversy. In February 1943 Wermuth asked for consideration of his 1941 application for a certificate of naturalization on the grounds that his case was an exceptional one since he had offered his services to the British armed forces and had a wife and son, both native Newfoundlanders. By marrying him, his wife, Madeleine Martin, had lost her British nationality and had become a stateless person under British and Newfoundland law. “The

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moral and spiritual gain thus afforded me would ... be invaluable and incalculable,” he pleaded with Commissioner H.A. Winter. Wermuth’s application was deferred until the end of the war. The secretary for justice argued that action was undesirable for security reasons. “These arguments apply with particular strength in respect of Dr. Wermuth who is of enemy nationality.” Lady Eileen Walwyn, the governor’s wife, whose good offices in support of his application Wermuth had requested, concurred with the decision. “It always seemed to me a pity,” she remarked to Winter, “that these Austrians were allowed to come out here in the first instance when war was so imminent.”51 In the case of thirty-one-year-old Jewish Austrian refugee physician Livia Rosenfeld, née Spiegler Halasz, the Commission did not hesitate to resort to expulsion. The pretext was her marriage in March 1940 to American Jewish physician Julius L. Rosenfeld, who had been stationed as a medical practitioner at Hare Bay (Bonne Bay) since 1938. The marriage allegedly broke her contract and his with the Department of Public Health. The real reason, however, appears to have been the Commission’s desire to accommodate “considerable adverse public comment on refugees being brought here to work ... thinking that it is only a means of obtaining admission to the country, especially by foreigners of whom we know very little.” Prior to her expulsion, the Commission considered prosecuting Halasz for attempting to continue sending monthly remittances of $10 to her mother in Budapest. Although Hungary was not an enemy country in June 1940, the chief censor advised “that a prosecution in this instance, if the Justice Department considers it feasible, would act as a deterrent to others who might be tempted to try to evade the Defence, Exchange or Censorship Regulations.” The Rosenfelds were ordered to leave Newfoundland in September 1940. But to the consternation of the Commission, Julius Rosenfeld returned in May 1941 to the US army base in St John’s as a member of the US Medical Corps, and it was expected that his wife would attempt to follow him shortly. In a note to the secretary for justice, the chief commissioner regretted that if Julius Rosenfeld was engaged by the Americans, “we would not be able to interfere with his stay in this country; but if he was discharged ... he would be returned to America.”52 Typical of the paradoxical situation in which Newfoundland’s few refugees from the Third Reich found themselves until the end of World War ii is the experience of German Jewish refugee Franziska Mayer. She was invited on a three-year contract in 1938, at the age of twenty-three, to work for the International Grenfell Association at isolated stations in

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Labrador in such different capacities as designer, weaver, and orphanage assistant. From 1940 on, the secretary for justice ordered Mayer, as an “enemy alien,” to remain in St Anthony, where her movements could be watched by a member of the police or the Ranger force. In Labrador, the chief of police contended, she would be able “to assist any German submarine that might try to establish a base or supply shelter.” Mayer recognized the necessity of the orders given her and followed them conscientiously until seven weeks after the end of the war. On 26 June 1945 she wondered whether the Department of Justice would lift the restrictions on her movement to enable her to migrate to the United States. She pleaded: “Please could the term ‘enemy alien’ be discontinued? Seeing that I am stateless, I desire to be classified as a refugee.” Mayer explained that “in 1934 I left Germany because of Jewish persecution. Our people were opposed to Nazism from the beginning. In 1941 the Nazi Government separated all Jews from German citizenship ... I would be truly grateful if Newfoundland would grant me full democratic equality and restore to me the right of unrestricted travel.” The secretary for justice signified his approval on 7 July 1945 with the words: “In this case, I am inclined to agree.”53 The above-mentioned cases indicate that not only residents of enemy nationality but an ever widening range of suspects of non-English background, who were often only remotely associated with enemy nationals, were placed under police surveillance and restricted in their movements as if they were enemy agents. Even minorities victimized by the Third Reich – and hence eager to support the Allied cause – encountered official mistrust and petty harassment in their relationship with the Commission of Government, not only during the first two years of the war as in Britain and Canada but right up until the end in 1945. No wonder the refugees, and members of other stigmatized non-British minorities, if they were not expelled, seized the first opportunity to leave Newfoundland. Public and official attitudes were never warranted by any concrete evidence of espionage or disloyalty. In November 1941 Commissioner Emerson stated at a security meeting that the small size of the Newfoundland community permitted an intimate check to be maintained upon local people. “The number of aliens was limited and their movements and affairs known in considerable detail.” By 1943 security arrangements with regard to all persons arriving and leaving Newfoundland by sea or air were among the tightest in North America. According to a report by the defence security officer in July 1943, security was so strict that it would be “extremely

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difficult for the enemy to introduce an agent” even into the Portuguese fishing fleet.54 Six years of meticulous police investigations of hundreds of alien suspects never brought to light proof of a single case of spying or enemy sabotage. It is one of the ironic, if not sad, legacies of Newfoundland’s home-front experience in World War ii that while government policies and public attitudes destroyed the viability of any German and other suspect minorities, the public was left with the belief that members of these minorities were in fact enemy agents whose existence justified these policies and attitudes.

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12 “The spy among us”

The U-boat syndrome Throughout the war, numerous civilians reported strange lights being exchanged between shore and sea. A few even observed large oil drums being loaded unto schooners ... The evidence strongly suggests that enemy activity was taking place within Newfoundland waters. To this day, stories from all over the island are told of surfaced U-Boats being refuelled with the help of shore-based personnel. Robert G. Thorne, A Cherished Past (2004), 131

German U-boats have been a topic of unabating interest in Newfoundland since World War ii and have occupied a significant place in local popular history and folklore. Contemporaries, amateur historians, and naval experts have described their movements in the North Atlantic waters off Newfoundland in considerable detail. Reviewing or adding to that literature would go beyond the scope of this book. Of interest in the context of this study, however, is the circulation of curious tales of U-boat antics still widely believed to be true. Indeed, the wartime belief that U-boats secretly communicated with shore-based contacts, or landed and released agents and saboteurs in Newfoundland bays, has stubbornly survived all vain quests for hard proof.

u-boat landings Throughout World War ii, the spectre of enemies within ready to communicate with U-boats never subsided in Newfoundland. During the years 1941–42, even as fifth-column hysteria began to abate in Britain and Canada, Newfoundland vibrated as never before with rumours of enemy submarine rendezvous off the coast and spies on land. U-boats in the eastern North Atlantic were believed to be in contact with agents-in-place in St John’s attempting to facilitate access for them to St John’s harbour. A

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Newsweek article of 13 July 1942 blamed several ship sinkings in the North Atlantic on a leak of information from St John’s to Germany. This account, in turn, fuelled public fears of a fifth column at work and brought pressures on the authorities to do something about it. Official enemy alien policy may perhaps be understood somewhat in the context of the haunted frame of mind and the pressures it exerted on the government. Stories of enemy agents being captured and shot by the American forces in wartime Newfoundland circulated widely, one amateur historian claims. In one story that gained prominence after the war, four German U-boat officers were buried with full military honours at the Argentia Naval Base. Unmarked graves found by civilians at Argentia were said to contain the remains of civilian and naval spies caught stealing secrets from the base. Some locals claimed they even heard the shots from the firing squads that executed the agents. Although he could not get American military historians to confirm any of these stories of “confrontations on Newfoundland soil with the enemy,” the amateur historian asserted as recently as 2004 that all of these stories were “believed to be true and were known by many influential people in Newfoundland.”1 Following two U-boat raids in September and November 1942, causing 96 casualties on four iron ore carriers docked at Bell Island, as well as the torpedoing and resultant sinking with 136 fatalities of the railway ferry Caribou forty miles off Port aux Basques in October that year, allegations mushroomed attributing all kinds of strange occurrences in Newfoundland to agents and saboteurs.2 Some local residents have maintained that the Uboat captain who torpedoed the ore carrier Rose Castle at Bell Island in November 1942 had a personal connection with the island. He supposedly had not only personally come on land the day before the raid to check its defences but after his return to Germany had even sent a postcard to the Bell Island girl he had danced with the night before the attack.3 Other rumours at the time had U-boat crews coming ashore in rubber dinghies after they had sunk the ore boats at Bell Island and seeing a movie. Strange people with odd accents visiting the city’s stores, clubs, and bars were said to be enemy agents. However, among the relevant (and now fully declassified) government intelligence files and extensive U-boat records, no evidence has been uncovered to verify any of the allegations. No incident can be corroborated where U-boat crews had contact with anyone in Newfoundland and Labrador, or tried to make contact. The U-boat orders were solely to seize every opportunity to attack Allied shipping. Published studies of these raids and of the Caribou sinking, in particular, have shown that the U-boats

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could not even always identify the nature of their targets, that is, whether these were troop carriers, freighters, or passenger vessels.4 Throughout the war, German naval strategists attached a relatively low priority to Newfoundland itself and indicated no interest in contacting anyone there. In addition, U-boats were known to dislike operating near the island.5

espionage and sabotage Stories of U-boat landings spawned suspicions of sabotage by agents in hiding and vice versa. On 12 December 1942, that is, forty days after the sinking of a second ore boat at Bell Island, a mysterious blaze razed the wooden Knights of Columbus Hall on Harvey Road, St John’s, during a weekend dance. Ninety-nine people, mostly servicemen, lost their lives in this tragedy. The first suspect was German American brewmaster Val Foltz of the Bavarian Brewing Company because his phone number was similar to one mentioned in an anonymous phone call at the time of the fire. But he was found to be out of town at the time, and the official inquiry could not identify an arsonist. Public lore then settled on a conspiracy of unknown enemy operatives as the cause and even today considers this a convincing explanation. Despite the lack of evidence for the cause of the blaze and the inconclusive report of the 1943 Dunfield inquiry into the fire, the local media have commemorated the event annually by affixing blame on imagined German agents. “It is virtually certain that the main reason 99 people died that night is that an enemy agent meant to kill as many people as possible,” Gary Hebbard asserted unequivocally in an anniversary issue of the Evening Telegram of 13 December 1992, and a book published in 2002 on the same event advertised “the near certainty that agents of Nazi Germany orchestrated this great tragedy.”6 Jack Fitzgerald, a prolific disseminator of local spy and U-boat lore, claimed in 1984 to have secret evidence that German agents started the wartime Knights of Columbus Hall fire. In 2005, however, he retracted his assertion and fingered instead an American pyromaniac as the culprit.7 But as prominent a Newfoundlander as William R. Callahan, a retired Evening Telegram editor who features himself as one of “Canada’s most senior journalists,” keeps nursing the myth that events such as the Knights of Columbus Hall fire and the sinking of the Caribou were linked to a Newfoundland-based network of Nazi agents. Alleged to be in steady contact with U-boats, these agents also supposedly plotted to assassinate prominent Allied citizens.8 Amateur historians have pointed to two additional fires in St John’s army

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12.1 Official poster displayed in St John’s in 1942. It warned people of loose talk and enemy agents. By suggesting local contacts with enemy submarines, it contributed to fifth-column fears. Courtesy panl.

barracks around the same time as evidence supporting the presence of agents-in-place.9 Subsequent fires in St John’s destroyed the Old Colony Club (21 January 1943), the Yacht Dance Club (8 April 1943), the Imperial Oil dock and storage facilities on the Southside (June 1944), and, on top of McBride’s Hill (as late as 25 April 1945), the United Towns Electric Office and the Newfoundland Liquor Control store. These were all ascribed to fifth columnists and saboteurs. By 1945 every fire in Newfoundland looked suspicious, even those with an apparent or accidental cause. Train derailments were believed to occur with unusual frequency, and from 1943 on, fire wardens and watches were posted at most night clubs. In the atmosphere of censorship and blackouts, with official posters warning against “careless talk,” Newfoundlanders had manoeuvred themselves into a state of fifth-column paranoia (see illus. 12.1).10 The Newfoundland Constabulary devoted considerable effort to recording and tracing allegations of sabotage and espionage activities. Among the matters brought to its attention were denunciations by Newfoundlanders

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of fellow Newfoundlanders as fifth columnists for listening to German radio and spreading alarming news of German victories. Recurring preoccupations of the police were the scrutiny of barrel-sized steel objects seen floating in various bays or rubber dinghies washed ashore as evidence of Uboat intruders. Some questioned where the German short-wave station obtained its information about, for example, St John’s blackouts and the number of damaged ships sheltered in Newfoundland. The chief of police was expected to take seriously a report in June 1941 of two men identifying themselves as Nazis to a woman at Cowhead and then disappearing into the woods.11 Police were never able to substantiate these and various other rumours. In January 1942 Spanish and Portuguese ships were said to be collecting fish and supplies in Newfoundland in order to refuel enemy submarines and raiders on the high seas. On the coast of southern Labrador, it was rumoured that German caches of fuel were sunk in the bottom of remote places so U-boats could refuel there. U-boats were believed to have picked up a certain Father Schultz, said to be a German who kept elaborate weather records while posing as a Catholic priest. Allegedly a well-known figure in the Battle Harbour area, he supposedly vanished mysteriously when war broke out. Explosions were reported heard in the vicinity of Trinity Bay South and Musgrave Harbour on 8 and 20 April 1942, a result of which, as a police report quoted a local informer, “several pieces of metal were drove in on shore”; these were linked to mines as well as torpedoes. By June 1942 even allegations of such trivia as a sketch of one of the bases at Argentia found on the streets of Placentia and a stranger in a khaki uniform asking for directions in Markland at 2 a.m. were reported as causes for concern.12 One of the more serious matters investigated was a “most secret” message from the rcmp in Ottawa of October 1943. The message warned that in August two German agents had been landed on the coast of Brazil from an innocuous sailing vessel with the Spanish flag painted on her hull and that a similar vessel was supposed to make another Atlantic crossing in order to land agents on the Canadian coast. It was suggested that en route to Canada this vessel might make an appearance in Newfoundland, where it might openly enter some port for its agents to disembark as fishermen. With the blessing of the secretary for justice, the chief of police decided to alert all police and rangers in Newfoundland by means of a circular of 10 December 1943 marked “most secret.” It contained the above information, a description of the vessel’s likely size and shape, and a request to be constantly on the lookout for any strange craft lurking in the

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waters of Newfoundland which might come into port dispensing agents who might look like ordinary fishermen. The high alert was continued following a second “most secret” despatch on 22 December 1943 from rcmp headquarters in Ottawa, passing on British intelligence that one or more German agents were believed to have left France for Canada, and a third secret memorandum of 11 January 1944 from the Canadian intelligence staff officer posted in St John’s that fishing vessels carrying enemy agents might be crossing the Atlantic for an unknown destination. The fishing vessels were supposed to be very similar in silhouette to Newfoundland fishing vessels but armed, flying no specific flag, and having American, British, Portuguese, Argentine, Peruvian, Ecuadorean, Columbian, Chilean, and Brazilian ensigns in reserve. The high alert was revived again even as late as 22 January 1945, when the rcmp sent word of yet another possibility of such a vessel appearing in the Newfoundland area. The vessel in question never arrived, but it can easily be imagined how this issue strained and alarmed the imagination, not only of the Newfoundland police and ranger force but probably of the entire public as well. Such a repeatedly and widely circulated alert could not be kept concealed from the public despite its top-secret classification. Here may be found one likely source for the many rumours still believed factual today of enemy agents supposedly landed by submarines.13 U-537

and

U-190

Ironically, the only evidence of any German submarine landing was not discovered until 1981. This landing occurred not on coastal Newfoundland but on the northern tip of Labrador. The information came to light only because of the inquiries of a German researcher compiling a book on German weather reconnaissance in the Arctic. A submarine had been sent to Labrador in October 1943 for the sole purpose of setting up an unmanned, automatic weather station to broadcast meteorological data, vital for German naval warfare in the Atlantic, to northern Europe. The Uboat captain had apparently chosen the site near Cape Chidley primarily because he had erroneously assumed that few Inuit would be there. Reality proved that the captain obviously had had no contacts in Labrador, for as Canadian Forces historian Alec Douglas noted, “any Moravian missionary could have told him that in mid-October of any year, when the harp seals migrate from Greenland via Labrador to the south, there were more Eskimos in the vicinity of C. Chidley than at any other period.”14 In twenty-eight hours the submarine crew completed the operation of

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hauling ten heavy canisters of equipment, plus a tripod and a mast, up a 170–foot hill and a quarter of a mile inland, where they assembled the station. The weather station automatically measured and transmitted temperature, barometric pressure, wind force, and direction and was technologically so sophisticated that Canadian officials conceded not having been able to set up similar systems until the 1960s. From the log of U-537 we know that the station transmitted data for at least two weeks. A second Uboat, sent in the summer of 1944 to set up another automatic weather station in Labrador, was sunk en route.15 Similar stations were set up in even more remote and inaccessible North Atlantic and Arctic spots, such as Greenland, Spitzbergen, and Franz Josef Land. Today, documents make clear that no operatives were intended to be landed in any of these places because the Labrador weather station was part of an extensive, sustained effort by the Nazi regime to obtain meteorological intelligence through Uboats, weather ships, and clandestine stations for its ground, naval, and air war.16 Despite the continuing circulation of countless wartime tales of submarines sightings, in the outports and towns of Newfoundland, of German sailors appearing everywhere and – as historian Michael Hadley has it from the flag officer, Newfoundland Force – even of U-boats flying through the air,17 only one sighting from shore can be confirmed beyond any doubt. That was U-190, which had surrendered on 11 May 1945 to the Canadian corvettes Thorlock and Victoriaville five hundred miles east of Cape Race after having sunk hmcs Esquimalt off Halifax with the loss of twenty-two lives only three weeks before. With most of its crew of fifty-four transferred to the Canadian corvettes, U-190 was taken to Bay Bulls, Newfoundland, where it arrived on 14 May 1945. While the German crew were taken to Halifax on 16 May for interviews, interrogations, and imprisonment, U-190 was subsequently put on display in St John’s harbour (see illus. 12.2 and 12.3). There journalists and photographers were given an opportunity to inspect this 1944 state-of-the-art snorkel-equipped type ixc U-boat (whose underwater endurance of several weeks afforded unprecedented operational range) before it was taken on a ceremonial tour of the ports of Montreal, Trois-Rivières, Quebec City, Gaspé, Pictou, Sydney, and Halifax. The rcn scuttled the inoperable Uboat in October 1947 at the spot where it had sunk the Esquimalt.18 The periscope and black surrender flag of U-190 are still at display at the Crow’s Nest in St John’s, a military officers’ club founded in 1942. In Halifax, as in Newfoundland, stories have abounded of the Canadian officers who first boarded U-190 discovering recent Halifax newspapers

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12.2 German submarine U-190 in St John’s Harbour, 1945. Courtesy panl.

12.3 Newfoundlanders examine U-190 on exhibit in St John’s Harbour, 1945. Courtesy Michael Harrington.

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and ticket stubs from local movie theatres and streetcars. An rcn veteran maintained in 1989 that upon searching the surrendered U-190, he himself also found Canadian cigarettes, Canadian rubber boots, maps of Canadian cities, and even pictures of Halifax girls that U-boat crew members had allegedly dated. And he added the claim that some of the U-190 crew had grown up in Canada and spoke fluent English. But in his wartime diary, published in 2004, U-190 engineering officer Werner Hirschmann termed these stories “pure invention, the product of an overactive imagination.” More disturbing yet to Hirschmann was his realization that “this myth had been compounded and exaggerated over the years, and that the story has grown in the telling.”19 U-boat tales have also been reported from other places. On the French island of Miquelon and in New Zealand, U-boat crews are alleged to have sneaked on land by night in order to extract fresh milk from grazing dairy cows.20 In his classic study of the fifth-column syndrome in World War ii, Louis de Jong provided perhaps the most astute insight into the phenomenon of fifth-column stories, their foundations, and their ubiquity. After examining in considerable detail the nature and scope of Nazi Germany’s wartime intelligence-gathering network, he concluded that “the ‘naming,’ the ‘creating’ of ‘enemies in one’s own midst’ is a form of satisfying inner needs ... It is an irrational but natural process, in fact an understandable way of assimilating a part of reality felt to be unbearable, a process which is almost inevitable in times of high tension. It seems as if the community that is being attacked is ... assuming that there are enemies in its midst; actually the contrary is the case.”21 Letters to the editor, magazine articles, and books keep the lore alive of enemy operatives and “agents-in-place” attempting to give access to enemy U-boats. The U-boat relics at the Crow’s Nest in St John’s and the surrender of U-190 have often served as reference points for a burgeoning U-boat lore since the war. Newfoundlanders have never tired of cherishing outlandish tales of German submariners in fishermen’s garb attending dances at local town halls, even in outports, or buying local bread. Decades after the war, well-known newspaper columnists such as Jack A. White “wouldn’t discount” the belief of many people that “a Nazi U-boat crew [came ashore to] view a movie at the Nickel Theatre.”22 Unverified and unverifiable tales of U-boat landings and enemy agents continue to be presented as fact,23 as exemplified in an article in Downhomer in October 2003 titled “The Spy among Us: A Never Before Told Sory about Espionage in St John’s during WWii,” by Ron Young.

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As late as 2004, that is, more than half a century after the end of World War ii, an amateur historian went to great length to present what he deemed credible stories such as surfaced U-boats being refuelled with the help of shore-based personnel and U-boats receiving signals from local Germans. Identified only as a well-known “character” before the war, one of these Germans allegedly sent radio signals from a shack on the St John’s Southside hills and then sneaked in a U-boat back to Germany, where a Newfoundlander claimed to have recognized him after the war as a Hamburg innkeeper.24 And in a book also published in 2004, another popular local amateur historian continued to portray Maurice Metal as a spy attempting to set up a radio station in Newfoundland “to guide German submarines to their target.”25 The widely read portrayal, allegedly based on this writer’s recollections as a wartime Newfoundland customs and railway employee, ignored the detailed, carefully researched documentation about Metal in my book Sanctuary Denied (published in 1992). Far from being a Nazi spy, Metal was actually a Jewish refugee from the Third Reich. Even when exposed as myths without substance, these stories simply refuse to die.

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9 Conclusions

The relish with which Newfoundlanders have speculated about U-boat crews’ ability to penetrate island society with unrivalled bravado and ease, a senior Newfoundland historian tried to explain to me, revealed a subconscious fascination with German skills and daring. The flourishing lore of U-boat crews coming on land in broad daylight and mixing with the local population in bars, movie theatres, and stores implies an alleged German capability to pull off anything, he suggested, and should be interpreted as a positive image. However, the wartime depiction of local residents of German-speaking background as enemy agents seeking contact with U-boats is incompatible with their actual ordeals as enemy aliens and their pre–World War i image and footprints. To illustrate these points has been one aim of this book. A related objective has been to identify the multi-faceted German connections that affected the lives of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. Last but not least, mainly in order to place the world war experiences in perspective, the book has intended to highlight mutual Newfoundland-German perceptions and the changing images of each other’s identities.

footprints The first documented German footprints have been traced back to the legendary landing of Leif Eirikson in L’Anse aux Meadows in ad 1000 and to the known arrival of Humphrey Gilbert in 1583 because a German with valuable expertise for the exploratory voyage accompanied each of them.

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In the first case it was the south German called Tyrkir, with his ability to identify grapes. In the second it was the ore expert Daniel the Saxon. Thereafter, German names can be found scattered among the earliest fishermen, colonists, explorers, soldiers, physicians, missionaries, and officials. However, it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that an immigrant of German-speaking background left more than his name to posterity. The seven-year stint of Lewis Amadeus Anspach as a missionary and an educator in St John’s and other towns of the Avalon Peninsula has been recognized as a major contribution to the cultural development of Newfoundland, although Anspach’s German background has never been acknowledged. Germans did not arrive in Newfoundland in significant numbers until the nineteenth century, first as part of the Hamburg provisions trade and then in connection with the economic developments in Newfoundland and Germany. Newspaper articles and government records document the appearance of a small German community in St John’s in the 1830s, which grew to become the largest group of residents of non-English-speaking background in Newfoundland by 1914. They represented a variety of social classes, denominations, religions, occupations, professions, and geographic origins. Professionals and experts were often recruited by local businesses, churches, and government agencies. Some of those making more significant contributions to Newfoundland development, such as Ludwig Rissmüller and Francis von Ellershausen, came as sojourners by way of the United States and Canada and did not integrate into the local German community. Others, such as engineer Robert von Stein, “Ode-toNewfoundland” composer E.R. Krippner, and herbalist F.H. Ackerman, became local celebrities or, like wrestler-chauffeur Otto Oppelt, even Newfoundland folk heroes. World War i marked a deep divide in the history of German overseas migrations and the life of German communities in all Allied countries. No persons with any ethnic German association, including second-generation German Americans and German Canadians, were allowed to enter, and Newfoundland’s vibrant German community vanished overnight. Some of its members were interned and deported to Canada, while others departed for the United States, Canada, or Germany. Those who stayed behind went into hiding or suffered social ostracism. Although immigration was not restricted after 1919, few Germans came to Newfoundland until the late 1920s. Only in the 1930s did Germans reappear in significant numbers, primarily as commercial agents, tourists, or scientists. Few took up residence, except for those who were recruited as specialists. In the expanding

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St John’s brewing industry, for example, the dominant role of Germans could not be overlooked. The local reluctance to welcome large numbers of German-speaking immigrants between the world wars is highlighted by the negative experience of thousands of asylum-seeking, mostly Jewish refugees from the Third Reich who approached Newfoundland for sanctuary in the 1930s. All were rejected, despite a 1906 Newfoundland law’s provision to facilitate the admission of refugees. Paradoxically, they were not wanted near any populated district on the underpopulated island, but neither were they allowed to settle in isolation in Labrador. Many of them possessed skills, expertise, and capital needed by Newfoundland at the time. Thus Newfoundland during the 1930s, in effect, adopted an unwritten discriminatory admissions policy that distinguished between a non-admissible class and an admissible class of Germans. Later, during World War ii, all of Newfoundland’s residents of Germanspeaking background, like those in other British dominions, found themselves again officially classified and socially segregated as “dangerous” socalled enemy aliens. However, while in Canada’s large, long-established German settlements, individuals remained more or less unaffected, in Newfoundland’s closed society the few “enemy aliens” suffered a comparatively harsh fate. Suspected of being real or potential spies, residents of even the remotest German-speaking background were subjected simultaneously to societal stigmatization and varying degrees of police surveillance and official restrictions of movement. Among those affected were German Jewish doctors, nurses, business people, and even the rabbi of the St John’s Hebrew congregation because he was German-born. For the size of its “enemy alien” population, the Newfoundland government also conducted relatively extensive internment operations – it built two camps and maintained several makeshift internment facilities to detain and eventually deport some 140 allegedly disloyal aliens of various backgrounds. Those not interned or deported encountered unemployment and social ostracism in the face of the sudden, unfounded hostility shown by formerly hospitable Newfoundlanders.

connections Lasting German institutional and cultural connections originated with the arrival of the Moravians in Labrador in 1771. Their mission stations in northern Labrador established a permanent institutional presence pioneering every conceivable service, including the educational, judicial, economic,

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medical, and social, in that remote region. They interacted peaceably with the reputedly unpacifiable Inuit, created a written language for them to facilitate their literacy, and introduced broad educational and other strategies to enable the Inuit and their cultural identity to survive in a rapidly changing modern world. Moravian linguistic, educational, musical, horticultural, and scientific pursuits, in particular, reflected German ways and drew on some of the most progressive models of the time. Operating within a framework of German culture and transplanting many aspects of German life into the rugged wilderness of northern Labrador, the Moravians left their mark as facilitators of Inuit survival in the broadest sense of the word. Their enclave of German culture in northern Labrador survived unchallenged for more than a century. Direct commercial connection with Germany began in 1819 following the repeal of the English Navigation Acts and the liberalization of Britain’s colonial trade. Until 1870 this so-called Hamburg provisions trade initiated Newfoundland’s direct and regular exchange of goods, first and foremost with the Free City of Hamburg but subsequently also with German ports such as Bremen, Danzig, and Memel. It also attracted to St John’s a steady flow of ideas and people from Germany. German bread, flour, butter, peas, and meats were the first products traded. The list rapidly expanded to include a growing array of foods, materials, and clothes needed for fishing, construction and the household and even luxury items such as pianos, coffee, cigars, and wines. For half a century Hamburg-baked German bread (also called ship’s bread, biscuit, hard bread, or zwieback) remained Newfoundland’s largest and most demanded import from Germany until a local baker managed to develop a competitive recipe. Later named “hardtack,” it became a staple food item among fishermen and sailors because it lasted for years without spoiling. As Germany transformed itself from a food-exporting to a food-importing country and Newfoundland’s society and economy changed as well, imports from Germany declined significantly and consisted largely of manufactured goods, such as marine and household utensils, instruments, tools, machines, and luxury items. In 1909 the German company of Amme, Giesecke, and Konegen A.G. won the contract to install the entire sixturbine power system for the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company’s new paper mill at Grand Falls. Present-day reminders of the importation of state-of-the-art German technologies are the six additional Voith turbines installed in Newfoundland’s first hydroelectric plants in Petty Harbour, Victoria, Seal Cove, Lawn, and Pierre Brook between 1908 and 1931. Even during the war Voith managed to service its turbines

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through its branches in the United States and Latin America. Most are still in mint condition and functioning today. While Newfoundland’s imports from Germany changed and declined after 1870, exports to Germany experienced the opposite trend. The tastes of Germany’s new industrial society dictated a growing market for salmon and lobster. By 1914, Prime Minister Edward Morris claimed, Newfoundland was selling its entire annual lobster catch to Germany. Simultaneously, the export of seal oil, needed in Germany as an industrial lubricant, increased fifteen-fold between 1869 and 1914. In equally growing demand was Bell Island iron ore, for which Germany’s Krupp steel corporation paid a higher price than American and Canadian customers. From the opening of the Bell Island mines, an increasing volume of their iron ore ended up in Germany. By 1938–39 Germany bought 73 per cent of the total tonnage mined per annum. Largely as a result of the ore trade, as well as a smaller trade in lead and zinc ores from Buchans, Germany became Newfoundland’s fourth largest trading partner by 1930–31. The expansion of commercial relations was accompanied by consular links, disrupted only by the world wars. Between 1844 and 1870 the German states of Prussia, Hamburg, and the North German Confederation each appointed honorary consuls in St John’s. An honorary consul represented the German Empire from 1870 to 1914 in St John’s and from 1880 to 1914 also in Nain, Labrador. After World War i, strong antiGerman sentiments appear to have prevented the reappointment of a German consul for Newfoundland until 1929. At the same time, Austria assigned jurisdiction for Newfoundland to its consul general for Canada in Ottawa.

perceptions Unlike the consular, commercial, and Moravian cultural connections established since the late eighteenth century, Newfoundland’s positive pre–World War i image of Germans did not survive the disruptive impact of the war. Until 1914 Germans were respected and well spoken of in St John’s. Newfoundlanders looked upon their attitudes and habits with a mixture of admiration and curiosity. Not only were Germans considered socially acceptable and assimilable, as the absence of discrimination and the ease of intermarriage at all social levels would suggest; they were also admired for their skills and contributions. In pre–World War i St John’s, one may detect examples of even a growing acceptance of German tastes. Among these could be included the local preference for lager beer brewed

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by the Lindberg brewery, German film festivals at the Nickel theatre, reports of travels to Germany in the local press, the welcome St John’s residents extended to the crews of German warships, and last but not least, the number of newborn Newfoundlanders given distinctly German first names. World War i changed all that. Virtually overnight, Germans were viewed as cruel, untrustworthy, and disloyal. In Newfoundland, residents and visitors with the remotest German association were treated as suspects. Even such pre-war celebrities as Robert von Stein and Otto Oppelt were now cast in the role of foreign agents focused solely on betraying the interests of Newfoundland. Nearly five years of systematic anti-German brainwashing essentially wiped out the positive pre-war images and perceptions of local Germans. The negative stereotype reappeared during the World War ii, when local Germans were automatically perceived to have resumed their role as spies and saboteurs. An ambivalent image of Germans became manifest in the 1930s. On the one hand, newspaper editorials and letters to the editor objected to refugees from the Third Reich as social castaways and a threat to the ethnic identity of the host society. On the other, a small minority of educated Newfoundlanders returning from Germany projected positive images of Germans they had met there. They expressed a high regard for German kindness, efficiency, education, and culture. Their judgment of Germany’s troubles was compassionate and their prospect for the country’s future promising. All were careful to distinguish between the Nazi regime and the German people; the later in the 1930s they visited Germany, the more they condemned the Nazi dictatorship and contended that it did not enjoy the support of the people. Similarly ambivalent impressions of Newfoundland and Labrador have been left to posterity by visitors from Germany – scientists, tourists, writers – from the late nineteenth century to World War ii. Their accounts projected two contrasting images – a positive one when the focus was on the promise of Newfoundland’s unexplored resources and opportunities, but a negative one when the weather, living conditions, and culture of the resident population formed the centre of attention. Thus visiting scientists and business people tended to report positively about Newfoundland and Labrador, while travel authors were often overwhelmed by negative impressions. Coming from a rapidly industrializing country with a dominant middle-class society and accustomed to judging the world by their middle-class standards, these visitors were struck by the economic backwardness they encountered, the potential of the largely unexplored

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resources, the absence of a middle class and of middle-class mores and culture, and the political power of the local merchant elite. The earliest tourist visitors came in the 1880s. Although scientist Theodor Anton Verkrüzen and travel writer Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg wrote independent travel accounts, Newfoundland represented to both of them an exotic world that differed in almost every respect from life in Germany. Interested in all aspects of the fishery, they observed with curiosity its hardships, hazards, and potential. But both attributed the appalling standard of living in St John’s and the outports to the monopoly of a few English fish merchants and the greed of Newfoundland’s fishocracy. Because Hesse-Wartegg perceived nothing but misery and hopeless rot everywhere, he not surprisingly had no faith in Newfoundland’s future. To Verkrüzen, however, the future looked bright because he saw potential in the island’s fishery, mineral deposits, and industrial development. Subsequent German visitors and writers exhibited the same dichotomous pattern of perception. Travel author Colin Ross and geographer Hans Schrepfer occupy a special place as monitors of Newfoundland’s and Labrador’s changing appearance in the eyes of Germans. Separately, they described their impressions repeatedly and more extensively than any previous visitors from Germany. Their writings shaped Germany’s image of Newfoundland through the 1930s and 1940s. What characterized Newfoundland above everything else in the eyes of both Ross and Schrepfer was the stark contrast between the traditional fishery and the nascent land-based development. Both viewed the fishery as a curse responsible for Newfoundland’s economic and cultural backwardness. But they focused primarily on areas that previous German visitors had overlooked – the importance of Newfoundland’s geopolitical location and its new mining and paper industries. Ross highlighted aspects that appeared to promise a radical departure from the past – the opening of the interior, economic self-sufficiency, and awareness of the island’s strategic marine significance. Schrepfer marvelled at the “new economy” generated by the burgeoning exploitation of the treasures of the interior. Although foreign-owned, the highly rationalized plants of gigantic size and enormous productivity at Bell Island, Grand Falls, Corner Brook, and Buchans were, in his opinion, destined to bring about revolutionary change. He admired not only their state-of-the-art technologies and production methods but also the communities’ “models of social achievement,” as evidenced by their modern accommodations, number of automobiles, and fringe benefits. How did immigrants of German-speaking background perceive their

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Newfoundland host society? For the period prior to World War i we have, apart from L.A. Anspach’s writings, no documents revealing their impressions and personal feelings. Circumstantial evidence indicates that German newcomers representing all class backgrounds, such as Robert von Stein, Charles Miller, Alo Gut, and James Rickert, appreciated the social acceptance and the quality of life they were able to afford. Attracted either by economic and professional opportunities or by the more relaxed, easygoing Newfoundland lifestyle, they found the atmosphere in St John’s congenial. From 1914 on, however, we are better informed. The war generated an abundance of government and police records dealing with the home front and the perceived danger from enemy aliens. In both world wars some residents ostracized as enemy aliens deposited statements with the police attesting to their unbearable ordeals. Too traumatized to articulate indignation and anger, they lamented their helplessness in the face of unjustified suspicions and persecution. And in both world wars, unemployment and fear for their lives made some local Germans so desperate that they actually requested internment as a safe haven. Those who were interned and then deported to Canada and England against their will begged in vain for an opportunity to refute unfounded accusations and prove their integrity and loyalty. They were unable to comprehend why their pleas for justice and mercy fell on deaf ears. The conclusions drawn by the few who were spared internment or deportation can be gleaned from their actions. With few exceptions, they left Newfoundland never to return. To sum up, Newfoundlanders like to pride themselves on their exclusive English, Irish, and Scottish heritage. This is a myth. In reality, Newfoundland’s and Labrador’s heritage is multi-cultured. The evidence in this book has demonstrated a remarkable and multi-faceted German experience of footprints, connections, and perceptions reaching back a millenium. A steady trickle of German-speaking incomers can be traced from the beginning of the European settlement of Newfoundland. Few had planned to immigrate. Some were recruited or attracted because their skills and expertise were in demand, but most ended up more or less by chance on the island, where they were welcomed as fellow residents and with few exceptions adapted easily. Despite their relative numerical insignificance and lack of cohesiveness as an ethnic group, many of them contributed significantly to all aspects of their host society’s development. Although usually labelled “foreigners” in an English-speaking population where, since the mid-nineteenth century, never more than 2 per cent were foreign-born, their contri-

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butions, work ethic, and assimilability were highly regarded by Newfoundlanders in all walks of life. Enduring cultural connections came into existence only in the remote region of northern Labrador, where the Newfoundland government encouraged Moravian responsibility for educational, judicial, economic, medical, social, and other services to the Inuit. Prior to 1914, the Moravian compassionate assistance in all aspects of Inuit well-being received widespread praise from Newfoundland government, health, and church circles. The negative perceptions generated in two world wars by systematic antiGerman brainwashing brought all positive attitudes to an end. Although a few educated Newfoundlanders returned from visits to Germany between the wars with undiminished regard for its citizens, the negative German stereotype became firmly entrenched in the public mind. Newfoundlanders saw Moravian missionaries and local residents of German origin as the embodiment of the enemy within. The island’s closed, ethnically homogeneous society, where nobody cared to question the wartime perception and treatment of ethnic minorities, has passed on that myth to subsequent generations. Indeed, few things are remembered today about the centuries-old German presence in Newfoundland and Labrador other than the local Germans’ alleged wartime roles as spies, saboteurs, and presumed contacts with hostile U-boats. Documentation concerning U-boat landings and alleged enemy agents filed in the Newfoundland, British, Canadian, American, and German archives has long been declassified. Historians have thus been able to thoroughly comb the pertinent archival files for any possible information about German U-boat crews coming on land, about spies and saboteurs hiding among the Newfoundland population, and about contacts between them. They have also examined the surviving logbooks and diaries and interviewed U-boat captains and crew. Nonetheless, no incriminating evidence has come to light. In addition, records of the Newfoundland Department of Justice document the difficulties enemy agents would have faced on the island because Newfoundlanders reported every suspicious activity. Indeed, the extent and reasons for denunciations are amazing. People were denounced for reasons ranging from their background and allegedly suspicious activities to personal opinions casually uttered at a small private dinner party. The authorities, in turn, took seriously any allegation of espionage and sabotage, thoroughly investigated it, and ensured that anyone presenting the remotest security risk was placed under police surveillance, interned, or deported.

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Yet the wartime stereotype has lived on, buttressed by tales about spies and saboteurs, as well as the elaborate post-war lore that Newfoundlanders have spun around the assumed antics of German U-boat crews coming ashore during both world wars. The imaginary German created by wartime propaganda and perceptions did not reflect the real identity and history of local Germans, but instead generated a new reality of its own. The fiction and stigmatization of local Germans acting as disloyal and subversive enemy aliens, often said to be communicating with U-boats, all but wiped out not only Newfoundland’s German population by 1945 but also the memory of the pre–World War i community’s existence and contributions. The myth of wartime enemy aliens acting as spies has reinforced that of Newfoundland’s exclusive British roots. The end of World War ii thus left virtually no traces of a German community and little awareness of the island’s multicultural heritage. Newfoundland’s post–World War ii German experience constitutes a separate story in every respect. It has no connections with the pre-war experience.

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1 Notes

abbreviations used in the notes cns

Centre for Newfoundland Studies Archives, Memorial University of Newfoundland co Colonial Office do Dominions Office lac Library and Archives Canada nmc National Map Collection, Library and Archives Canada panl Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador pro Public Record Office, London (now part of the National Archives) spg Society for the Propagation of the Gospel uah Unitäts-Archiv, Herrnhut, Germany zs Zentrales Staatsarchiv, Potsdam (now Bundesarchiv, Berlin)

introduction 1 See Isajiw, “Ethnic Identity Retention.” See also his “Definitions and Dimensions of Ethnicity.” 2 Bassler, “German Canadian Identity in Historical Perspective.” 3 Bassler, Sanctuary Denied, 66. 4 MacDonald, “To Each His Own,” 19. 5 Hoerder, Creating Societies, 287. 6 Bassler, “‘We Should First Look to British Stock’: The Refugee Experience in Newfoundland, 1939–1945,” in Paul Bartrop, ed., False Havens: The British

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Notes to pages 7–11

Dominions and the Holocaust (Lanham, 1995), 253–79; “‘Leave to Land Shall Not be Refused”: The Right to Asylum in Newfoundland, 1906–1949,” Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 7, no. 2 (1993): 8–23. “‘Deemed Undesirable’: Newfoundland’s Immigration Policy, 1906–49,” in J.K. Hiller and P. Neary, eds., Twentieth-Century Newfoundland: Explorations (St John’s, 1993), 153–77; “Newfoundland’s ‘Dangerous’ Internees Who Never Were: The History of Victoria Camp, 1940–43,” Newfoundland Studies 6, no. 1 (1989): 39–51; “Attempts to Settle Jewish Refugees in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1934–1939,” The Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual 5 (1988): 121–44. “Newfoundland and Refugees from the Third Reich, 1933–1941,” Newfoundland Studies 3, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 37–70. 7 See also Bassler, “The German Experience in Newfoundland to 1914: Migrations, Connections, Images,” in Peter Liddell and Walter Riedel, eds., Begegnungen – Connections: Proceedings of Symposium VII on German Canadian Studies, 19 May 1990, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC; Victoria: cautg, 1991), 1–13.

chapter one 1 Matthews, Lectures, 8, 65–6, 84ff., 132–3. Jabbra and Cosper, “Ethnicity in Atlantic Canada,” 13. 2 During Charles v’s reign, for example, Germans were allowed an open and active part in the development of the Spanish colonies. The south German trading houses Fuggers and Welsers operated mines in Santo Domingo and New Spain and undertook settlement in Venezuela. The Ehingers monopolized the slave trade to the West Indies from 1528 to 1532. See Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance, 66–7. 3 Uebe, Labrador, 6. 4 The explanatory German text refers to “Terra Nova” as a new land discovered only a few years ago by French and Portuguese, who had sailed to this territory to seek strange adventures. The Inuit woman is described as a kidnapped savage who was brought to Europe for public exhibition and conversion. Her husband had been killed by French because he allegedly practised cannibalism and in twelve days had killed twelve French and Portuguese. The Augsburg version of the print is reproduced in Sturtevant, “The First Inuit Depiction by Europeans,” 47–9. My colleague Hans Rollmann drew my attention to a copy of the Nuremberg version in his possession. The first reference to the existence of this woodcut is in Sturtevant, “First Visual Images of Native America,” 437ff., 452. Neary and O’Flaherty, Part of the Main, 16, reproduces a 1577 drawing by the English artist John White as the first European image of Canadian Inuit.

Notes to pages 12–16

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5 Lindeman, Die arktische Fischerei der deutschen Seestädte 1620–1868. 6 In 1627 seven Hamburg ships were reported in England to be going to Newfoundland. See Lounsbury, The British Fishery, 37–8. Glerum-Laurentius, “A History of Dutch Activity in the Newfoundland Fish Trade,” 25. 7 Ingstad, Westward to Vinland, and The Norse Discovery of America, vol. 2. 8 Morrison, The European Discovery of America, 51–2, suggests that “just as father Eiric put the ‘Green’ in ‘Greenland’ to attract settlers, so Leif put the ‘Vin’ in ‘Vinland’ ... to throw off all Vinland seekers for centuries.” 9 Larsen, The Discovery of North America; Brandt. Bau deinen Altar auf fremder Erde, 31–6. 10 Hughes, “The German Discovery of America,” 79–81; Morison, The European Discovery, 89–94; Larson, “Did John Scolvus Visit Labrador and Newfoundland in or about 1476?” 11 Tuckermann, “Der deutsche Anteil,” 363. Hennig, “Wo lag die ‘terra prima vista’ des John Cabot?” 610–12, advanced weighty arguments that, like the Norwegian John Skolp (Scolvus), John Cabot reached southern Labrador instead of Newfoundland. 12 Prowse, History (1971), 38–41. 13 Hayward, “English Swords 1600–1650,” 158–61. 14 Nef, The Conquest of the Material World, 39ff. 15 Rowse, The England of Elizabeth, 151–9, 177ff.; Hennings, Deutsche in England, 24ff., 32ff. 16 Collingwood, Elizabethan Keswick, 200. Donald, Elizabethan Copper, 214–15, 373–6. Quinn, “Preparations for the 1685 Virginia Voyage,” 222. 17 Hakluyt as cited in Quinn, The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, 408–13. Daniel was not the only foreigner in Gilbert’s entourage. On the voyage was also a learned Hungarian by the name of Stephen Parmenius, born in Buda, to record in Latin the highlights of the expedition. He perished with his notes in the same shipwreck as Daniel. Martin, Once upon a Mine, 6, incorrectly refers to the Saxon ore refiner as Daniel of Buda. 18 Quinn, Newfoundland from Fishery to Colony, 170–5. I am grateful to Ralph Pastore for this reference. Another settler in this colony who, judged by his name, might have been of German descent was Henry Crout. He was an agent of one of the subscribers to the settlement company and was appointed keeper of the colony’s diary. He considered Newfoundland suitable for settlement. Nothing is known about his origins and end. See Cell, English Enterprise in Newfoundland, 66–71. 19 Quoted in panl, P 4/3, box 1, file 15, Morine, “A History of Newfoundland,” chapter xxi, p. 41. Prowse, History (1895), 280, also quotes the letter, but spells the name Koch as “Coch.”

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Notes to pages 16–18

20 Lach, “Deutschkanadische Kunst in Quebec,” 126. 21 Harper, Painting in Canada, 27; Lord, The History of Painting in Canada, 60–1. 22 German settlers are identifiable in Quebec as early as 1664, and a group of French and German Swiss soldiers were part of the Huguenot Du Gua de Monts’ expedition of 120 French to Acadia in 1604. Germans ended up in France and New France as a result of the Thirty Years’ War, the annexation of Alsace Lorraine in 1648, and the inclusion of Germans in the French armies of Louis xiv and his predecessors. A source of German migrations to New France was also the very active colony of German and Dutch Protestant merchants in ports such as Rouen, to whom the French crown ceded the administration of seventeenth-century New France in return for the promise to settle the new lands. See Debor, 1664–1964, 4–6; Bovay, Le Canada et les Suisses, 4–6; Jaenen, “Problems of Assimilation in New France.” 23 Swiss German troops were garrisoned in Louisbourg, and fishermen from Île-Royale are known to have migrated between Newfoundland and New France. See Bonnault, “Les Suisses au Canada,” 51ff.; Janzen, “‘Une grande liaison.’” 24 Williams, Father Boudoin’s War, 161–8. 25 cns, Ressencement de toutte La collonie Establie en liste de Terreneuve Et saint pierre, Le Grand Plaisance et la premiere coulonne, pour l’anne 1693; Resencement de matelots Pecheurs que Les habitants de plais.ce ont Engagés Pour l’anné 1701, a fair venir de France, pour fair valloir les Graves que le Roy leur donne. Recensement des familles de La colonie de Plaisance. Isle de terre Neuve en 1706; Arsenault, Histoire genealogie des Acadiens. 26 Debor, 1664–1964, 5. 27 Genealogical research by my colleague Gordon Handcock in Twillingate parish registers reveals the baptism of four sons to a Daniel Decker (William, John, David, and Samuel), who also shows up as an apprentice in the Slade ledger for six months in 1785. According to Handcock, the Deckers immigrated around this time from England. 28 Interviews with Clayton Colbourne (whose mother was a Decker), 29 August 1985; Calvin and Sam Decker, 30 August 1985; and Chris Decker, 16 September 1985. 29 Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation, 496. Knittle, Early 18th Century Palatine Emigration, 65–87; Cobb, The Story of the Palatines, 76–85. 30 Vera Staubitzer interview. In the German settlement of Limerick, Irish Palatines embraced Methodism as early as 1749 and in 1756 took their new faith to America where they spread it. See Magee, Loyalist Mosaic, 176–9. 31 I am grateful to my colleague Hans Rollmann for supplying the pertinent

Notes to pages 19–21

32 33 34

35 36

37

38

39

40 41

42 43 44

309

excerpts from the diary he found at the Moravian archives in Herrnhut, Germany. Prowse, History (1895), 151ff., 202ff., 285, 287, notes that local merchants identified some of the new justices as New England men. Extracted from the collection of parish registers in the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, St John’s. Seary, Family Names of the Island of Newfoundland, identifies as German some thirty family names in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Newfoundland, but claims an exclusive British origin for many names that might equally well (and in some cases are actually proven to) be of German origin, such as Ackerman, Beck, Beer (Behr), Brenner, Cruse (Kruse), Decker, Etsell (Etzel), Falk, Knee (Knie), Knoll, Luther, Myers, Rickert, Rolf, Wise (Weis). Letter from George Snelgrove, 30 April 1990, based on information from Judy Foote and Marguerit Mullins. Letter from Rita King, 24 April 1989, whose great-grandmother Jane was the daughter of Joseph and Ann Short. Jane moved to Halifax, where in the censuses of 1861, 1871, 1881, and 1891 her origin was listed as German. Referring, according to local legend, to unidentified fish appearing in a small brook near Garnish on Christmas Eve. See Evening Telegram, 24 December 1988 and 14 January 1989. Smallwood, Encyclopedia, vol. 1, 592. This explanation, however, is contested by Howley, “The Late Archbishop Howley’s Newfoundland Name Lore,” 95. It is not clear whether this description refers to Newfoundland fishermen or Nova Scotians (from Lunenburg), who were also fishing off Labrador. See Dewitz, An der Küste Labradors, 22. Prowse, History (1895), 309. The Halifax Morning Journal and Commercial Advertiser of 14 December 1859 articulated the wide recognition of the excellence that Lunenburg’s fishing fleet had gained by the mid-nineteenth century: “These despised Dutchmen have done more to foster the art of shipbuilding in Nova Scotia than any other class of people within our borders ... The vessels these people build are marvels of neatness. We verily believe that they lavish a greater amount of money in ornamenting their craft – in carving and gilding – than they would be willing to disburse in decorating their frows and daughters.” Balcolm, History of the Lunenburg Fishing Industry. Kelland, Dories and Dorymen, 22–45. Schneider, Jens Haven in Labrador, 6ff.; letter of Jens Haven to David Nitschman of 8 January 1765, courtesy of Hans Rollmann. nmc, Bellin, “Cartes de la Nouvelle France ou Canada.”

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Notes to pages 21–30

45 I am grateful to my colleague Hans Rollmann, who found the map and drew my attention to it. Translations from German are my own. 46 Handcock, “The Origin and Development of Trinity up to 1900”; spg Journal, series B6, nos. 180 and 183. I am grateful to Hans Rollmann for the spg reference. 47 panl, p 4/3, box 1, file 15, Morine, “History,” chap. xix, pp. 6, 59. I am grateful to Gordon Handcock for verifying the medical services of surgeons Coke and Clinch. However, he was unable to confirm the existence of Dr Gott. 48 Webber, “The Military History of Newfoundland,” 535. This undocumented assertion might be an error resulting from confusion with Fort St Johns, southwest of Montreal. 49 He resigned after being court-martialled for defrauding the men in his regiment. See his biography in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 7: 743–4. 50 Seume, “Mein Leben,” 130. 51 Rede auf die bevorstehende Wahl der Magistrate und Bevollmächtigten einer Gemeinde in Neufundland. 52 Wedekind, “Die Kaiserin von Neufundland.” 53 spg Journal 28: 2–3. 54 Anspach, History, 230ff. 55 Anspach, Geschichte und Beschreibung von Newfoundland, 77ff. The name “Newfoundland,” however, for which, according to a footnote, a perfect German translation existed – “Die Teutschen nennen es Neufundland” (Geschichte, 274) – was left untranslated throughout. 56 spg Journal 28: 435. 57 Ibid. 29: 398. 58 See Story and Jones, “Anspach, Lewis Amadeus,” 9–11; O’Flaherty, The Rock Observed, 60–2. 59 Anspach, History, 6–10, 66, 370–1. 60 Ibid., 293ff, 343, 356–65. 61 Ibid., 368, 373. 62 Ibid., 304, 359, 427, 438, 467, 475ff. 63 spg Journal 30, 249–50. 64 Anspach, History, 478.

chapter two 1 MacGregor, “Report of an Official Visit,” 338–9. 2 Sagarra, A Social History of Germany, 110–14; Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, 137–44; Pinson, Pietism.

Notes to pages 31–8

311

3 The Moravian missionary impulse has been traced to Zinzendorf’s encounter with missionaries of the Danish Halle-mission, started in 1706. See Müller, 200 Jahre Brüdermission, 5–9; Hahn and Reichel, Zinzendorf und die Herrnhuter Brüder, 30ff. Sessler, Communal Pietism, 15–16, however, argues that “persecution ... led to the need for settlements in foreign parts, and this need in turn gave impetus to the theory of missionary work, which then grew to such proportions that it is easy to confuse it with the purpose behind the settlements.” 4 Hiller, “The Foundation and Early Years,” 12. 5 pro, co 194/27, pp. 103–4, Palliser to the Earl of Halifax, 11 September 1765. 6 Kölbing, Die Missionen, part ii, 19–20. 7 Rollmann, “Labrador History Unearthed.” 8 Quoted in Hunt, The Life of Sir H. Palliser. 9 Even after he had made cordial contact with the Inuit, Haven recalled, he kept meeting people in Newfoundland who “had made up their mind to murder the Eskimos” despite a proclamation by Palliser forbidding the continuation of such “treacherous or cruel conduct.” See [Haven], “Lebenslauf,” 906–10. Haven, who spoke Danish and German, admits that he did not speak English when he first came to Newfoundland in 1764. 10 Kölbing, Die Missionen, part ii, 55; Peacock, “The Moravian Mission in Labrador, 1752–1959,” 46–7, 54; Horwood, “Moravians.” 11 Tanner, Outlines, 1. Ben-Dor, Makkovik, 9–10. Whiteley, “The Moravian Missionaries,” 18. 12 The first Moravian census of 1773 counted 250 of an estimated total Labrador Inuit population of 1,460 wintering near Nain. See Treude, Nordlabrador, 20. 13 Hegner, Fortsetzung von David Cranzens Brüder-Historie, 129. 14 Taylor, Labrador Eskimo Settlements, 92. 15 These consisted largely of personnel for Goose Bay airport and in-migrants attracted by the economic development and urban amenities of the area. Superintendent F.W. Peacock signified the growing shift in the operation of his ministry when moved his head office from Nain to Happy Valley in 1954. 16 By 1990 the five remaining Moravian congregations in Labrador were no longer a mission. Responsibility for this mission field had been transferred after World War i to the British Moravian Church, although a German missionary was in charge of Nain until as late as 1980. 17 “The Moravian Church in Labrador.” 18 Jannasch, Unter Hottentoten, 87ff., 95–9. 19 Newfoundland, House of Assembly, Journal, 1880, 355–8.

312 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

Notes to pages 39–48

Butler, Igloo Killinek, 27. Rompkey, Jessie Luther, 267, 271. Missionsblatt der Brüdergemeine, 72, no. 3 (1908): 79. Jannasch, “Bericht von Makkovik,” 51–2. See Rollmann, Labrador through Moravian Eyes, 41. Translated by Hans Rollmann and posted on his Web page. Koch, “Die Küste Labradors, 157. Pilot, A Visit to Labrador, 13. Rompkey, Jessie Luther, 265–6. Peacock, Reflections from a Snowhouse, 39. Grenfell, A Labrador Doctor, 130. Jannasch, Unter Hottentotten, 74. Evening Herald (St John’s), 14 April 1906. Brückner, “Religiöse Einstellung,” 82–3. Rompkey, Jessie Luther, 270, reported conversation at the mission station to be a mixture of English, German, and Inuit. Lochman, Comenius, 16–7. Francke was a Lutheran pastor, university professor, and founder of several educational institutions in Halle. See Hinrichs, Preussentum und Pietismus, and Deppermann, Der Hallische Pietismus. Kölbing, Die Missionen, part ii, 66–74. Brückner, “Religiöse Einstellung,” 109. Thom, Friedrich Erdmann, 101–6. Ibid. Peacock, “The Language of the Inuit,” 28. Martin, Die Bibel und unsere Eskimo. Senft, Wie wir den Heiden das Wort Gottes gebracht haben, 28–40; Peacock, “Languages in Contact in Labrador,” 1–3; Heinrich und Treude, “Einige Entlehnungen,” 67–70. Perry and Edmondson, “Complex Language Ecologies.” F.W. Peacock interview. In 1990 the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs found 53 per cent of Labrador Inuit to be functionally illiterate. panl, gn 1/1/7, 1909 (25/2/6). Müller, 200 Jahre Brüdermission, 65–7. Jannasch, Unter Hottentoten, 72. “Überblick über das Missionswerk der Brüdergemeine in dem Zeitraum zwischen den Synoden von 1857 und 1869,” Missions-Blatt 6 (1869 or 1870): 20. Ibid. See Rollmann, Labrador through Moravian Eyes, 61. Lutz, Musical Traditions of the Labrador Coast Inuit.

Notes to pages 48–58 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

68 69

70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

313

Koch, “Geschichte der supplementären Expedition,” 174. Thom, Friedrich Erdmann, 101–6. Pilot, A Visit to Labrador, 9. Peacock, “The Moravian Mission in Labrador,” 211. Jannasch, Unter Hottentoten, 71; Reichel, “Bericht von Bruder Levin Theodor Reichels Visitationsreise,” 34. Jannasch, Erziehung zur Freiheit, 55. Martin, Die Bibel und unsere Eskimo, 21. Peacock, “The Moravian Mission in Labrador,” 228. “The Moravian Church in Labrador.” See, e.g., Rollmann, “Inuit Shamanism,” 131–8. Brückner, “Religiöse Einstellung,” xxxi–xxxii, 4, 32. Uttendörfer, “Die Entwicklung der Pflege der Naturwissenschaften,” 89–98. Stolz, “Bibliographie,” 108. Ibid., 98–106. Cranz, Historie. Möschler, “Beitrag zur Schmetterlingsfauna von Labrador,” 172–4. For a list of Möschler’s publications to 1883 on Labrador butterflies see Stolz, “Bibliographie,” 114–21. As quoted in Peacock, “The Moravian Mission in Labrador,” 85. Hann, “Resultate der metereologischen Beobachtungen,” 117, 358–61, 420–3; Döll, Wetter und Klima; Macpherson, “Early Moravian Interest in Northern Labrador Weather and Climate,” 30–41. Miller, “Quakes in Newfoundland.” Jannasch, “Bericht von Makkovik,” 49–50. See Reichel, Missions-Atlas der Brüder-Unität, 21, and Reichel, “Labrador, Bemerkungen über Land und Leute,” 121–7. According to Peacock (interview), this process occurred dozens of times between as late as 1940 to 1957. “Map of Esquimaux Bay, by the Moravians.” F.W. Peacock interview. Copy in the Unitäts-Archiv, Herrnhut, Germany. See copy in the Centre for Newfoundland Studies, St John’s. Whiteley, “Miertsching, Johann August,” 513. Jannasch, Herrnhuter Miniaturen, 111–28. Jannasch, Unter Hottentoten, 120. “Brief Account of the Vessels,” 75–83; Wilson, With the Harmony to Labrador. For example, in the report by Reichel’s visitation in Labrador, published in Missions-Blatt aus der Brüdergemeine 26, no. 2 (1862): 51. Jenness, Eskimo Administration, 18, 30ff.

314

Notes to pages 58–63

84 Müller, 200 Jahre Brüdermission, 157ff.; Hiller, “The Foundation and Early Years,” 82, 112–17. 85 Schulze, Abriß, 107. 86 Ibid., 215. 87 Hutton, A History of the Moravian Missions, 30–1. 88 Borlase, Labrador Studies, 212. 89 Rompkey, Grenfell of Labrador, 248, comments on the reasons why the Moravians, with their much older and more encompassing missionary work, became victims of the “grand drama Grenfell had created in the public mind.” “Many of Grenfell’s visits to our stations,” Rompkey quotes the Moravian superintendent in 1930, “have not been mission trips at all, but advertisement, and collecting of material for advertisement. In his lectures and reports Dr. Grenfell has been in the habit of intentionally avoiding mentioning the existence of the Moravians on the coast.” 90 See Axtell, “Preachers, Priests, and Pagans.” 91 Paine, The White Arctic. 92 Brice-Bennett, “Two Opinions”; Evening Telegram (St John’s), 11 May, 1991, headline: “Archaeologist suggests Moravians in Labrador suppressed Inuit culture.” 93 This is seen as the consequence of introducing Inuit to harvest certain resources (codfish, seal skins, furs, etc.) that had a European market value. See, e.g., Ben-Dor, Makkovik, 28–52. For an analysis of the historical context, see Hiller, “The Foundation and Early Years,” 157ff. 94 Brody, The People’s Land, 32–3. 95 Brice-Bennett, “Missionaries as Traders,” 223–46. 96 Scheffel, “The Demographic Consequences”; Kleivan, “The Eskimos of Northeast Labrador,” 146–53. 97 Jenness, Eskimo Administration, 40. 98 Kennedy, “Northern Labrador,” 265. 99 Pilot, A Visit to Labrador, 10. 100 Warneck, “Missionsrundschau,” 275. 101 Peacock, “The Moravian Missions in Labrador,” 51.

chapter three 1 2 3 4

Newfoundland, House of Assembly, Journal, 1835, appendix, 154. pro, fo 33–32 to 87. Kellenbenz, “Données statistiques,” 250. Hauptstaatsarchiv Hamburg, Bestand 314–1, cg2, vol.1ff.; Archiv der Zolljacht, Hamburg, Bestand 373/2, va 1b vol.1ff.

Notes to pages 63–5

315

5 No information is available about the the origin of these Newfoundland place names. The Anglican baptismal register of Lamaline mentions Point Dantzic in 1858. Little Dantzic is referred to (for the first time?) in the Newfoundlander, 4 and 18 February 1879. The name of the nearby town of Garnish, according to a writer in the St John’s Evening Telegram of 24 December 1988, is alleged to have been derived from the German expression gar nichts, meaning “not a thing.” 6 Letter from Rita King, Halifax, 24 April 1989. She traced her maiden name of Crews to a great-grandfather, Robert Cruse, who lived in Great St Lawrence, and thence to the Lamaline area. Robert Cruse married Jane Short, daughter of Joseph and Ann Short, planter of Lamaline. According to the Grand Bank Methodist records, a daughter named Jane was born to them. The daughter moved in the 1850s to Nova Scotia, where in the census from 1861 to 1891 (she died in 1895) she continued to be listed as being of German origin. 7 Krawehl, Hamburg’s Schiff- und Warenverkehr, 66; Innis, The Cod Fisheries, 309ff. 8 panl, ms 2372, Cochrane Papers, pp. 120–1. 9 Newfoundland, House of Assembly, Journal, 1857, appendix, 428–32; 1858, appendix, 460–62. 10 The increase in the arrival of German-owned vessels is documented in the St John’s Public Ledger and General Advertiser of 30 July 1852: Vessels belonging to Germany Denmark Prussia

in out in out in out

1849

1850

1851

1 1 1 1 0 0

3 3 1 1 0 0

3 4 4 2 5 5

11 Krawehl, Hamburg’s Schiff- und Warenverkehr, 434. Prowse, History (1895), 454, states that in 1850 German and Danish vessels took 200,000 tons of oil and 6,430 sealskins. “The trade with Hamburg in oil continued for many years; Munn sent as much as 500 tons of pale seal oil in a year to Hamburg, the greatest factory of adulterated goods in the world, there to be converted by German science and dexterity into the finest quality of ‘Pure Codliver Oil.’” 12 See Kellenbenz, “Données statistiques,” 255, for statistics based on data derived from Newfoundland newspapers. 13 Newfoundland, House of Assembly, Journal, 1858, appendix, 460. Krawehl,

316

Notes to pages 67–9

Hamburg’s Schiff- und Warenverkehr, 171, presents Hamburg statistics which suggest that the Hamburg-Newfoundland connection for the most part actually followed a quadrangular pattern of trade relations, with Britain as a stopover. Most of the vessels involved in the provisions trade sailed from Hamburg to Newfoundland via England and returned from overseas to Hamburg via England. Only a few of the ships took their cargo from Newfoundland directly to Hamburg. 1832

1833

1834

1835

1836

1837

1838

13 20

10 53

7 59

16 63

20 56

25 82

23 94

English vessels clearing Hamburg and Altona for Newfoundland from overseas or southern Europe England

14 Krawehl, Hamburg’s Schiff- und Warenverkehr, 432f; Public Ledger, 29 March and 1 April 1864. 15 O’Neill, A Seaport Legacy, 853; Smallwood, The Book of Newfoundland, 4:549. 16 Newfoundland, Legislative Council, Proceedings, 1830, 55. 17 Newfoundland, House of Assembly, Journal, 1858, appendix, 460. 18 pro, co 194/76, 195/17, Germans in St. John’s; panl, Cochrane Papers, ms 2364, p. 329; ms 2371, pp. 288–9. 19 Public Ledger, 6 November and 11 December 1827, 1 August and 21 November 1828. Oehlschlager appears to have become a professor in Philadelphia, where he taught German, French, and physics at a Jesuit college. He was considered a top-rate physics and mathematics professor, highly regarded by faculty and student body, according to Wallace Furlong (interview, 8 December 1987). 20 Newfoundlander, 3 July 1857, 24 February 1859, 13 March 1864; Maritime History Archive, Memorial University; Keith Matthews, name file; Newfoundland, House of Assembly, Journal, 1859, appendix, 455; Public Ledger, 3 July 1857. 21 Newfoundlander, 31 March 1864. 22 Keith Matthews interview. In his 1980 biographical sketch “McBride Family of the Firm of Kerr and McBride” (in cns, “Profiles of Water Street Merchants”), Matthews seems to confuse Robert Ehlers, ship-broker in Bristol, with Gustav Ehlers, and he seems to be in error when he asserts that Robert Ehlers married the daughter of Charles Fox Bennet, instead of Thomas Bennet.

Notes to pages 69–73

317

23 Public Ledger, 8 July 1834, 9 July 1841, 23 July 1855, 23 July 1861. Morning Post, 8 and 18 November 1851. Newfoundlander, 26 May and 18 June 1868. 24 Thereafter he was employed in the telegraph business at St Pierre, but was “anxious” to end his days in Newfoundland. James G. Hagen was married to Elizabeth, daughter of Clement Benning, once mha for Burin; see Observer’s Weekly, 15 August 1939. 25 Newfoundlander, 27 June 1879. The Daily News of 3 December 1914 reported the death of Elizabeth Matilda Fischer, wife of the late Carl Fischer, aged sixty-eight. 26 Information supplied by Melvin Baker, St John’s, 8 December 1987. 27 Daily News (?), 25 November 1864; Public Ledger, 26 June 1855, 20 August 1861; Newfoundlander, 12 November 1863. 28 Public Ledger, 5 July and 7 October 1836. Beyer was married. The Patriot of 3 December 1835 mentions his youngest daughter, Maria Elizabeth Jane Beyer, and the Royal Gazette of 21 June 1838 announces the marriage of his daughter Susanna Antoinette to John Leitch of Greenoch. 29 Public Ledger, 11 June 1844. 30 Morning Post and Shipping Gazette, 2 October 1851; Public Ledger, 31 May and 29 October 1850, 1 July 1851, 5 and 12 May 1854. The Newfoundlander of 7 July and 25 August 1882 reported the arrival from and departure for Halifax of a Mrs and Miss Muhlenbruck (Muhlenburg). 31 Daily News, 3 March 1915. 32 Public Ledger, 6 and 23 September 1842, 19 May and 6 October 1843, 1 May 1849, 16 and 23 July 1850; Telegram, 29 November 1854. 33 Morning Post, 18, 20, 21, 25, and 27 December 1851. 34 The Newfoundland Directory for 1871, for example, lists John and William Grubert, shoemakers in Harbour Grace, and George Weber, tailor in St John’s, plus several coopers of German origin. Masons from Germany finished the three-storey mansion of the merchant brothers Giovannini in St Lawrence in 1865; see Evening Telegram, 14 August 1994. 35 Moyles, “Complaints is many,” 2, 21. 36 Newfoundlander, 10 May 1867. 37 Herald (St John’s), 1 July 1893. I am grateful to Melvin Baker for this reference. 38 Newfoundlander, 3 February 1858. 39 Thanks to Hans Rollmann for informing me of the incorrect initials of Schmidt in Howley, Ecclesiastical History, 348. 40 Hans Rollmann, “A Bell for Petty Harbour,” Telegram, 24 July 2005. 41 pro, co, 195/20, 21, Stanley to Sir John Harvey, 7 June 1844; Grey to Sir John Le Marchant, 11 May 1850.

318

Notes to pages 73–81

42 Based on data collected by Günter K. Sann, honorary consul of the Federal Republic of Germany in St John’s, 18 December 1978. 43 Newfoundlander, 1 and 5 April 1858. 44 panl, gn 1/3/a, 1868–70, file 4/1870. 45 Mott, Newfoundland Men, 153. 46 Robert S. Furlong interview. 47 zs, 09.01/53149. Jahresberichte. 48 panl, gn 1/10/0, 1917, War Files, E. Morris to W. Davidson, 23 March 1917. 49 panl, gn 1/1/17, 1913, W.E. Davidson to L. Harcourt, 5 May 1912. 50 panl, gn 1/10/0, 1917, War Files, Morris to Davidson, 23 March 1917. Note: the one-million-tons export figure does not square with official customs returns and data compiled by the Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation, which indicate much lower figures. 51 Evening Telegram, 21 December 1892. 52 Baker et al., Illustrated History, 58, 78–9. 53 Langenfelder (J.M. Voith archivist) interview. 54 Haering, “Johann Matthäus Voith,” 307–10. 55 Harold Priddle interview. “Oldest Plant on Avalon Peninsula,” 2; Appleby et al., “The History of the Victoria Power,” 109, 141, 143, illus. 31, 32, 35. 56 Gelpke, “Die Turbinen.” 57 I am grateful to my colleague Chesley Sanger for drawing my attention to the significance of Rissmüller and sharing his excerpts from the Evening Herald with me. 58 Goddard, “The Rissmüller Factor,” 133–9. 59 Tønnessen and Johnsen, The History of Modern Whaling, 105. 60 Goddard, “The Rissmüller Factor,” 139ff. 61 Browne, Where the Fishers Go, 168–9. 62 Evening Herald, 8 April 1903. 63 Webb, On the Northwest, 158. 64 Newfoundland, Marine and Fisheries, Annual Report for 1904, as quoted in Goddard, “The Rissmüller Factor,” 154. 65 Millais, Newfoundland, 184–5. Thanks to William Kirwin, who drew my attention to this work. 66 Colonist, 16 March, 1906, as quoted in Webb, On the Northwest, 157. 67 Webb, On the Northwest, 232. 68 Seeck, “Rohe Barbaren,” 67ff. 69 Taylor, “An Eskimo Abroad,” 38–43. See also Borlase, Labrador Studies, 160–5. 70 Magdeburger Zeitung, 21 October 1880. 71 Jacobsen, Beiträge.

Notes to pages 81–7 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

83

84 85 86 87 88

89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96

319

Virchow, “Eskimos von Labrador,” 253–74. Schneider, Prinz Pamiok. Bechler, Zur Schau gestellt. Them Days 12:1 (1986): 8. panl, gn 1/1/7, 1907 (25/2/4); gn 1/1/7, 1909 (25/2/6); gn 1/1/7, 1910 (25/3/1); gn 1/3/a, 1907, files 34–49, no. 48. Seeck, “Rohe Barbaren,” 75. panl, gn 1/1/17, 1910 (25/3/1), Governor Ralph Williams to Colonial Secretary, 19 December 1910. panl, gn 1/3/a, 1911, Des. no. 16. Newfoundland, House of Assembly, Journal, 1880, 355–8. Bourquin, Grammatik. Jannasch, Unter Hottentotten, 65, notes that as a teacher at the Moravian college in Niesky, Germany, Bourquin had supported the Turnbewegung (i.e., the promotion of gymnastics as a means of developing national consciousness) initiated by the famous “Turnvater” Friedrich Ludwig Jahn in early nineteenth-century Germany. This incident is documented on the photocopied pages 38 and 39 of an old German-language book dealing with Moravians. The pages cited are in the possession of Günter K. Sann, St John’s. The book’s front section is missing and the author is not identifiable. panl, gn 1/1/7, 1907, Wm MacGregor to the Earl of Elgin, 17 August 1907. Evening Telegram, 6 August 1907. uah, r.15.k.b.18., Martin to LaTrobe, 27 August 1907. Ibid., Perrett to LaTrobe, 29 August 1907. Jannasch, Unter Hottentotten, 75–6. Koch, “Die Küste Labradors,” 151–63. Neumayer, Die internationale Polarforschung, contains two contributions by Koch, one analyzing his polar light observations at Nain: “Die Polarlicht-Beobachtungen auf den Stationen Nain und Kingua-Fjord,” 210–34. Uebe, Labrador; Hann, “Resultate,” 117, 358–61, 420–3. Hantzsch, “Beiträge”; “Unsere Labrador-Mission,” 87. uah, r.15.k.b.18. Perrett to LaTrobe, 29 August 1907; Israel, “Bernhard Adolf Hantzsch,” 37–43. “Verzeichniß,” 97–102. See also the publications by Koch, Hantzsch, and Uebe. Uhlig, “Untersuchung,” 230–6. Evening Herald (St John’s), 17 November 1906. panl, gn 1/1/7, 1908, file 25/2/5. panl, gn 1/3 a, no. 19–36d, 1911.

320

Notes to pages 90–8

chapter four 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24

Gazette (Montreal), 31 January 1876. Stephens, “Water-Wheels of St. Croix,” 17–19. Evening Telegram, 24 November 1881. Martin, Once upon a Mine, 18–19. Gazette (Montreal), 7 January 1876. The correspondent appears to have been Moses Harvey. Royal Gazette, 24 June 1879. Martin, Once upon a Mine, 18. Morning Chronicle, 20 December 1877; Harvey, Across Newfoundland, 83. Morning Chronicle, 17 March and 20 December, 1877. Harbour Grace Standard, 20 April 1878; Harvey, Across Newfoundland, 85. panl, gn 1/3/a, 1877, file 3, “A Magistrate for Betts Cove.” Morning Chronicle, 20 April and 9 June 1878; Notes from the log of hms Foam 1883 coastal tour, Bobbie Robertson Files, Newfoundland Historical Society. Harvey, Across Newfoundland, 76ff; Morning Chronicle, 17 March 1877. Newfoundlander, 9 June 1876; Times, 24 May 1876; North Star, 20 May 1876. panl, gn 1/3 a, 1877, file 21/1877, “Railway.” panl, gn 1/3/a, 1878, file 34/1878. When construction of the Newfoundland railway finally began in 1881, official plans projected a line from St John’s terminating at Halls Bay. However, the line that was actually completed in 1897 terminated in Port aux Basques, passing along a route some thirty miles south of Halls Bay. Harvey, Across Newfoundland, 91–4; Martin, Once upon a Mine, 21–2. Stockwood, “Railway Rogues and Minerals”; Martin, Once upon a Mine, 21–2; Hiller, “The Railway and Local Politics,” 130. Martin, Once upon a Mine, 37. Newfoundlander, 17 December 1880. Sarah, a distant relative of George M. Story, was seventeen when she married, had four children, and returned with her husband to Germany before World War i (G.M. Story, letter to author, 21 December 1989). Wallace Furlong interview. Evening Herald, 25 October and 26 November 1907. Ibid., 5 August 1897. Gertrude Crosbie interview. Wallace Furlong interview; Penney, “The Newfoundland Railway,” 478. The Newfoundlander of 1 April 1884 reported R. Stein returning from Halifax. Daily News, 27 January 1896, 5 August 1897, 7 February 1900, 26 May

Notes to pages 98–102

25 26 27 28 29

30

31 32

33

34 35

36 37

38 39

321

1902; Evening Telegram, 3 April 1894, 16 July 1914; Evening Herald, 23 July 1895; Mark Stein interview. Daily News, 19 September 1894, 11 January and 19 September 1896, 27 January and 22 September 1897; Evening Telegram, 20 September 1892. Daily News, 12 February and 29 September 1896, 9 February 1897, 14 September 1898; Evening Telegram, 16 July 1914. Daily News, 4 August 1896. Interviews with Robert Furlong, Shane O’Dea, Eric Rankin, and Wallace Furlong; Daily News, 13 August and 18 September, 1896. Mail and Advocate (St John’s), 12 September 1914; Shirley Stein interview; Evening Telegram, 16 July 1914. Of Robert von Stein’s seven children, only descendants of his three oldest sons’ children, who were all born before 1914 in Newfoundland, still live on the island. Eric Rankin (born 1895) interview. According to Rankin, Brehm definitely had no Scottish accent, and it is very doubtful that he was born in Scotland, as a promotional folder by the Murray’s Pond Fishing and Country Club contends. Also Ferd Hayward interview. Günter Sann interview. Roger Crosbie interview. Newfoundlander, 16 May 1879; Daily News, 26 May 1898. Bursell, “Motor Cycling in Newfoundland,” 24; McNeilly, “Game and Game Fish Protection in Newfoundland,” 5–6; Baker, “The Development of the Office of a Permanent Medical Health Officer,” 102–3. Murray’s Pond Fishing and Country Club, 1; Murray, “The Atlantic Salmon of Newfoundland,” 348; “The History and Biology of the Rainbow Trout,” 1. Joy, “The Growth and Development of Trades and Manufacturing,” 115, 123. Coopering used to be done on piecework terms. The more barrels a cooper made, the more he was paid at the end of the month. The local cooper received no training except by watching other coopers and learning by doing. See Horvath, “The Newfoundland Cooper Trade,” 2–3, 43–4. Newfoundlander, 23 March 1875. I am grateful to George Horvath (in an interview) for information about Henry Bendel and the Grimms and to Harold Pretty, Ottawa, for information about Otto Kruger. According to William Parson of Carbonear (interview), cooper Otto Grimm “married a Davis girl and worked for Murray and Crawford in Carbonear.” His brother Hans Grimm appears to have come to Newfoundland as a specialist in rendering whale oil. He remained single. panl, gn 1/10/0, 1914, War Papers 1917. Based on the Labrador diary of Henry Homfeld and family documents in the

322

Notes to pages 102–11

possession of Max F. Homfeld, St Michaels, Maryland, usa. 40 panl, gn, p7/a/11, John Rorke & Company, Carbonear, Rorke Ledgers 1875, 1876, 1877, 1878. I am grateful to George Horvath, Mount Pearl, for directing me to this source. 41 Quotations from Homfeld, The Homfeld Family, 34–5. 42 Vera Staubitzer interview; Carol Chaplin (née Baer) interview. 43 Frank Rickert (son of James Rickert) interview; Augusta Mercer (daughter of James Rickert) interview. 44 George Ingerman (1874–1915), Peter Hubert Kercher (1904–15), William Markward (1914), T. Musfeldt (1895), Charles Nelson (1893–1917), John H. Nelson (1903–16), Hans Plieninger (1914–15), and H. Schmidt (1898). 45 Evening Herald, 31 May 1907. 46 Ibid., 5 September 1892. 47 Evening Telegram, 29 May 1954. 48 Daily News, 12 March 1896 and 4 January 1897. 49 Ibid., 7 December 1903. 50 panl, gn 2/5, file 226-b. 51 Kahn, Listen While I Tell You, 21; panl, gn 13/2/a, box 413, files “Aliens No. 1” and “Aliens No. 2.” 52. Information supplied by Anne Marie Power, daughter of Adele and Francis White, and Adele Sharpe, née Power, 20 December 1993. The local anglophone priest baptized Anne Marie’s francophone father Francis White, although his siblings retained the parental surname of LeBlanc. Since Adele did not know French, she and Francis communicated in English with German and French accents, as Anne Marie remembers. 53 Martin, Leonard Albert Miller, 22. 54 Daily News, 17 May 1897. 55 Ibid., 25 October 1940. 56 Joseph R. Smallwood interview. 57 Daily News, 1, 12 and 17 December 1898; 12 and 13 January, 16 May, 6 November 1899; 20 January and 24 May 1900. 58 Graham, We Love Thee Newfoundland, 266. 59 Ibid., 131; Daily News, 8 August 1902, 10 November 1903. 60 Daily News, 2 November 1901. 61 Graham, We Love Thee Newfoundland, 134. 62 Ibid., 166; Bond, “How Newfoundland Got Their Ode,” 442–4. 63 Evening Herald, 14 December 1905, 20 March and 24 September 1906. 64 Evening Telegram, 27 August; Observer’s Weekly, 24 March 1936. 65 Evening Herald, 30 and 31 July 1907. 66 Evening Herald, 18 September 1908 and 13 December 1909.

Notes to pages 111–18

323

67 Evening Telegram, 31 July and 3 October 1907, 14 June 1909. In June 1905 there were three and in September 1909 nine cars in Newfoundland; see Evening Telegram, 5 June 1905 and 27 September 1909. 68 Evening Telegram, 25 September 1909 and 21 February 1912. 69 Evening Herald, 18 September 1908. 70 Ibid., 18 September 1908. 71 Ibid., 15 January and 13 December 1909, 30 January 1911 72 Ferd Hayward interview. Bunt and Johnson, “Boxing and Wrestling,” 155–6; Evening Telegram, 17 January 1913. 73 Evening Herald, 6 March 1906. 74 Andrieux, Marine Disasters, 33ff. 75 Newfoundlander, 10 December(?) 1882; Daily News, 20 April 1900 and 17 June 1901; Evening Telegram, 27 September 1893. 76 Newfoundlander, 10 and 13 October 1882. 77 panl, gn 1/3/a, 1883, file 31. 78 Ibid., D.W. Fowke to E.D. Shea, 19 November 1883. Daily News, 28 June 1899. 79 Ibid., 1905, File 4. 80 Carter, “The Passion Play of Ober-Ammergau,”13–15; panl, gn 2/27, Passports 1903–15. 81 Telegram (St John’s), 8 August 2005. 82 Daily News, 6 February 1908. 83 Kerr, “The American Brewing Industry,” 176–7. 84 Denison, The Barley and the Stream, 259–60; Wilson, “The Changing Taste for Beer,” 102–3. 85 Evidence as to a Revision of Tariff, evidence of J. Lindberg. 86 Evening Telegram, 10 September 1988. 87 panl, gn 1/3/a, 1891, Memo dated 26 May 1891; Newfoundlander, 26 July 1872, 10, 17 and 20 April and 1 May 1883; Daily News, 16 April 1896. See also the Directory for the Towns of St. John’s, Harbor Grace and Carbonear, Newfoundland for 1885–86 and McAlpine’s Newfoundland Directories of 1894–95, 1904, and 1908. 88 O’Neill, The Oldest City, 149; Evening Telegram, 3 September 1988. 89 panl, gn 1/3/a, 1903, file 36. 90 Evening Herald, 1, 3 August 1903. 91 Evening Herald, 3, 4, 6, 10, 14 August 1903. 92 Evening Herald, 5, 9, 10, 12 August 1907. 93 panl, gn 1/1/7, 1907, Wm MacGregor to the Earl of Elgin, 17 August 1907; Evening Telegram, 6 August 1907. 94 Evening Herald, 27 August 1907.

324

Notes to pages 119–30

95 Daily News, 20 June 1895. 96 On 1 July 1907 the Evening Herald referred to Polish migrants on Bell Island as “troublesome Europeans and a class who create discord ... wherever they go.” 97 See Bassler, Sanctuary Denied, 51–69. 98 Daily News, 27 September 1895. 99 Prowse, History (1971), 454. 100 Kennedy, The Rise of Anglo-German Antagonism, 56–7. 101 Daily News, 27 September 1895. 102 Evening Herald, 1 May 1907. 103 Tocque, Newfoundland, 86.

chapter five 1 “Die Robbenschlägerei in Labrador,” Ausland (1861), 1171–2. 2 Verkruzen, Mollusca Dredged; Verkrüzen, “Zur Fauna von Neu-Schotland (Nova Scotia) und Neufundland.” Before coming to Newfoundland, Verkrüzen had combined dredging mollusks with sightseeing in Norway and Iceland, as reported in Verkrüzen, Norwegen, seine Fjorde und Naturwunder, and Verkrüzen, Reise nach Island im Jahre 1872. 3 Verkrüzen, “Bericht über meinen Besuch der grossen Bank von Neufundland im Sommer 1880”; and “Bericht über die Neufundlandbank-Fischerei im Sommer 1880.” 4 Verkrüzen, “Der Robbenfang Neufundland’s,” 102–5. 5 Hesse-Wartegg, Kanada und Neu-Fundland, 206–15. 6 Gelcich, “Der Fischfang der Gascogner.” 7 Verkrüzen, “Bemerkungen über Neufundland,” 95–6. 8 Klittke, “Die Beothuk-Indianer.” 9 Verkrüzen, “Bemerkungen über Neufundland,” 95–6. 10 Hesse-Wartegg, Kanada und Neu-Fundland, 46. 11 Ibid., 197–206. 12 Deckert, Nordamerika, 259–61; Oppel, Landeskunde, 73–9. Although both noted Newfoundland’s economic diversification in the preceding twenty-five years, they differed in other respects. Deckert emphasized the economic potential of the island and was confident of its prospects in view of developments in sheep-raising, agriculture, copper and iron ore mining, lumbering, and the processing of wood for furniture. Newfoundland’s deep coastal indentations and its numerous inland waters, he believed, facilitated access to the interior. Oppel, on the other hand, stressed the historical importance of the fishery and the unexplored condition of many parts of the interior. According to him,

Notes to pages 131–7

13 14 15 16 17 18

19

20

21

22

23

325

“the entire northeast and a stretch along the south coast have not even been penetrated by hunters. Dewitz, An der Küste Labrador’s, 19. Jannasch, Unter Hottentotten, 91–2, 114. Dewitz, An der Küste Labrador’s, 16–24. Ibid., 16–24. See also Schulze, Abri einer Geschichte der Brüdermission, 219, and “Labrador,” in Missionsblatt der Brüdergemeinde 6 (1869): 11. Niedieck, Mit der Büchse in fünf Weltteilen; With Rifle in Five Continents. When their hunting time expired on 20 October, the guide assured Niedieck and his friend that the government would allow a three-day extension for hunters who had not reached their licence limit. Niedieck blamed his faulty 500–Express rifle for his earlier failures and now used a new 375–Express rifle, 9½ mm. calibre, killing two more animals on the last day. Next time, he resolved, he would come later in the season to avoid the warm weather and the flies, and would hunt the animals in the south where they spent the winter. For example, Kölbing, Die Missionen der evangelischen Brüder. Reichel, “Labrador, Bemerkungen über Land und Leute,” 121–7; Reichel, “Bericht von Bruder Levin Theodor Reichels Visitationsreise”; Römer, Die Missionen der Brüder-Unität. Koch, “Die Küste Labradors und ihre Bewohner,” 151–63. Neumayer, Die internationale Polarforschung 1882–1883, contains two contributions by Koch. Uebe, Labrador, devoted roughly equal space to the history of Labrador’s discovery, its topography, climate, and population. He argued that the “Indian” custom of hunting yearround had decimated Labrador’s wildlife to a point of endangering the future of these tribes themselves. Unlike the “work-shy” Indians, the Inuit would be “suitable labour material for a rationalized coastal fishery in the future.” The 3,500 white settlers, he concluded, owed their survival in the harsh environment of Labrador mainly to the medical service, vehicles, and tools made available by Dr Wilfred Grenfell. Döll, Wetter und Klima; [Baumbach], Meteorologische Beobachtungen. See also Scherhag, “Die aerologischen Entwicklungsbedingungen einer LabradorSturmzyklone,” 90–2. In 1925 Paul Hettasch had agreed to resume the collection of weather reports in two years’ time from the Moravian mission stations for the German marine observatory in Hamburg. He even visited the Hamburg observatory in 1932 to receive instruments and instructions on how to set up the collection of additional meteorological data at Makkovik. During his two-year absence at Hamburg and Makkovik, Hettasch’s daughter Katie gathered the data at

326

Notes to pages 137–41

Nain. In addition to the standard data, Hettasch started gathering information about visibility, fog, and so-called recurring ash rains, identified as dust carried by strong western winds from industrial centres in eastern Canada. Measuring snowfall turned out to be especially challenging because of frequent blowing snow and drifts. A more detailed analysis of the 1933 ash storm described by Hettasch can be found in the 1937 publication by Döll. For his selfless cooperation, it was noted, Hettasch was awarded the observatory’s bronze medal in 1933. Baumbach wished the valuable meteorological measurements in Labrador would continue and be sent directly by wireless transmission to Hamburg. 24 Uebe, Labrador, 91–2.

chapter six 1 Studies dealing with the administration of the war effort and the patriotic commitment of Newfoundlanders to the Allied cause include Nicholson, The Fighting Newfoundlander; O’Brien, “The Newfoundland Patriotic Association”; and McDonald, “To Each His Own.” None of these studies touch on the treatment of residents of non-British origin. 2 The People’s Party of Sir Edward Patrick Morris, in power since 1909, was, to quote McDonald,“To Each His Own,” 49, “a coalition of individuals and interest groups whose chief aim was ‘to combine their own personal interest with a parade of national devotion.’” 3 Since his appointment in 1912, Davidson had acquired a reputation as a paternalistic, authoritarian governor. By July 1916 his imposition on the political scene had become so unpopular that the newly formed national coalition government of August 1917 relieved him of his extra-constitutional powers and created a Department of Militia headed by a cabinet minister. Davidson resigned as governor in December 1917. See Noel, Politics in Newfoundland, 122; McDonald,“To Each His Own,” 48ff. 4 O’Brien, “The Newfoundland Patriotic Association,”23; Noel, Politics in Newfoundland, 121. 5 Davidson was apparently determined, “if the Dresden threatens retaliation, to announce that in the event of its opening fire on the town and arresting or executing the Governor and leading people as prisoners or hostages, the people are armed and will exact the fullest retribution on the whole crew” (pro, co 616/1, Davidson to Harcourt, 8 August 1914). 6 Newfoundland, General Assembly, Acts, 1914, 7–9. 7 United Towns Electric Company Newsletter, 2; Daily News, 6 October 1914;

Notes to pages 142–6

8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26

327

Appleby et al., “The History of the Victoria Power Station,” 109, 141, 143, appendix 35; J.M. Voith G.m.b.H. archivist Langenfelder. Daily News, 21 and 22 October 1914; Mail and Advocate, 22 October 1914. panl, gn 1/10/0, War Files 1914, Davidson to Harcourt, 31 December 1914. Medical Health Officer R.A. Brehm pointed out that the estimated 3,100 calories of the St John’s Penitentiary diet compared favourably with the 3,000 calories fed pows in England. The food supplied to “hard labour” prisoners in the Penitentiary was only inferior from the point of view of variety and its marked deficiency in fat. For the diet of a “healthy man doing moderately hard work,” Brehm argued, 3,000 to 3,300 calories were sufficient (panl, gn 1/10/0, War Files 1916, Bennett to Davidson, 25 September 1916). panl, gn 1/10/0, War Files 1915, Supt. H.M.P. A.A. Parsons to R.A. Squires, 9 June 1915; gn 2/1/a, vol. 135, no. 32. panl, gn 1/10/0, War Files 1915, Magistrate’s Office, Bay of Islands to Hon. R.A. Squires, 12 June 1915. As quoted in Dooley, “The War and the Wall.” See reproduction and interpretation of Otto Rasch’s letter ibid. panl, gn 1/10/0, War Files 1915, Magistrate’s Office, Bay of Islands to Hon. R.A. Squires, 12 June 1915. French, “Spy Fever in Britain”; Panayi, “The Imperial War Museum,” 352. Mail and Advocate (St John’s), 10 December 1914; Daily News, 16 December 1914, 7 and 8 January 1915; Evening Telegram, 6 January 1915. Noel, Politics in Newfoundland, 122, poignantly summarized the World War i battlefield experience of Newfoundlanders: “Time after time the Newfoundland troops were committed to futile and suicidal attacks by the English staff officers, who seemed determined to prove that their men were indeed ‘lions led by donkeys.’” I am indebted to Patrick O’Flaherty for identifying this column. panl, gn 1/10/0, War Files, 1914. The files of records and correspondence of the governor’s office constitute the chief source for the following information and quotations, unless indicated otherwise. Ibid., Davidson to Harcourt, 31 December 1914. See, e.g., the pre-World War i experience of Rockwell Kent as relayed in his autobiographical account After Long Years, 8. Evening Telegram, 16 July 1914. panl, gn 13, box 39, file 16. 24. At the end of the war his services as translator became useful to the Department of Justice. Daily News, 2 October 1914. In the eyes of the government, Warschauer’s main offence seems to have been

328

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Notes to pages 146–50

something he did not do, rather than something he did. While he continued to receive censored mail from the United States, the authorities wondered with unease why he no longer mailed any letters. “Either he writes no letters or he sends them abroad by private agency,” concluded the governor on 3 July 1915. “In either case he opens himself to the imputation of having something to conceal.” See panl, gn 2/4, box 2, file 2. panl, gn 1/10/0, War Files, 1915, “The Case of Mr. Warschauer,” 8 January 1916. panl, gn 1/1/7, Davidson to Lewis Harcourt, 7 December 1914, and gn 1/10/0. panl, gn 1/3/a, Newfoundland Patrol, 1915; pro, co 194, vol. 290, nos. 216–19. panl, gn 2/14, file 8; gn 1/3/a, 1919, d no. 24. Traxel, An American Saga, 52–3, 82–8. Kent, After Long Years, 8–9; panl, gn 1/3/a, 1914, file 57: “Case of Rockwell Kent.” panl, gn 1/3/a, 1914, file 57: “Case of Rockwell Kent”; Kelly, Rockwell Kent, 33. Kelly, Rockwell Kent, 33; panl, gn 1/10/0, 42/4/5; Mail and Advocate, 31 December 1914. Kent, It’s Me O Lord, 299. Smallwood, “Newfoundland’s Famous ‘German Spy.’” panl, gn 1/3/a, 1914, file 57; gn 1/3/a, Newfoundland Patrol, July–August 1915; gn 1/10/o, War Files, 1915. See Hadley, U-boats against Canada, xii, 3–7; Rössler, The U-boat, 47–87. Candow, “The Defence of Newfoundland, 1870–1918,”120–5. Hazlehurst, Politicians at War, 143–5. panl, gn 1/3/A, Newfoundland Patrol (Defense against Submarines), 1915. panl, gn 1/3/A, file 5, Davidson to Bonar Law, 15 June 1917. Daily News, 19 July 1915; panl, gn 1/3/a, Newfoundland Patrol, July to August 1915. In order to coordinate matters of coastal defence, the executive council in June 1915 formed a Home Defence Committee consisting of the ministers of finance, fisheries, and justice, as well the colonial secretary and occasionally the governor. This committee was also responsible for recommending policy with regard to enemy aliens, taking into account representations from the npa, the Admiralty, Whitehall, and Canada. At the 7 August 1915 meeting of the Home Defence Committee, “special consideration was given to the cases of Messrs. Rusch and Koch, German subjects who had been resident here for more than twenty years. It having been stated that these men were harmless, it was agreed that an exception be made in their cases and

Notes to pages 150–3

44 45 46 47 48 49

50

51 52 53 54

55

329

they be not interned. They are to be, however, under strict surveillance of the police, and, if the Minister of Justice thinks proper, they can be interned at any time.” panl, gn 2/1/a, vol. 135, no. 4. Ibid., no. 568. panl, gn 13, box 184, file 44, Statement of Josephine Feuchtinger, 31 August 1915. panl, p8/b/9, file 5, R.F.C. Meeting, 16 September 1915. panl, gn 1/10/0, War Files, 1915, Davidson to Bonar Law, 7 December 1915. Richard J. Korner, a twenty-four-year-old native of Budapest, came with his wife to Newfoundland in March 1913 to pursue fox ranching, fur trapping and fur trading. Korner believed that he owed his internment to a denunciation by Warschauer. The American consul at Beauport, acting on behalf of enemy subjects, did not consider Korner’s detention in Canada and separation from his wife in Newfoundland justifiable. He was released in May 1916 in order to work for the Minto Coal Company in New Brunswick. He returned to St John’s in 1922 and became naturalized the following year. In 1932 Korner became farmer and gardener on Sir Richard A. Squires’s farm, and in 1940 he was again placed under police surveillance as an “alien.” See panl, gn 13/2/A, box 38, file 90. The twenty-two-year-old Hungarian-born stoker Hans Plieninger, a St John’s resident since early 1914, was married to a British-born Newfoundlander. He was not an army reservist. See panl, gn 1/10/0, War Files, 1914. panl, gn 1/1/7, Government House, St John’s, to Bonar Law, 1 and 16 November 1915. panl, gn 1/10/0, War Files, 1915, Bennett to Davidson, 20 December 1915. panl, gn 2/4, carton 4, file f 12: “Enemy Property and Interests – Nfld, 1914–1918.” panl, gn 1/10/0, War Files, 1915, Governor to Deputy Minister of Justice, 6 August 1915, cites a pertinent example of such a tip: “Mrs. Wakefield also informed me that the attitude of the Eskimo at Hopedale was different from that of previous years. They did not crowd on to the Sagona but remained on shore saying the Germans were strongest on land and the British on sea therefore the Eskimo will stay on land.” The reference to Hudson’s Bay traders is in gn 1/10/0, War Papers, 1916, Abraham to Davidson, 4 December 1916. In a typed letter from the governor to the colonial secretary (panl, gn 1/10/0, War Files 1915), the original version (dated 3 August 1915) referring to the Moravians was crossed out. It read: “I advise that these enemy aliens should be returned to their homes on Labrador by the last direct steamer in October when the submarine menace will be over for the present season. The question

330

56

57

58 59

60 61

62 63 64

65 66 67

Notes to pages 153–8

of their custody next summer will be dealt with at a later date.” It was replaced by the following handwritten insert: “... to be deported to England as enemy aliens by their own ship, the Harmony, on her return voyage shortly to England. I understand that the people supported by the Mission can be looked after by the five or six British subjects who belong to the Mission.” She was the wife of Dr Arthur Wakefield, a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps who served on the hospital staff of the Grenfell Mission in St Anthony and Battle Harbour, Labrador. In 1911 Wakefield organized a levy of 150 Legion of Frontiersmen to serve as scouts and militia along the Labrador coast in the event of war. In the fall of 1914 he and his Frontiersmen joined the Newfoundland Regiment. See Nicholson, The Fighting Newfoundlander, 97–8; Grenfell, A Labrador Doctor, 369; Kerr, Wilfred Grenfell, 200, 203. Evening Telegram, 6 August 1915. Occasionally Davidson expressed doubts as to whether evidence from Labrador about the alleged hostile views of enemy subjects was always “of the best quality.” See panl, gn 1/3/a, Newfoundland Patrol, July to August 1915. panl, gn 13, box 184, file 44. In March 1916 Davidson decided to take no further action on this matter because “the German missionaries have up to the present carried on their Mission duties correctly and with discretion” (panl, gn 1/10/0, War Files, 1916, Governor to Colonial Secretary, 16 March 1916). Ibid., War Files, 1917, Governor to Colonial Secretary, 19 July 1917. Filschke was alleged to have written in a letter: “On the 3rd June King George will be 50 years old. May Zeppelins congratulate him by dropping a few bombs out of the clouds over London.” The accusation could not be verified. See ibid., War Files, 1916, Governor to Colonial Secretary, 26 June 1916. Bechler, Kriegsgefangen in Labrador und London, 3. Ibid., 3. Martin Filschke interview. nac, rg 24 d1, vol. 3967, file 1047–4–54; vol.1, Commander MacDermott to Captain of Patrols, Sydney, 3 November 1917; panl, gn 1/1/7, 1918, Government House to Walter H. Long, 12 August 1918; gn 2/14, carton 4, file F 12, Colonial Secretary to Governor, 9 January 1919. Wilson, With the Harmony to Labrador, 63–4. Ibid., 64; Allen, Who Are the Moravians? 63. Hanson complained to Davidson in 1916 that in his forced return the regular legal procedure had not been followed, that no inclination was shown to recompense him for losses sustained, and that no apology had been forthcoming for all the indignities he had suffered through this unwarranted action. He in

Notes to pages 158–61

68 69 70 71

72 73 74 75

76 77

78 79

80 81 82 83

331

vain demanded “a searching investigation.” See panl, gn 1/10/0, War Files, 1915. It could not be ascertained whether Kellerschon and Peters were deported. See ibid., War Files, 1916–17. panl, gn 2/14, carton 2, file 1. No other incriminating evidence was uncovered about these individuals. panl, gn 1/10/0, War Files 1917, Grant Squires to Davidson, 1 May 1917. The closest German submarines ever appear to have come to Newfoundland during World War i was 120 miles south of Cape Race and 70 miles off St Pierre. They appeared there for the first time on 26 August 1918 and in the following days were reported sinking one coastal boat, three Lunenburg fishing vessels, and one Norwegian steamer with no loss of life. See Evening Telegram, 27, 29 and 30 August 1918. J.R. Smallwood, I Chose Canada, 230. panl, gn 1/3/a, 1918, no. 9 d: “Coast watches for submarine bases in Newfoundland.” Ibid., file 5, Davidson to Bonar Law, 15 June 1917. Larsen strongly protested the unproven accusations of stealing and lying for the enemy when, he claimed, he had only been working in the interest of this country. See panl, gn 2/14, carton 2, file 1. Ibid., C.H. Hutchings to A. Mews, 28 September 1918. panl, gn 1/1/7, 1918, Government House to Walter Long, 13 December 1918. Hannevig’s company was a major source of local employment in 1918 and had given rise to hopes of converting to a steel and iron shipbuilding plant. Its sudden closure in September 1919 came as a shock to the government and the public. See gn 2/5, file 314-c. panl, gn 1/10/0, War Files, 1914 and 1915; pro, co 194, vol. 290, nos. 221–7. For example, the minister of justice noted that Private John H. Nelson, as a member of the Newfoundland Regiment, had been killed on 1 July 1916 when the Department of Justice in July 1917 scrutinized the record of his Hamburg-born father, who had immigrated in 1877 (panl, gn 1/10/0, War Files, 1917). The Daily News, 27 November 1916, reported Fritz Bowman missing since Beaumont Hamel. Conrad Stein, son of Robert von Stein, enlisted in the 3rd Battalion of the Newfoundland Regiment (Daily News, 19 October 1916). Frank Rickert interview. Augusta Mercer interview. panl, gn 13, box 39, file 16. 82. panl, gn 1/3/a, Newfoundland Patrol, July to August 1915.

332

Notes to pages 161–6

84 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 290, file: Sidel, Otto. Koch died on 7 August 1924 in St John’s, aged fifty-three, leaving one daughter in Newfoundland and his mother and brother in Germany. See Evening Telegram, 8 August 1924. I am grateful to Harold A. Pretty, Ottawa, for this reference. 85 Robert S. Furlong interview. 86 cns, J.R. Smallwood Collection, file 3.05.011. 87 For Premier Smallwood’s ceremonial speech of 23 July 1968, which offered an official apology for the wartime deportation of Kent, see Smallwood, Newfoundland Miscellany, 168, 171. 88 This legend is documented in Hogan, Pathways of Mercy, 280ff. I am grateful to my colleague William A. Kearns for drawing my attention to this source. 89 Martin, Once upon a Mine, 12. 90 Fitzgerald, Strange but True Newfoundland Stories, 75–7; Prim and McCarthy, Those in Peril, 44–6.

chapter seven 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Noel, Politics in Newfoundland, 130. Cesarani, “Anti-alienism in England,” 5. Fischer, Enemy Aliens, 301ff. Roberts, Whence They Came, 69. panl, gn 1/3/a, 1921, Des. no. 231. Ibid., 1922, Des. no. 618. Anne Marie Power and Adele Sharpe (née Power) interview. Evening Telegram, 8 November 1930, 22 January and 1 August 1931. I am grateful to Harold A. Pretty, Ottawa, for this information. In his twentieth annual report of 20 January 1931, the president of the Newfoundland Poultry Association, F.R. Clark, stressed that “from its commencement Mr. Rusch has been actively connected with our work and is the only member amongst us with that record. His loyalty and support had always been freely given.” Clark summarized Rusch’s contribution to the development of poultry production in Newfoundland in these words: “During the twenty years you have witnessed many changes in our personel as well as in the progress of our work and ... it is in large measure due to your great example and encouragement that the association has gone on its efforts for the production of standard bred poultry in Newfoundland. We do feel sure that you look back over the years that have gone and then visualize the present you can see the result of your work in the establishment in our midst of two fine plants owned by Messrs. Cohen and Earle, you realize that it was worth while to have kept faith with your great belief that poultry production in Newfoundland was

Notes to pages 166–70

333

both feasible and profitable.” 9 “Neue Zeit in Labrador,” Missionsblatt der Brüdergemeinde 93, no. 2 (February 1929): 33. 10 panl, gn 13, uninventoried, file “Aliens 1916–20.” 11 panl, gn 1/3, no. 1308, Colonial Secretary to Governor Harris, 2 December 1919. 12 panl, gn 1/3/a, 1925, Des. no. 693. 13 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 413, file “Aliens No.1.” 14 Evening Telegram, 1 September 1925, 25 and 29 June and 2, 15, 16 and 19 July 1926. 15 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 39, file 9; box 262, file “Epstein, Edward, Buchans.” 16 panl, gn 13, box 38, files 45 and 46; gn 13/2/a, box 193, file 61. 17 Ibid., box 39, file 9; box 134, file 9. 18 This information came to light in 1948 when the mayor of St John’s published an inquiry from Germany about their whereabouts. See Evening Telegram, 9 February 1948. 19 Evening Telegram, 16 October 1930. I am grateful to Harold Pretty for this reference. Also J.R. O’Dea interview. 20 panl, gn 13, box 38, file 87. 21 Evening Telegram, 17 April 1952. 22 The identity of Eugene Kurber is based on information supplied by Harold Pretty, Ottawa, 29 May 1989. 23 panl, gn 13, box 48, file 7; gn 13/2/a, box 38, file 103; box 193, file 45; box 401, file “Voss, Walter”; R.A. Monnier interview, 10 December 1984. 24 Montreal Gazette, 1 March 1948; Evening Telegram, 18 March 1948. 25 However, insufficient funding and the serious health hazards of the underground operation bedevilled the enterprise, even after the outbreak of war eased the availability of credit and increased the demand for fluorspar. See panl, gn 53/2/A, Applications to enter Newfoundland. Martin, Once upon a Mine, 66ff. 26 Other names not mentioned elsewhere in this and the following two chapters and identified (not always correctly) by the Newfoundland Constabulary as German residents in 1938 include Francis Bienenfield, Benjamin Glick, Benjamin Von Bommell, Peter Dutch, Max Heffer, R.W. Hack, Henry Halpert, Moritz Sulzbacher, and Paul Teichmann (naturalized in 1932). The 1935 census counted thirty-two permanent German-born residents and sixteen German nationals in Newfoundland. The number of Germans visiting Newfoundland in the 1930s, however, was much higher. 27 Directory for the Towns of St. John’s, Harbor Grace and Carbonear, Newfoundland for 1885–86 and McAlpine’s Newfoundland Directory for 1894–95, 1904, and 1908.

334

Notes to pages 170–7

28 Denison, The Barley and the Stream, 259ff.; Wilson, “The Changing Taste for Beer in Victorian Britain,”102ff.; Wilson and Gourvich, The Dynamics, 5. 29 Blue Star was brewmaster Jake Guehring’s award-winning entry at the 1954 international beer-brewing competition in Munich, Germany. This label also won an award at a subsequent world competition in Brussels. The Bavarian Brewing Company’s Red Label and Jockey Club beers also won medals at competitions in Germany. This information was obtained in interviews with Gerry Fagan and Gil Sharpe in 1983. 30 Interviews with Ferd Hayward, Gil Sharpe, and Pat Brownrigg. 31 Alex Feaver interview. The Schneiders boarded with Feaver until the brewery construction was completed. 32 Gil Sharpe interview. 33 Gerry Fagan interview. Gil Sharpe interview. 34 Daily News, 8 May 1933. It is also possible that the Bennett brewery’s decision in 1932 to have brewmaster Scheuermann install a modern brewing system inspired Garrett Brownrigg to have a completely new Germandesigned plant. 35 Gil Sharpe interview. 36 Alex Feaver interview. 37 Interviews with Tobias Macdonald, John R. O’Dea, and Gus Wadden. 38 Gerry Fagan interview. 39 Evening Telegram, 8 and 27 February, 18 and 21 March, 25 and 27 April, 2, 3, and 16 May 1933. 40 panl, gn 2/5/285-a, Correspondence Re: Proposal to Export Newfoundland Dried Fish to Germany, April-May 1919. 41 Ore shipments from Bell Island in gross tons were as follows: Year

Canada

Germany

1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930

556,614 152,700 270,360 418,375 155,895 343,567 416,037 429,268 616,354 681,400 467,784

26,025 148,052 722,106 207,116 806,265 788,443 330,135 845,151 866,953 753,929 661,406

Totals

6,155,581

United Kingdom 6,750 7,500 – 65,475 15,135 – 119,344 – 27,540 5,330 –

USA

Total

– – – 46,340 – – – 61,030 – 74,340 43,771

589,369 308,302 998,465 737,306 977,295 1,132,010 863,716 1,335,429 1,547,085 1,516,999 1,177,961 11,183,935

source: Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation Ltd, Wabana Mines (document in possession of John Pinsent, District Vocational School, Bell Island).

Notes to pages 177–83 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

56 57 58 59

335

Hasenbrink, “Das Eisenerzvorkommen von Wabana (Neufundland),” 553–60. Martin, Once upon a Mine, 58. Evening Telegram, 24 December 1938; Daily News, 9 January 1940. panl, gn 38, s 7–1–1, J.H. Thomas to G.H. Ferguson, 6 November 1934. Evening Telegram, 10 January 1930. Baker, The Illustrated History of Newfoundland Light and Power, 111–2, 190, 200. panl, gn 13, box 1, file 28; gn 13/2/a, box 193, file 28; Robert S. Furlong interview. panl, gn 13, box 1, file 28; gn 13/2/a, box 193, file 28; Nora Good (Gut) interviews 1983 and 1984. St John’s Daily News, 24 February 1930. panl, gn 13/2/a, box 193, file 72; John R. O’Dea interview; Robert S. Furlong interview. Koehl et al., The Three Musketeers, 272–81; Smallwood, Book of Newfoundland, 4: 543; Kanada Kurier, 5 May 1988. Daily News, 25 August 1930. Ibid., 21 May 1932. The Daily News of 6 July 1937 claimed that the airship deliberately flew “so low that everyone was able to get a perfect view of the latest marvel of the air. On previous occasions the ship had passed over other parts of Newfoundland and many people here were hoping that some time they would be privileged to see the ship ... It was indeed a surprise then, when about four o’clock the hum of her engines were heard and, looking up, people in all parts of the city saw the Hindenburg fly so low that her name could be clearly discerned whilst people in some sectors say they saw some of passengers waving handkerchiefs ... There were citizens in the West End who feared that she had crashed into the South Side Hill and several cars rushed to Signal Hill thinking that passing over Cabot Tower she had collided.” The Observer’s Weekly of 7 July 1936 added that “before coming to St. John’s the liner paid a visit to Mount Pearl wireless station. She circled the eastern mast, hovered for a few minutes and dropped well below the top mast, then passed slowly over the buildings. From observation through field glasses passengers could be seen distinctly as well as stewards in their white uniforms and some of the passengers appeared to be taking photographs of the station. Then slowly turning eastward, the ship rapidly disappeared over the hills. Her visit was a memorable one, and it was the talk of the town on Saturday and yesterday.” Daily News, 21 August 1936; Observer’s Weekly, 7 July 1936. panl, gn 1/3/a, 1925, Des. no. 487. Robert S. Furlong interview. Daily News, 20 February 1939.

336

Notes to pages 183–97

60 panl, gn 1/3/a, nos. 201–42, 1934, file 216/34. 61 I am grateful to Kenneth Templeton and Dennis Ryan for providing access to Robert S. Furlong’s consular file in the possession of Mrs Frank Ryan, executor of the Robert S. Furlong estate. 62 panl, gn 1/3/a, 1938, nos. 111–302a, file “Passports – Abolition of Visas, Austria”; gn 1/3/a, box 330, file “Admission of European immigrants to Newfoundland”; gn 38, s1–1–2, Meeting of 13 April 1938. 63 Ibid. 64 panl, gn 13, box 38, file 88. 65 Robert S. Furlong interview. 66 In January 1937 Canada’s German consulate general moved from Montreal to Ottawa. panl, gn 1/3/a, nos. 201–42, 1934, file 216/3,4 and nos. 76–161, 1939, file 116/39; Robert S. Furlong Estate, file “rsf, Miscellaneous, German Consulate.” 67 panl, gn 2/5, file 683, Re: Film “Confessions of a Nazi Spy.”

chapter eight 1 “Ross, Colin”; “Ross, Colin,” nsdap membership file, Berlin Document Centre; Dikigoros, “Colin Ross (1885–1945)”; Baumunk, “Ein Pfadfinder der ‘Geopolitik.’” 2 Ross, Zwischen U.S.A. und dem Pol, 46. 3 Schrepfer, “Ergebnisse geographischer Beobachtungen,” and “Corner Brook.” 4 Professor at the Hochschule für Welthandel in Vienna, Bruno Dietrich published a scholarly sketch of Newfoundland geography in 1933 as part of a handbook on the nature, culture, and economy of North and Central America. Like Ross, he featured the antiquated fishery, lumbering, and mining as the foundations of the island’s economy and viewed agriculture, and with it the food supply, as the “stepchild of Newfoundland.” Only rich mineral resources, he surmised, could infuse new life in the economy. The fate of the Beothuks intrigued him, as it did most other foreign observers. In line with James P. Howley’s findings (1915), Dietrich attributed their disappearance to systematic extermination, “certainly an inglorious page in the history of Newfoundland. See Dietrich, “Neufundland.” 5 Schrepfer, “Ergebnisse,” 400. 6 Ibid., 390–4. 7 Schrepfer, “Corner Brook,” 264. 8 Schrepfer, “Ergebnisse,” 395–6. 9 Ibid., 396–7. 10 Ibid., 409.

Notes to pages 197–202

337

11 Schrepfer, “Neufundland.” 12 According to Schrepfer, John Cabot’s discovery of 1497 had aroused little interest in England until almost a century later, when Sir Humphrey Gilbert annexed it for the English crown. Why, for four centuries, did the slowgrowing population cling to the coast, pursue fishing as its only livelihood, and allow the interior to become an uninhabited wilderness after the “extermination” of the Natives? Schrepfer identified three reasons: the nature of the boreal and in part subarctic interior; the economic mindset of the settlers, who arrived as fishers and continued to cling to this occupation; and the hostility of British policy towards coastal settlement at the coast and interior colonization. 13 Schrepfer, “Neufundland,” 152. 14 Shaw, “Population Distribution in Newfoundland,” 241; Rogers, A Historical Geography of the British Colonies, 192. 15 Schrepfer, “Neufundland,” 164. Schrepfer repeated his conviction that much could be done to raise the standard of living in Newfoundland. The fishermen’s small potato, beet, and cabbage patches indicated possibilities of largerscale farming. The island could be self-sufficient, if not in the cultivation of bread grains, then certainly in the production of meat, eggs, and dairy products. Modernization of the fishery and processing of high-quality fish products could turn Newfoundland into one of the largest fish suppliers of the world. A systematic colonization of the interior could be combined with the development of secondary processing industries to create work and wealth for thousands. Here Britain had a special responsibility and every reason “to create order in its own house” before accusing other nations of colonial incompetence, Schrepfer concluded. In his perspective, “the example of Newfoundland clearly taught that the oldest British colony did not become a model colony.” 16 Lehmann, Kanada und Neufundland, 86–103. 17 The recently launched explorations of the interior, the article continued, did not create a sufficient foundation for the luxury of an indigenous parliamentarianism with an expensive bureaucracy. Britain’s abolition of Newfoundland self-government in 1933 and its replacement by an efficient administration was therefore more likely motivated by the “healthy egoism” of Britain’s national interest than by any sentiments of solidarity or charity. Like Colin Ross and Hans Schrepfer, the writer pointed to Newfoundland’s renewed midAtlantic geopolitical importance at a time of increasing telephone and air communications. Another reason, he added, was Britain’s desire to reappropriate Labrador, with its long, strategically important coastline after Newfoundland had tried to dispose of it and Canada’s designs on it were known.

338

Notes to pages 203–11

18 Begun in 1937, the newly opened “Newfoundland Airport” at Gander was reportedly laid out in a most generous and modern fashion to accommodate the vast expansion anticipated of the transatlantic traffic generated by large passenger planes. With four huge runways built to withstand the drastic variations in climate and with the latest technologies for landing control, weather reporting, and illumination for night landings, this was “the airport of the future.”

chapter nine 1 Belkin, Through Narrow Gates, 183. 2 For example, Smith, “Ansiedlungspläne auf Neufundland,” features Newfoundland as spacious and vastly underpopulated in comparison with Holland and England. Looking for ways to utilize its undeveloped resources, Newfoundland was allegedly interested in recruiting settlers from such countries as Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Settlers from these countries were presumed to have expertise in areas particularly suited to Newfoundland’s plans for economic and financial revitalization. 3 See my book Sanctuary Denied for a more detailed exposition of the history of Newfoundland’s refugee policy. 4 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 227, file “Immigration 1921–1926”; Belkin, Through Narrow Gates, 172ff. 5 Ibid., 183–4. 6 Ibid., 184–5. 7 Observer’s Weekly, 11 May, 14 July, 11 August 1934. 8 Cyril Bankhin interview. Cyril Banikhin is the son of Frank Banikhin. 9 panl, gn 38, s 2–1–12, Memos 1936, F. Banikhin to Sir John Hope Simpson, 5 March 1936. 10 Ibid., Walwyn to MacDonald, 12 March 1936, and Memorandum by Commissioner for Natural Resources, 13 March 1936. 11 pro, do 35/181, 6652/126. 12 panl, gn 38, s2–1–12, file 7. 13 Daily News, 2 March 1939. Observer’s Weekly, 6 March 1939. 14 Observer’s Weekly, 25 April, 9 May, 22 August 1939; Evening Telegram, 29 July 1939; Feingold, The Politics of Rescue, 94ff; Wyman, Paper Walls, 99ff. 15 pro, do 35/706, M 529/91. 16 panl, gn 1/3/A, nos. 5–7, document 9/39. 17 Abella and Troper, None Is Too Many, vi, 237. 18 panl, gn 1/3/a, vol. 134, file 316, H. Walwyn to M. MacDonald, 30 June 1936.

Notes to pages 211–24

339

19 panl, gn 38, s 4–1–5: L.E. Emerson, “Memorandum on Immigration and Deportation,” 11 April 1938. 20 pro, do 35/720, m 651/2 and m 651/5; panl, gn 1/3/a, 1934, nos. 303–23. 21 panl, gn 1/3/a, 1934, E. Machtig to L.E. Emerson, 12 December 1938. 22 panl, gn 1/3/a, 1939, nos. 5–17, 9/39; gn 2/5, file 731. 23 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 413, file “Aliens No. 1”; Evening Telegram, 16 August 1938; Daily News, 16 and 18 August 1938. 24 panl, gn 13, box 38, file 88; Zlatin, “The Administrative History,” 11. 25 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 193, file 69, and box 237, file 40; gn 38, s 1–1–2: Meeting of 23 March 1939; gn 38, s 61–1–2, file 12; Dittman, Appointment to Newfoundland, 15. 26 Evening Telegram, 9 November 1931. 27.Daily News, 10 November 1931. 28 Evening Telegram, 10, 12 , and 13 November 1931. 29 “Why Newfoundland Wants a Stable Germany,” Daily News, 30 January 1931; “Helpful to Wabana,” Daily News, 31 January 1931. 30 “Why the Antipathy to Germany,” Daily News, 10 October 1933. 31 Evening Telegram, 20 April 1933. 32 Daily News and Evening Telegram, 14 July 1939. 33 Daily News, 29 September 1939. 34 Daily News and Evening Telegram, 23 June 1939. 35 Observer’s Weekly, 25 April 1939.

chapter ten 1 For the phenomenon of the fifth-column scare, see Jong, The German Fifth Column. The term “fifth column” originated during the Spanish Civil War and is usually ascribed to the Falangist General Emilio Mola. Asked which of the four columns converging on Madrid he expected to capture the city, he is supposed to have replied “the fifth column,” meaning organized sympathizers within the Spanish capital. During World War ii the “fifth column” became the standard designation for alleged Nazi sympathizers acting as agents and saboteurs for the cause of the Third Reich. 2 Editorial, Evening Telegram, 23 September 1940. The interpretation and application of the Defence Act was left to the discretion of the constabulary and the Commission. The lack of democratic government, the local media noted, left the act with no safeguards against dictatorial abuse. “Parliament and the Governor in Council are one and the same. There could be no recourse from a decision – no matter what it might involve ... An order under the present system of government may emanate from one member of the

340

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4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23

24

25

Notes to pages 225–34

administration. Even to commissioners might be applied the observation that it is human to err,” as the editorial noted. panl, gn p7/b/40, 1937–39; gn 38, s 4–2–4; gn 13, box 48; gn 13/2/a, box 402, file “Re: German Ship ‘Christoph von Doornum’ Held at Botwood”; Evening Telegram, 2 September 1939; Daily News, 27 September 1939. panl, gn 38, s1–1–2, file 838–’39 J.63–’39. Ibid., s4–2–4. Daily News, 6 September 1940; Observer’s Weekly, 10 September 1940. panl, gn 38, s4–2–4. panl, gn 13/2/a, box 48; box 425, file “Internment Camp”; Daily News, 7 September 1939; Evening Telegram, 9 September 1939. panl, gn 13, box 48, file 7; gn 1/3/a, 1938, file 694/38; Gillman, “Collar the Lot!” 39–64. panl, gn 13/2/a, box 413, file “Aliens No. 1.” Evening Telegram, 13 October 1939; Daily News, 13 and 14 October 1939; Observer’s Weekly, 17 October 1939; panl, gn 13, box 48, files no. 7 and “Enquiry – Escape Knabe and Munch.” panl, gn 13, box 48, file “Escape Josting and Munch – Interned Aliens.” panl, gn 13/2/a, box 38, file 87; box 48, file 7. panl, gn 13, box 48, file “Carl Webber.” panl, gn 13/2/a, box 425, file “Weber, Max.” panl, gn 13, box 48, file 7. panl, gn 13/2/a, box 193, file 72; gn 13/2/a, box 448, File “Interned Prisoners.” Ibid. gn 14/1/a, files 294.10/6 to 294.14/3, file 294.10/6. panl, gn 13, box 104, file 32; gn 13, box 48, file 7; gn 13, box 26, file “Misc.”; gn 13/2/a, box 36, file “Regulations for Discipline of Prisoners of War”; nac, rg 33, vol. 41/83, file 381. panl, gn 13, box 48, file 7. Daily News, 7 September 1939; Douglas Eaton and George Snelgrove interviews. Daily News, 11 June 1940. See also O.L. Vardy’s speech “Germany on the Eve of the War,” given at a Rotary luncheon and reported in the Evening Telegram, 29 September 1939, and column by A.S. Eker, “German People Want No War,” in the Evening Telegram, 11 September 1939. panl, gn 13/2/a, box 26, file 4; box 38, file 3; box 48, file 7; box 425, files “Internment Camp, Pleasantville (Misc. Matters)” and “Internment Camp, Pleasantville (Requisitions, requests from prisoners, etc.).” Ibid., box 425, files cited and file “Internment Camp, Pleasantville Internees’

Notes to pages 235–48

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

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Mail)”; gn 1/3/a, 1938, file 694/38; gn 13/2/a, box 26, file 4; box 214, file “Status and treatment of German and Italian merchant seamen by Canadian government.” panl, gn 1/3/a, 1938, file 694/38; gn 13, box 26, file 2. panl, gn 13, box 26, file 2. panl, gn 13, box 104, file 32; gn 1/3/a, 1938, no. 694 (2), file “Internees.” panl, gn 13, box 26, no. 2. panl, gn 38, s4–2–4, file 1. panl, gn 13, box 48, file 4; gn 13/2/a, box 26, file 4; box 425, file “Internment Camp, Pleasantville (Internees’ Mail).” panl, gn 13, box 48, files 4 and 6; gn 13/2/a, box 467, file “Interned Aliens – Mail April to May 28.” Ibid.,gn 13/2/a, box 467, file cited, and box 448, file “Interned Prisoners.” Ibid., box 448, file 4; fox 49, file “Internment Camp – Buildings.” panl, gn 13, box 48, file 6. Ibid., file 7. Ibid., file “Escape Joesting and Munch – Interned Aliens.” Daily News, 5 June and 16 October 1940; Financial Post, 14 September 1940. panl, gn 13, box 48, files 3 and 8. Ibid., file “Escape Josting and Munch – Interned Aliens.” Ibid., file 8; gn 13, box 104, file 32; lac, rg 25, g 2, vol. 2407, file 7344–40. lac, rg 25, g 2, vol. 2397, file 698–40 c. panl, gn 13, box 48, file 8; gn 13, box 104, file 32. panl, gn 13/2/a, box 48, file 8, and box 104, file 31. panl, gn 13, box 48, file 8, and box 38, file 3; gn 13/2/a, box 467, file “Interned Aliens – Mail April to May 28.” panl, gn 13/2/a, box 104, file 32; lac, rg 25, g 2, vol. 2397, file 698–40 c. Koch, Deemed Suspect. Gillman, “Collar the Lot!” panl, gn 1/3/a, 1938, no. 694 (2), file “German Internees”; lac, rg 25, G 2, Vol. 2397, file 698–40C. lac, rg 25, g 2, vol. 2397, file 698–40 c, anr to Skelton, 9 November 1940; pro, do 35/996, file pw 19/84. pro, do 35/996, file pw 19/3/7. Bassler, “Newfoundland’s ‘Dangerous’ Internees”; Bassler, Sanctuary Denied, 163–75. panl, gn 13/2/a, box 36, file “Immigration – 1942.” Ibid., box 413, file “Aliens No.2.” pro, do 35/996, pw19/3/7, Dominions Office to Government of Newfoundland, 13 June 1941.

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Notes to pages 249–64

55 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 413, file “Aliens No. 2,” and file “Treatment of Finnish, Hungarian, Roumanian and Bulgarian Nationals,” box 26, file 10 “No. 4 Interned Aliens.” 56 Ibid., box 262, file “Enemy Aliens Detained in Newfoundland.” 57 lac, rg 24, c1, hqs, 7236–91–7. 58 lac, rg 25, g2, vol. 2404, file 4814–40. 59 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 413, file “Treatment of Finnish, Hungarian, Roumanian and Bulgarian Nationals.” 60 Bassler, Sanctuary Denied, 201–3. 61 panl, gn 13, unnumbered box, Misc. files re: aliens, file “Aliens (Female).” 62 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 36, file “Immigration – 1942.” 63 Ibid., box 38, file 3.

chapter eleven 1 Regulations Made under Defence Act, xv–xvi. 2 Ibid., xiv, xxviii, xxix. 3 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 36, file “Passive Defence 1939; box 413, file “Aliens No. 1.” 4 Evening Telegram, 1, 22 October and 8 December 1938. 5 Observer’s Weekly, 11 and 25 April 1939. 6 panl, gn 13, box 38, file 87. 7 Evening Telegram, 7 July 1939 8 panl, gn 13, box 38, file 115. 9 Evening Telegram, 12 September 1939. 10 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 193, file 28; gn 13, box 1, file 28; Nora Good interview, 1983. 11 panl, gn 13, box 1, file 45; gn 13/2/a, box 193, files 45 and 66. 12 Evening Telegram, 10, 21, 22, 23, and 31 May 1940. 13 panl, gn 3/2/a, box 38, file 60. Gillingham’s address of January 1939 is reprinted in Daily News, 27 January 1939. 14 See Bassler, Sanctuary Denied, 118–19. 15 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 413, file “Aliens No. 2.” 16 Ibid., box 413, file “Aliens No. 1,” and box 457, file “Registration of Aliens.” 17 Ibid., box 413, file “Aliens No. 2.” 18 Ibid., box 38, file 60; box 39, file 64. 19 Ibid., box 38, file 3, and box 413, file “Aliens No. 2.” 20 Ibid., box 1, file 28; box 227, file “Naturalization of Aliens.”

Notes to pages 264–77

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21 panl, gn S 3/1/a, file “Intercepted Letters etc., Misc.”; gn 13/2/a, box 413, files “Aliens No. 1” and “Aliens No. 2, May 1940–Dec.1940.” 22 Tobias Macdonald interview. 23 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 193, file 74, and box 401, file “Voss, Walter”; gn 1/3/a, box 493 (3), file 694/38. 24 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 38, file 46, and box 262, file “Epstein, Mr. and Mrs. Albert.” 25 Ibid., box 38, file 45; box 39, file 9; box 193, file 61; box 262, file “Epstein, Edward, Buchans.” 26 Ibid., box 139, file 67. 27 Ibid., box 38, files 82 and 90; and box 290, file “Rusch, Otto.” 28 Ibid., box 413, file “Labrador – suspected German activities.” 29 Ibid. One main source of denunciations was Richard White from Nain. He was married to an Inuit woman who, according to Chief Ranger D. Bragg, had a “very bad reputation in Nain.” “Her influence was such on the people that Mr. Hettasch took action and had Mr. White moved from Nain. It is for this reason that White bears the family a grudge and would stop at nothing to get revenge. I quote the following incident to illustrate the point. Mrs. Hettasch sent to Mr. White, last Christmas, a cake to brighten his Christmas table, who returned the cake in July covered with mould, and sent a very sarcastic note saying that he could not eat a cake made by Mrs. Hettasch because of her German influence.” 30 panl, gn 1/3/a, box 694(3), file 694/38; gn 38, s 3–1–3, file 7. 31 Ibid., 1938, box 694 (2); gn 38, s 3–1–3, file 7. 32 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 38, file 102; and box 413, file “Aliens No. 1.” 33 Ibid., box 38, file 58. 34 Ibid., box 39, file 31. 35 Ibid., box 38, file 1. 36 Ibid., box 1, file 12, and box 38, file 55. 37 Ibid., box 36, file “Immigration Control 1941”; box 38, file 3. 38 Ibid., box 193, file 64, and box 262, file “Foltz, Valentine.” 39 Ibid., box 193, file 73. 40 Ibid., box 39, file 11. 41 Evening Telegram, 19 December 1939 and 10, 17, 21 May 1940. 42 panl, gn 1/3/a, 1938, box 694 (2); Evening Telegram, 23 May and 5 June 1940. 43 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 39, file 59. “Mr. P.B. Wallheimer Reports on Peat Bogs,” Daily News, 30 November 1939. 44 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 38, file 88.

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Notes to pages 277–87

45 Ibid., box 36, file “Immigration Control 1941. 46 Dittman, Appointment to Newfoundland, 15. 47 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 38, file 34; and box 262, file “Deutsch, Ilka”; Dittman, Appointment; Dickman, Stories We Lived, 31–8, 106–10. 48 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 404, file “Dr. Josephine Maiwald.” 49 Ibid. 50 panl, gn 2/5/a, file 835; gn 13/2/a, box 193, file 71, and box 249, file “Redlich, Dr. Lisbeth Angela Henrietta.” 51 panl, gn 13/2/a, file 76; box 353, no. 2, file “Wermuth, Eric, George. gn 2/5/a, file 868; gn 38, s 3–1–1, files 1 and 6; J.J. McCormack and Peter Furey interviews. 52 panl, gn 13/2/a, box 38, file 73; box 39, file 22; box 400, file “Rosenfeld, Dr. J.L. & Mrs.” 53 Ibid., box 193, file 69. 54 panl, gn 38, s 4–1–2, files 4 and 5; gn 13/2/a, box 50, file “Security 1941.”

chapter twelve 1 Fitzgerald, Untold Stories of Newfoundland, 46ff. 2 Daily News, 23 July 1942; How, Night of the Caribou; Michael Harrington, “Offbeat History,” Evening Telegram, 12 and 19 September, 3 October 1988. 3 Fitzgerald, Jack Fitzgerald’s Notebook, 81. 4 See Great Britain, Ministry of Defence (Navy), German Naval History; Hadley, U-boats against Canada; Rohwer, Axis Submarine Successes 1939–1945, 43–129; MacLeod, “Death by Choice or by Chance?”; Neary, The Enemy on Our Doorstep, 54–6. 5 German naval strategists attached higher priorities to objectives in midAtlantic and along the Canadian and American coasts. See Great Britain, Ministry of Defence (Navy), German Naval History, 1: 75ff.; 2: 2ff., 37, 51ff., 56, 67, 105; 3: 7ff., 32, 59, 81, 83; Hirschfeld, Feindfahrten, 191, 132–304. 6 McGrath, Last Dance. In an eight-page Encore Magazine article of December 1992 featuring the Knights of Columbus fire, Frank Rasky reasoned that “the blaze was almost certainly lit by an enemy agent” because St John’s, as a rally point for Allied convoys, “was swollen with enemy agents of all stripes.” 7 Fitzgerald, Newfoundland Disasters (1984), 33, and Newfoundland Disasters (2005), 85. 8 In a “documentary novel” titled The Banting Enigma: The Assassination of Sir Frederick Banting, published in 2005, Callahan argues that Canadian scientist Frederick Banting was actually the victim of an assassination order

Notes to pages 288–94

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16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

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from Hitler. Banting died in February 1941 when his plane crashed after taking off from Gander en route to England. Prim and McCarthy, Those in Peril, 96. This book contains numerous tales about alleged World War i and World War ii enemy operatives in Newfoundland. panl, gn 13/2/a, box 58, file “Posters”; box 262, file “Censorship”; Fitzgerald, Newfoundland Disasters (1984); Stockwood, “Submarines and Sabotage”; Michael Harrington, interviews in 1987, 1988, and 1989. panl, gn 13/2/a, box 249, file “Radio broadcasts heard over German and Italian stations concerning Newfoundland”; box 400, files “Object seen in water in vicinity of Flat Island, B.B., June 12th, 1941;” “Object seen in water at Dark Cove, Salvage, June 17th, 1941,” and “Nazis at Cowhead”; Kenney and Wentzell, On the Beat, 100. panl, gn 13/2/a, box 42, file “Fifth Column;” box 63, file “Submarines – refuelling of”; box 262, file “Explosions heard in vicinity of Trinity Bay South and Musgrave Hr., April 8th and 20th 1942”; box 363, file “Sketches of places and strangers seen at different places”; McQuaid, “America’s Vulnerable Sector,” 29; Tyson, “Post War Forties,” Ibid., 115. panl, gn 13/2/a, box 63, file “Suspected landing of enemy agents.” Local postwar commentators of wartime rumours about enemy agents deliberately avoid separating fact from fiction. See, for example, Chesley Byers, “Hard Aground,” Evening Telegram, 30 May to 4 June 1988. Douglas, “The Nazi Weather Station in Labrador,” 42–7. Correspondence between Alan Ruffman, W.A.B. Douglas, David C. Nutt, and F.W. Peacock, March 1982 to August 1983, courtesy of Rev. F.W. Peacock, 1983. Thanks also to Marion Burnett for referring me to documentation held in the Centre for Newfoundland Studies, Memorial University of Newfoundland. Syrett, “German Meteorological Intelligence,” 325–33. Hadley, U-boats against Canada, xiii. Daily News, 11 and 15 May, 5 and 16 June 1945; Hadley, U-boats against Canada, xiif, 224ff., 289–301; Evening Telegram, 17 April, 1986. Hirschmann with Graves, Another Place, Another Time, 185. J.P. Andrieux interview; “U-boat Invaders Milked Friesians in New Zealand,” Times (London), 18 January 1984. Jong, The German Fifth Column, 256. Evening Telegram, 5 August 1989. Prim and McCarthy, Those in Peril, 96. Thorne, A Cherished Past, 130–6. Furlong, Sweep You Across for a Penny, 129–33. See also Furlong, “Spy Stuff.”

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1 Bibliography

manuscript sources archiv der zolljacht, hamburg Bestand 373/2, va 1b berlin document center nsdap membership files hauptstaatsarchiv hamburg Bestand 314–1, cg2 j.m. voith gmbh archive, heidenheim, germany Register of turbine sales (Empfängerliste), 1906–22 library and archives canada, ottawa (lac) Department of External Affairs (rg 25) Transfer to Canada of Enemy Internees from the uk Files re Newfoundland Department of National Defence (rg 24) Internment in Newfoundland of German pows National Map Collection (nmc) Jacques-Nicolas Bellin. “Cartes de la Nouvelle France ou Canada” (1752), nmc 15012

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memorial university of newfoundland, st john’s (mun) Centre for Newfoundland Studies Archives (cns) J.R. Smallwood Collection F.W. Peacock Papers Peacock, F.W., “The Moravian Mission in Labrador 1752–1979: ‘The Goodly Heritage’” (unpublished ms., 1980) French census lists of Placentia for 1693, 1701, and 1706 Maritime History Archive Keith Matthews name file Keith Matthews. “Profiles of Water Street Merchants”(unpublished ms.) newfoundland historical society Bobby Robertson Files provincial archives of newfoundland and labrador, st john’s (panl) Governor’s Office, gn 1/1/7 Cochrane Papers, ms 2364, 2371, 2372 Colonial Secretary, gn 2/14, gn 2/5/A Department of Justice, gn 13, 13/2/A Commission of Government, gn 38 Immigration, gn 53/2/a John Rorke and Company, Carbonear, gn, p 7/a/11 Newfoundland Patriotic Association, p8/b/9, p7/b/40 War Files, 1914–18, gn 1/10/0 Alfred Bishop Morine. “A History of Newfoundland” (unpublished ms., ca. 1935) Parish registers public record office, london (pro) Colonial Office Newfoundland, Original Correspondence, Secretary of State: co 194/76, 290; 195/17, 20, 21 Dominions, War 1914–18 co 616/1 Dominions Office Newfoundland, Commission of Government: do 35/181, Jewish Refugees from Germany do 35/705, Settlement of Jews in the Dominions do 35/706, Settlement of Refugees in the Dominions do 35/720, Miscellaneous Migration Inquiries – Newfoundland do 35/996, Internees and Prisoners of War in Canada

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Foreign Office General Correspondence Hamburg and Hanse Towns: fo 33–32 to 87. robert s. furlong estate, st john’s rsf, Miscellaneous, German Consulate unitäts-archiv, herrnhut, germany (uah) Bestand f, Labrador Rubrik r 15, Correspondence with Labrador Collection nb x , Drawings and photographs Personalakte Karl August Filschke zentrales staatsarchiv, potsdam (now bundesarchiv, berlin) (zs) Deutsche Arbeitsfront, Arbeitswissenschaftliches Institut Zeitungsausschnittsammlung Neufundland, 1933–44 Auswärtiges Amt Jahresberichte des Kaiserlichen Konsulats in St John’s, 1887–1906

interviews (in the author’s possession) Andrieux, J.P., 24 July 1984 Banikhin, Cyril, 19 October 1984 Brownrigg, Pat, 13 December 1983 Chaplin, Carol, 17 December 1984 Colbourne, Clayton, 29 August 1985 Crosbie, Gertrude, 19 June 1984 Crosbie, Roger, 22 January 1985 Decker, Calvin and Sam, 30 August 1985 Decker, Chris, 16 September 1985 Eaton, Douglas, 19 July 1984 Fagan, Gerry, 24 November 1983 Feaver, Alex, 30 July, 1991 Filschke, Martin, 3 July 1991 Furey, Peter, 18 December 1988 Furlong, Robert S., 20 December 1983 Furlong, Wallace, 8 December 1987 Good (Gut), Nora, 25 November 1983 and 20 June 1984 Harrington, Michael, 1987, 1988, and 1989 Hayward, Ferd, 14 November 1984

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Horvath, George, 4 December 1988 Langenfelder, Mr, 21 July 1972 McCormack, J.J., 18 December 1988 Macdonald, Tobias, 6 December 1983 Matthews, Keith, 25 November, 1983 Mercer, Augusta, 1 May 1984 Monnier, R.A., 10 December 1984 O’Dea, John R., 29 November 1983 O’Dea, Shane, 27 April 1984 Parson, William, 2 February 1988 Peacock, Frederick William, 29 October 1984 Power, Anne Marie, and Adele Sharpe, 20 December 1993 Priddle, Harold, 24 August 1987 Rankin, Eric, 12 December 1984. Rickert, Frank, 4 September 1984 Sann, Günther, 24 October 1981 Sharpe, Gil, 6 December 1983 Smallwood, Joseph R., 24 November 1983 Snelgrove, George, 11 November 1987 Staubitzer, Vera, 16 November 1984 Stein, Mark, 22 October 1984 Stein, Shirley, 3 December 1985 Wadden, Gus, 19 November 1984

newspapers Colonist (St John’s) Daily News (St Johns’s) Deutscher Kolonial Dienst Encore Magazine (St John’s) Evening Herald (St John’s) Evening Telegram (St John’s) Evening Standard (London) Financial Post Frankfurter Zeitung Gazette (Montreal) Harbour Grace Standard Herald (St John’s) Kanada Kurier (Winnipeg) Magdeburger Zeitung

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Gay Rights Trump Freedom of Religion

367

2 Index

Abraham, Captain G.H.F., 149–50, 152, 154, 159 Ackerman, F.H., 107–6, 296 Aix-la-Chapelle, 134 Akerman (family name), 19 Alaska, 137–8 Alberts, Captain, 118 Altona, 63 Amherst, Colonel William, 19, 21 Amme, Giesecke, and Konegen A.G., 78, 298 Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company, 77–8, 106, 266 Anne, Queen, 18 Anspach, Lewis Amadeus, 24–8, 29, 296, 302 Arandora Star, ss, 246 Argentia, 94, 274, 286, 289 Ariel, ss, 69 Armstrong, Catherine Matilda, 68 Armstrong, William, 68 Atlas Construction Company, 265, 271 Austria, Austrian, 4, 64, 76, 106, 127, 141, 144, 148, 153, 162, 166–7, 181, 182, 183, 186, 211, 212, 213, 216, 254, 257, 262, 263, 271, 276, 279, 282

Badger, 167 Baer, ss, 97 Baie Verte, 163 Baird, James and Alexander, 180 Banikhin, Cyril, ix Banikhin, Frank, 208–9 Barby, 51–2 Barkam, Selma, 123 Bartlett, Isaac, 143 Battle Harbour, 118, 289 Baumbach, D.S., 137 Bavaria, 110, 111, 116, 169, 171 Bavarian Brewery, ix, 116–17, 171–2, 228, 264, 272–3, 287, 334n29 Bay Bulls, 163, 291 Bay de Verde, 25 Bay of Exploits, 196 Bay of Islands, 142, 143 Bay Roberts, 25, 117 Bear (Behr), John, 104 Beauport pow camp (Quebec), 151 Beck, Johann Ludwig, 43–4 Belkin, Simon, 207–8 Bellin, Jacques-Nicolas, 21 Bell Island, 27, 75–6, 144, 159, 177–8, 179, 191, 194, 212, 228, 242, 273, 286, 299, 301, 324n96, 334n41 Bendel, Henry, 100

368 Bennett, Sir John, 264 Bennett, Thomas, 69, 316n22 Bennett Brewing Company, 173–5, 264, 334n34 Beothuks, 126–7 Berlin, 81, 83, 94, 106, 212 Betts Cove, 91–4, 127 Beyer, Anthony, 70 Bicher, Harold, 181 Biehl, Walter, 180, 185, 229 Bienenfield, Francis, 333n26 Bishop’s Falls, 168 Bismarck, Otto von, 83, 85, 117, 120 Bjerknos, C., 159 Blackhead, 111 Blair, C.F., 276, 277 Blondel, Nicolas, 16 Bobert, Marie, 16 Bochum, ss, 220–1 Boerger, Otto, 237, 239 Bolt, Canon, 215 Bommel, Benjamin von, 333n26 Bonavista, 24 Bonne Bay, 80 Botwood, 181, 196, 212, 225, 226, 236, 241, 242, 264, 266–7 Bourquin, Johann Heinrich Theodor, 44, 83, 85 Bowman, Fritz, 331n79 Bowring, John, 69 Bowring Brothers Ltd, 95, 97 Bowring (C.T.) Ltd, 95 Boyle, Sir Cavendish, 108–9 Brant, G.C., 263 Brehm, Frank, 100 Brehm, Robert A., 99–100, 107, 321n30, 327n10 Bremen, 63, 100, 102, 186, 298 Bremen, sms, 84–5, 118 Bremen D-1167 monoplane, 181

Index Brendel, Henry, 100 Brenner, Harry Hirsch, 167–8, 266 Briand, Albert, 273–4 Brigus, 25, 148–9 Brown, Boveri and Company, 78 Brownrigg, Garrett, 170–1, 334n34 Brownrigg, Pat, ix Bruning, Dr, 176 Buchans, 168, 194–5, 196, 225, 270, 299, 301 Burchell, Charles J., 251 Burgeo, 208, 279–80 Butler, Kenneth C., 39 Cabot, John, 13, 98, 128, 307n11, 337n12 Cabot Steam Whaling Company, 78–9 Cahill, Sergeant, 242 Callahan, William R., 287, 344n8 Canadian Jewish Congress, 207 Canning, John, 70 Cape Broyle, 79 Cape Chidley, 152, 290 Cape Race, 128, 182, 291, 331n71 Cape St Francis, 114 Carbonear, 77, 100, 101–3, 141, 143, 144, 225, 248, 274 Caribou, ss, 286–7 Carlow (family name), 19 Cartwright, John, 22 Cartwright, Labrador, 138, 181 Cashin, Sir Michael, 166 Chicago, 81–2, 103; World Fair (1892), 81 China, Chinese, 120, 179, 196, 261, 263 Christoph von Doornum, ss, 185, 225–7, 240, 245 Churchill Falls, 208 Clarke, Anna and Heber, 167, 267

Index Clutterbuck, P.A., 209 Cochius, R.H.K., 273–4 Cochrane, Governor John, 68 Codner (Samuel) and Whiteway, 65 Colonial Manufacturing Company, 80 Comenius, John Amos, 42 Connors, M., 108 Continental Distilleries Ltd, 176 Cormack, W.E., 193 Corner Brook, 168, 169, 181, 182, 190, 194–5, 212, 226, 228, 256, 271, 274, 301 Corsican, ss, 151 Coveyduck, Constable G., 251 Cowhead, 289 Cranz, David, 43, 52 Crosbie, George C., 99 Crow’s Nest (St John’s), 291, 293 Cupids, 15–16 Curling, 143 Currie, John S., 260 Dahn, Walter, 167 Daniel the Saxon, 15, 26, 296, 307n17 Dantzic Cove, 19, 63 Dantzic Point, 19, 63, 315n5 Danzig, 19, 63–4, 67, 104, 160, 212, 298 Davidson, Sir Walter, 140, 141, 145, 146–59, 162, 326n3 Davis Inlet, 53, 82 Dea Mazella, ss, 227, 242 Decker, Bill, 16, 308n27 Decker, Calvin and Sam, 16–17 Decker, Jean, 16 Deckert, Emil, 130, 324n12 defence regulations, 224, 248, 253–4, 261, 262, 339n2 Demster, Johan, 21 Des Voeux, Sir George William, 117

369

Deshowitz, Joseph and Philip. 106 Deuchar, A., 71 Deutsch, Ilka, 278–9 Dewitz, A. von, 131–2 Dewling, Harry, 274 Dieppe, Deslin de, 11 Dietlinger, Edmund, 106 Dietrich, Bruno, 193, 336n4 Dornier d0-x seaplane, 181–2 Douglas, Alec, 290 Dresden, hms, 140, 326n5 Dresden State Museum for Ethnology, 85 Duder, C.R., 98 Duder, John L., 95 Dunfield, Sybil, Estelle, and Dorothy, 116 Dutch, Peter, 333n26 “Dutch dory,” 20 Eastport, 280 Eaton, William J., 259 Edamer (Edema), Gerard, 16 Edward vii, 46 Ehlers, Ernst, 68 Ehlers, Gustav, 68, 72, 316n22 Ehlers, Hans, 68 Ehlers, Robert, 69, 316n22 Eide, Anton, 160 Ekholm, Walter, 250 Elizabeth I, 14 Ellershausen, Francis von, 89–95, 296 Ellershouse, ns, 91 Elsner, Ferdinand, 53, 81 Emerson, Mrs F.R., 260–1 Emerson, L.E., 167, 186, 188, 243, 244, 245, 251, 265, 268–9, 281, 283 Epstein, Albert and Frieda, 167, 263, 265–6

370

Index

Epstein, Edward, 167, 263, 265–6 Epstein, Isidor, 106 Erdmann, Friedrich, 44, 48 Erhardt, Johann Christian, 18, 32, 58 Eskimo Bay, 53 Esposito, Luigi, 243 Esquimalt, hmcs, 291 Etsell (family name), 19 Ewig, Philip, 110 Fagan, Gerry, ix, 172, 176 Falcon, ss, 95 Feaver, Alex, 175 Feldmann, Hans von, 185 Feldmann, Phoebe, Margarethe, and Stella, 167, 185–6 Feldtmann, G.H., 68 Feuchtinger, Josephine, 150 Ficke, Adele. See White, Adele fifth column, 223–4, 253–9, 273, 293, 339n1 Filschke, Clara and Martin, 155, 157 Filschke, Karl, 154–7, 166 Finland, Finns, 248–50, 261 Fischer, Carl (Charles) A.E., 69, 317n25 Fitzgerald, Jack, 287 Fleming, Michael Anthony, 72–3 Florizel, ss, 147 Flower’s Cove, 182 Foltz, Valentine, 173, 272–3, 287 Ford’s Harbour, 59 Fort Amherst, 159 Fortune, Sarsfield, 271 Francke, August Hermann, 42–3, 51–2 Francois, 278 Frantzen, Commander, 117 Franz Josef Land, 291 “Frederick the Duchman,” 15–16 Fredericton, 243–4

Frehlich, Samuel, 106 Frolich, Hank, 175 Furlong, Robert S., ix, 73, 95, 162, 183–8 Gaden (merchant), 20 Gallert, ss, 114 Gander, 271, 272, 338n18 Garland, C.F., 246 Garnish, 19 Gelcich, Eugen, 125 Geneva Convention, 234–7, 241 George, Carl, 101 “German” (Inuit) band, 49 Germania, ss, 114 German Jewish Refugee Committee (London), 213 Germantown, Pa, 19 Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 15, 295, 307n17, 337n12 Gillingham, Alan G., 217–19, 232, 233, 236, 238, 239, 240, 258–9, 262 Gittleson, Elias, 106 Givens, Anna Elizabeth and R.C., 270–1 Glick, Benjamin, 333n26 Gordon, Patrick, 26 Gorvin, John H., 275 Gott, Dr, 23 Grand Banks, 23, 25, 125, 159, 198, 248; bank fishery, 122–4 Grand Falls, 78, 169, 194–6, 225, 226, 264, 274, 280, 298, 301 Greenland, 12, 31, 43–4, 52, 291, 307n8 Greenly Island, 181 Grenfell, Sir Wilfred, 45, 59, 150, 314n89, 325n21, 330n56; and International Grenfell Association, 212, 282–3

Index Gresse, Seicille, 16 Gretzinger, Frederick Rubin, 271 Grimm, Otto and Hans, 100, 321n37 Gronau, Captain, 181 Grossman, Otto, 277 Grube, Master, 14–15 Gruber, R., 69 Grubert, John and William, 317n34 Grubert, Michael, 100 Gruenberg, Erich, 212 Guehring, Jake, 173, 334n29 Guild, J.R.E., 269–70 Gut, Alo (Aloysius), 175, 179–80, 255, 263–4, 302 Gut, Julius, 179–80 Gut (Good), Nora, 180 Guy, John, 15 Guzman, Adolph von, 91, 92, 94 Guzzle, Jeffrey, 70 Haas, Friederich, 70 Hack, R.W., 333n26 Hacker, Franz, 95 Hadley, Michael, 291 Hagen, Captain John and James G., 69 Hagenbeck, Carl, 81–3, 236 Hague Convention, 141, 143 Hakluyt, Richard, 15 Haler, Rabbi, 277 Halifax, 19, 99, 102, 107, 117, 151, 262, 268, 291, 309n36 Halls Bay, 93, 320n15 Halmberg, Martin, 106 Halpert, Henry, 333n26 Hamburg, 12, 53, 62–3, 71, 72, 73, 81, 101–2, 106, 114, 119–20, 137, 161, 167, 168, 180, 185, 217, 229, 237, 294, 298; marine observatory, 53, 86–9, 137, 268–9, 325n23; pro-

371

visions trade, 62–9, 74–5, 296, 298, 315nn10–11, 315–16n13 Hamilton, Bishop J. Taylor, 157 Hamilton Inlet, 82 Hamilton River, 208 Handcock, Gordon, 21 Hann, Allan, 175 Hannevig, Christopher, 159–60, 321n77 Hansen, Bernard, 111 Hanson, James S., 158, 330n67 Hantzsch, Bernhard Adolf, 87 Happy Valley, 36 Harbour Grace, 25, 77, 97, 100, 142, 159, 168, 175 Hare Bay, 282 Harmony, ss, 57, 59, 87, 153, 157 Harms, Professor, 87 Harold (schooner), 115 Harp, George, 268 Harvey, Hon. John, 89, 145, 160 Harvey, Rev. Moses, 92–3 Hasebrink, A., 177 Hatcher, A.G., 207, 215 Haven, Jens, 20–1, 32, 34, 55, 311n9 Hayward, Ferd, ix, 113, 171 Heart’s Content, 77, 158 Hebbard, Gary, 287 Hebron, 34–5, 40, 44, 46, 53, 59, 81, 82, 137, 154 Hecuemarre, Anne, 16 Heffer, Max, 333n26 Henry viii, 14 Hepburn, Francis C.K., 69, 72 Herder, ss, 114–15 Herrnhut, 30–1, 37–8, 43–4, 47, 51, 86, 134 Hesse-Wartegg, Ernst von, 121, 124–5, 127–30, 301 Hessians, 23

372

Index

Hettasch, Katie, 267, 269, 325n23 Hettasch, Paul, 137, 267–70, 325n23, 343n29 Hettasch, Siegfried, 267–70 Hickman, Albert Edward, 171, 173, 182–3, 217, 219, 228, 272; A.E. Hickman Company, 169, 264 Hindenburg (airship), 182, 335n55 Higgins, John G., 251 Hirsch, Baron de, 206 Hirsch, D., 69 Hirschmann, Werner, 291 Hitler, Adolf, 178, 206, 210, 215–19, 223, 229, 251, 254, 268, 269, 274, 281 Holyrood, 98, 181 Holland, Bertha, 106, 168, 267 Holland, Fred B., 106, 168 Holt, Janet, 110 Homfeld, Heinrich Hermann (Henry), 101 Hoover, J. Edgar, 273, 280 Hopedale, 32–4, 39, 40, 44, 47, 49, 53, 131–2, 135, 137, 157, 267–70, 329n54 Hope Simpson, Sir John, 207–9 Horwood, Harold, 260 House (F.G.) and Company, 180 Howley, 133 Hudson’s Bay Company, 47, 57, 58, 81, 82, 152, 156, 329n50 Huebsch, F.L., 158 Huenefeld, Baron Günther von, 181 Humber, Andrew, 225 Hundel, John, Mary, and Thomas, 19 Hungary, Hungarian, 141, 144, 150, 162, 248, 282, 307n17, 329n50 Huntcliff, ss, 105 Hus, John, 30 Hutchings, C.H., 146

Hutchings, Eikum, 106 Hutchings, Marie, 267 Hutterites, 210 Hutton, Charles, 108, 110, 111 Ingerman, George, 267, 322n44 Ingstad, Helge, 12 Inuktitut, 43–7 Jacobsen, J. Adrian, 80–1 Jamestown exhibition, 82, 118 Jannasch, Hans-Windekilde, 50, 53, 54–6 Jannasch, Adolf Hermann, 37–8, 41–2, 44, 47, 50, 53, 56, 86, 131 Jeffery, Charles E.A., 217, 220, 260 Jewish Colonization Association (ica), 206–7 Jews, 69, 106–7, 119–20, 167–8, 181, 186, 196, 259, 263–4, 265–6; and anti-Semitism, 120, 181, 186, 205, 212, 214, 216–18, 220–2; refugees, 205–14, 224, 246–7, 250–2, 255, 259, 260, 261, 263, 275–83, 294 Jochsen, Carl, 100 Joesting, Wilhelm, 225, 227, 231, 233, 236, 240, 241 Jong, Louis de, 293, 339n1 Junkers W 33L monoplane, 181 Katz, Max, 187, 212–14, 277 Kean, Captain Jacob, 118 Keegan, L.E., 120 Kelland, Otto P., 20 Kellerschon, J., 158 Kellnitz, Dr G., 69 Kent, Rockwell, 147–9, 162 Kercher, Peter Hubert, 147, 158, 322n44 Keswick smelters, 14ff

Index Killinek, 34–7, 39, 49, 87, 152, 154, 156, 166 Kingston Penitentiary, 251 Kite, ss, 95 Klapisch, Henry, 209 Kleinschmidt, Samuel, 44 Kleinwächter, Ludwig, 183 Kleiser, Annie, 158 Klopfer, Rudolph, 169, 253, 255–6, 263 Knabe, Walter, 227, 233–5, 236, 241 Knight, Richard, 18, 103 Knights of Columbus Hall (St John’s), 287 Knowles, E.C., 238, 240 Koch, Ernst, 106, 161, 328n43, 332n84 Koch, K.R., 48, 49, 86, 134–7 Koch, William, 16, 307n19 Köhl, Hermann, 181 Köln, ss, 115 Konopka, Kurt, 225, 238, 245 Konsul Henderick Fisser, ss, 226 Korner, Richard J., 151, 266–7, 329n49 Kothe, Anna Louise, 168 Kothe, Bertha, 106, 168 Kothe, Frederick William, 168, 223, 228–9, 244, 254–5, 263 Kreisler, Otto, 181 Kriegelstein, David, 44 Kroehnert, Kurt, 240, 245 Krippner, E.R., 107–10, 296 Kristallnacht, 219, 221, 277 Krollman, Gustave, 71 Kruger, Otto, 100 Krupp steel corporation, 75–6, 144, 299 Kuehne (pow), 234 Kurber, Eugene, 169

373

lager beer, 116, 170–6, 299–300 La Grue, Laurent, 16 Lamaline, 63 La Manche, 178 Lamprecht, Karl, 87 L’Anse aux Meadows, 12–13, 295 Largestau (Largetrau or Largeteau), Marie, 16 Larsen, C.G., 159 Laskowski, John, 105 Latendorf, Chas. Bruno, 270 Lawn, 178–9, 298 Layritz, Paul Eugen, 43, 52 Lee, Alfred. See Thiele, Gustav Alfred Lehmann, Heinz, 199–200 Lehr, A.B., 107 Leif Eirikson, 14–15, 128, 295 Leipzig, 116 Lendzian, Erich, 244 Lenz, Berthold, 39, 41 Leopard, ss, 69 Lidrow, Charlotte, Marianne, and Louisa, 19 Liebig, Justus, 78 Lindberg, John, 100; J. Lindberg Brewing Company, 116–17, 170, 299 Linden, Count Karl von, 56 Linder, Carl, 53 Linklater, Captain Henry, 53 Little Bay, 94 Liverpool, 101–2 Louis iv, 17, 308n22 Ludwig, Jno, 19 Lunenburg, ns, 19–20, 309n39, 309n41, 331n71 Lusitania, ss, 149 Luther, Jessie, 39, 41 Luther (family name), 19 Lüttge, Franz Theodor, 146–7, 158

374

Index

Luttrell, Narcissus, 18 Lutz, Maija M., 48 McBride, Robert, 72 McBride and Kerr, 69 MacDermott, Lieutenant A., 140 Macdonald, Tobias, ix, 264 MacGregor, Governor Sir William, 29, 45, 47, 58, 118 McNamara, Alfred, 106, 216, 255 Macpherson, Dr Cluny, 236, 239 Mahoney, Sergeant, 272 Maiwald, Josephine, 279–80 Makkovik, 32, 34, 36–7, 47, 53, 59, 152 Markward, William, 322n44 Martin, Bishop Albert, 46, 83, 85, 157 Martin, Madeleine, 281 Martin, Roland, 274 Martin, Wendy, 178 Mayer, Franziska, 282–3 Mayer (Mahier), Le Sieur Charles, 16 Maxse, Governor Sir Henry FitzHardinge, 117 Meaney, E.B., 241 Memel, 63, 298 Mercator, Gerhard, 10–11 Mercer, Augusta. See Rickert, Augusta Merschein, Thomas, 16 Mertens, Jacob, 169, 228, 231, 244 Metal, Julio and Maurice, 273, 275–7, 294 Meyer, Alfred, 106 Miertsching, Johann August, 53–6 Mi’kmaqs, 126–7 Millais, J.G., 80 Miller, Charles and Henrietta, 106–7, 302 Miller, Leonard Albert, 107 Miltzon, Johann, 212

Minchinner, Thomas, 19 Miquelon, 293 Mistaken Point, 114 Monkstown, 20 Monnier, Albert, 169 Moore, Edward C., 42 Moravians, 18, 20–1, 27, 29–61, 80–6, 131–2, 134–7, 152–8, 166, 267–70, 297–8, 299, 303 Morine, Alfred B., 23, 146, 166, 260 Morris, Sir Edward Patrick, 75–6, 140, 145, 148, 161, 298 Morrison, Annabel Downie, 95 Morrison, Donald, 95 Möschler, Heinrich Benno, 52–3, 56 Mosher (family name), 19 Mount Pearl, 158, 163, 182, 335n55 Mudges and Company, 65 Mugford Tickle, 59 Mühlenbruch, Edward F., 70–1 Müller, Bishop Polykarp, 43 Munch, Ernst, 227, 240, 241 Murray’s Pond Fishing Club, 98, 99 Musfeldt, T., 322n44 Musgrave Harbour, 289 Myers, Charles, 100 Myers, J.F., 71 Nain, 32–4, 38–44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 53, 82, 83, 86, 118, 137, 138, 157, 267; German consulate, 38, 83–5, 118 National Socialist German Labour Front, 240 Nazism (National Socialism), 185, 188, 189–90, 192, 197, 200–4, 205, 212, 214, 222, 223–4, 228–9, 231, 246, 255, 257, 260, 269–70, 283 Nelson, Charles, 322n44 Nelson, John H., 103, 322n44, 331n79

Index Neptune, ss, 114 Neumeister, Fritz, 175 New Zealand, 293 Newfoundland Brewing Company, 175–6 Newfoundland Patriotic Association, 140, 150 Newfoundland Trading Company, 145 Newman and Company, 65 Niedieck, Paul, 133–4 Niehaus, William, 107 Nipper’s Harbour, 181 North West River, 36, 53 Norway, Norwegian, 69, 126, 135, 143, 159–60, 183, 185, 198, 224, 248, 272, 324n2 Notre Dame Bay, 91–2, 94, 95, 127 Nova Scotia Steel Company, 144, 191 Nuremberg woodcut, 11 Oddvar II, ss, 230 “Ode to Newfoundland,” 108–10 O’Dea, John R., ix, 176 Oehlschlager, Johann Christian, 68, 316n19 Oehlschlager and Company, 68 O’Hara, James, 53, 132 Okak, 33–5, 39, 46, 53, 82, 138, 156 Olson, Captain Olaf, 183 Olson, Young, 113 Oltmann, Hans, Marie, and Martin, 168 O’Neill, Chief of Police P.J., 252, 272 Oppel, A., 130, 324n12 Oppelt, Otto, 83, 85, 89, 110–13, 163, 296, 300 Osborn, Henry, 18 Ottenheimer, Frederick William, 168, 263, 266

375

Paatz, Gut and Company, 180, 185 Palatinate, Palatines, 17–18, 24 Palliser, Hugh, 20–1, 31–2 Panther, sms, 117–18 Paris World Exhibition (1881), 81, 82 Parry, Sir C. Hubert, 110 Paton, J.L., 214–16 Paul, ss, 169 Peacock, F.W., ix, 44, 49, 50, 267, 311n15 Pelder, John, 274 Penson, John H., 210, 262 Perret, Robert, 193 Perrett, Walter, 85, 157 Petawawa, Camp, 243–5 Peter, Frieda Mary, 271 Peters, C.S., 158 Petty Harbour, 73, 76–8, 122, 179, 298 Piccott, A.W., 150 Piehl, Barney, 107 Pierre Brook, 178–9, 185, 298 Pietism, 30, 42, 51–2 Pining, Didrik, 13 Placentia, 142, 147; Placentia Bay, 16, 20, 80, 94, 178, 289 Pleasantville camp, 225–6, 230–43, 245, 257 Plieninger, Hans, 151, 322n44 Plymouth, 13, 14 Porsh, Godlove (Gottlieb Porsch), 21–3 Port aux Basques, 97–8, 133, 199, 270, 273, 286, 320n15 Portugal Cove, 25 Pothorst, Hans, 13 Pouch Cove, 18, 103 Power, Anne, 165–6 Power, Gregory, 274 Price, C.E., 272

376

Index

Prowse, Daniel Woodley, 19, 29, 87, 119–20 Prowse, Kenneth R., 73, 118 Prowse, Robert Henry, 73–4, 114 Puddester, H.G, 236 Quarton, H.B., 270 Quirpon, 21 Raff (family name), 19 Rama, 34–6, 40, 49, 81, 82, 135, 138 Random Island, 246 Rasch, Otto, 143 Redlich, Lisbeth, 250, 280–1 Reichel, Bishop Levin Theodor, 40, 49, 53, 54 Reid, Harry D., 85, 110 Reid, Robert G., 110, 199 Reid, William D., 110–11, 113 Reid Newfoundland Company, 97 Reiffenstein, John Christopher, 23 Reinhardt, C.H., 69 Rencontre West, 278 Rendell, Stephen, 69 Renews, 115 Renouf, E.M., 184 Rhine, Elizabeth, Francis, and Thomas, 18 Rhine, Ulridge, 18 Richards, Morley, 200–2 Rickert, Augusta, 105, 161 Rickert (Rickez or Rickerts), Emil (James) Joseph, 104–5, 160, 266, 302 Rinderknecht, Friedrich, 132 Rissmüller, Ludwig, 78–80, 296 Ritter, Johann Ernst Heinrich, 132 Ritter, Richard. See Knight, Richard Roeske, Alfred H., 180, 228–30, 231, 237, 239, 240, 244, 255

Rollmann, Hans, x, 22, 73, 308n31, 310n45 Rooney, John, 98 Roque, Daniel, 16 Rorke, John, 101–3 Rose Castle, ss, 286 Rosenau, E., 180–1 Rosenfeld, Julius L., 282 Rosenfeld, Livia (Spiegler Halasz), 282 Ross, Colin, 138, 185, 189–91, 197, 204, 301 Rotterdam, 185 Rozany (Haranzy), Hendrich, 212 Ruau, Francois, 16 Rusch, Otto, 141–2, 143, 145, 160, 166, 167, 266–7, 328n43, 332n8 Russia, 64 Ryan, Margarite, 168 Saglek Bay, 35, 59 St Anthony, 150, 212, 283 St Bride’s, 280 St Francis Island, 103 St George’s Bay, 93, 106 St Joseph’s, 281 St Laurent, Louis, 244 St Lawrence Whaling Company, 80 St Louis Fair (1905), 82 St Pierre, 118, 140, 227, 273–4, 317n23 Salmonier, 146, 275–6 Salter, A.H., 142 Santa Cruz Oil Corporation, 268–9 Schasse, O., 180 Scheffhauser, Otto, 175–6 Scheuermann (brewmaster), 173, 334n34 Schiebeler and Company, 180, 185, 229 Schmidt, H., 322n44

Index Schneider, Hans and Anita, 171–2, 175 Schnitzer, Joseph R., 158, 163 Scholler, Friedrich Adam, 43, 52 Schrepfer, Hans, 180, 185, 193–9, 204, 301, 337n12, 337n15, 337n17 Schroeter (Schroeder), Charles, 101 Schultz, Father, 289 Schultze, Edward, 69 Schuyler, Lieutenant, 19 Schweiger, Christian, 68 Scolvus, John, 13 Seal Cove, 178, 298 Seume, Johann Gottfried, 23 Shallop Cove, 106 Sharpe, Gil, 172, 174 Short, Joseph and Ann, 19, 307n36, 315n6 Siebert, Walter E., 169–70 Silver Cliff, 94 Silvia, ss, 97 Skelton, O.D., 268 Smallwood, Joseph R., ix, 162, 194, 198 Snook’s Arm, 79 Sobieski, ss, 247 Sondheimer, Walter E., 273, 276 Spawn (family name), 19 Spiegler Halasz, Livia. See Rosenfeld, Livia Spitzbergen, 291 Squires, Sir Richard A., 142, 148, 267, 273, 329n49 Stabb, Henry Hunt, 70, 106 Stadler, John, 169 Stein, Conrad, 331n79 Stein, Jack, 97 Stein, Mark, 96 Stein, Max, 271 Stein, Meta, 95, 186

377

Stein, Robert Carl von, 95–9, 118, 145, 186, 296, 299, 302, 331n79 Steinhauer, James P., 170 Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), 95 Sulzbach, Emil, 151 Sulzbacher, Moritz, 333n26 Summers, G.B., 235 Swiss, Switzerland, 4, 19, 26, 27, 76, 78, 110, 157, 169, 174, 235, 244, 271, 308n22, 338n2 Syria, Syrians, 119–20, 160, 196 Teckel, Sarah, 16 Teichmann, Paul, 333n26 Thiele, Gustav Alfred (Alfred Lee), 106, 169, 266 Thomas Edward (brig), 114 Thorlock (corvette), 191 Tillmann, Mr, 70 Tilt Cove, 127 Tocque, Philip, 120 Topsail, 106, 168, 228, 261 Trapnell (R.H.) Ltd, 169 Trenkle (Swiss German engineer), 141 Trepassey, 114 Trinity, 19, 21, 23; Trinity Bay, 127 Trotel, Jean, 16 Twillingate, 95, 129, 280, 308n27 Tyrkir, 12–13, 26, 296 U-190, 291–3 U-537, 290–1 U-boats (World War i), 149–50, 159, 321n71 Uebe, Karl, 136, 137 Uhlig, Johannes, 87 Ungerer, Marie, 106 United Towns Electric Company, 77, 141, 288

378

Index

Vail, Robert N., 67 Vardy, O.L., 217, 220 Venison Island, 102–3 Verkrüzen, Theodor Anton, 122–4, 126–7, 198, 301, 324n2 Victoria, Newfoundland, 77, 141, 179, 298 Victoria camp, 244, 245–9, 249 Victoriaville (corvette), 291 Vienna, 127, 189, 220, 276, 280; Congress, 24, 74 Virchow, Rudolf, 81 Voisey’s Bay, 59 Voith (J.M.) G.m.b.H., 77–9, 141, 178–9, 185, 298–9 Voorhoeve, Jacob, 273–4 Voss, Walter, 168–9, 263–5 Vrignaud, Marie, 16 Wabana, 143, 178, 194, 216, 334n41 Wakefield, Mrs, 153, 158, 329n54, 330n56 Waldensians, 30 Waldseemüller, Martin, 10 Wallheimer, Paul B., 275, 277 Walwyn, Governor Sir Humphrey, 227, 234, 243, 247, 260–1, 275, 276 Walwyn, Lady Eileen, 282 Wandelt, Herr, 105–6 Warschauer, Richard, 145–6, 151, 327–8n26 Weber, George, 317n34 Weber, Max (Carl Webber), 172–3, 228–9, 234, 244, 245, 263, 272

Wedekind, Frank, 24 Weiz, Samuel, 36, 53 Wermuth, Eric C., 281–2 Wieburg, J.A., 69 Whitbourne, 97 White, Adele (née Ficke), 106, 165–6, 322n52 White, Francis, 106, 165–6, 322n52 White, Jack A., 293 White, Richard, 343n29 Whiteside, Lilian, 278 Whiteway, William, 94 Wich, Hans and Erna, 165, 173–5, 263–4 Wieburg, Captain J.A., 69 Wiese (Wise), Conrad, 101–3 Wigh, Louis, 262 Wilhelm ii, Kaiser, 120, 145, 149, 163 Williams, Governor Ralph, 82 Windels, Erich, 187–8 Winter, H.A., 282 Winter Station, 133 Wood, Colonel William, 268–9 Wurdail (family name), 19 Wurfbain, A.L., 209 Young, Ron, 293 Zimmermann, Henry, 70 Zinser, Karl, 236, 244 Zinzendorf, Count Nikolaus Ludwig von, 30, 42, 47, 58 Zoar, 34–5, 59, 82, 137, 138 Zwieback, 66–8, 298