QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

The Fatherland focuses abroad “They [the German-Australians] saw nothing contradictory in their ‘nostalgic nationalism’ and their firm ties with the Australian state. Once they had been naturalized, they did not question their loyalty to the British crown ... the majority ... felt themselves part of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society in which they could nevertheless harbour

Successful establishment of the initial migrant surge in South Australia and growing interest in Queensland emboldened the Hamburg Senate in 1840 to investigate colonising New Zealand’s Chatham Islands with 12,000 people. A flag and coat-of-arms had been designed before the project was quietly dropped. By the time the German Empire under Kaiser Wilhelm I awoke to its colonial aspirations, Britain, France, Italy, Belgium and Holland had pretty well carved up Africa, leaving Germany to eke out toe holds on the Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts. A similarly undignified scramble for the various islands, atolls and archipelagos of the South West Pacific also ensued. Tsingtao on the Shantung Peninsula on China’s northeast coast – Germany’s Hong Kong of the north – was a base too far from home, and too far from the scattered islands of the vast South West Pacific, to be defensible, and the far-flung colonial possessions and their inhabitants would have to fend for themselves. Nonetheless, Germany was not discouraged from its Pacific goals, and her aspirations found wide support from German Queenslanders. Johannes Voigt (1987) describes what he termed “the growth of ‘nostalgic nationalism’ among the German diaspora at the end of the 19th century, particularly those settled in Queensland and Australia. “The growth of ‘nostalgic nationalism’ overseas was undoubtedly encouraged in part by developments in Germany towards unity and concord: from then on there was one common home country for all German-Australians, which helped offset British Australian orientation towards mighty England. ”It was in that mid-Victorian era that the British queen always sought the opinion of her prince consort, Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, which she regarded as a legacy after his death in 1861. It was an age when the common Anglo-German heritage of origin, language and culture was emphasized and cultivated. From the outside, the establishment of the German Reich could be viewed, first and foremost, as a means of strengthening Anglo German relations in terms of power and standing together politically. “German-Australian nationalism … experienced further impetus, however, from German colonial policy, which made Australia and the German colonial empire neighbours. These nationalist feelings were also generated in part by the policy pursued by Germany during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II, which, in its desire for a ‘place in the sun’, eventually seemed to seek confrontation rather than collaboration with Britain, when it started the unfortunate naval arms race.

nostalgic national sentiments and preserve emotional ties with their land of origin. “Festivals and celebrations, visiting warships, and, of course, the nearby colonies in the South Seas kept alive a certain … ‘nostalgic nationalism’. It was not, however, capable of fostering German nationalism among the German-Australians. Their roots were too firmly embedded in Australian soil, their ties to the British crown too strong.” Nonetheless, as Voigt noted, “the foundation of the German Reich provided Germans in Australia with a ‘central address’, as it were, to which they could direct their nostalgic feelings … German Australians were also seized by a delirious worship of the Emperor and Bismarck in Germany. Three settlements in Tasmania, Queensland and South Australia were given the name ‘Bismarck’...” – in Queensland, the Darling Downs district known today as Maclagan. Between 1873 and Bismarck’s 70th birthday in 1885, there was a steady stream of visiting German-Australians returning home bearing gifts made from Australian precious metals and timbers, and illuminated addresses for the Chancellor. Increasing interest from the Fatherland manifested itself in a variety of ways, from enhanced reporting on attitudes and events in Australia, to imperial favours bestowed on Lutheran or Protestant churches, such as Bibles and, in one instance, a church bell. The latter was occasioned after Carl Riedrich and other parish councillors in Charters Towers had written to the Reich Chancellor on 27 February 1886 asking for “a bell of German metal”, and the new belfry was successfully rung in, three years later. Disparate forces began to pull, however, after the impetuous Wilhelm II came to the throne, and Germany embarked, increasingly, on policies emulating, and striving with, Britain in obtaining her own place in the sun, “and worldwide acknowledgement of the German Reich.” In Europe, this began to manifest in an unfortunate ‘tit-for-tat’ naval arms race when Britain startled the world with the launch of its revolutionary battleship Dreadnought in 1906, and steel-makers everywhere – especially in Germany – looked to Queensland’s mines for supplies of ‘Wolfram’ (tungsten) to harden their armoured castles at sea. For the moment, however, relations with the Fifth Continent continued to be largely cordial.

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