QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Franco-Prussian war veterans honoured in Brisbane

“On receiving the order ‘Attention! Straighten the line!’, the elderly gentlemen snapped their fragile bones together. With heads held high (as high as the stooped necks would allow), chests out and stiffened knees, one could see then from the lively flash on their eyes that they felt themselves back in those glorious days when they had fought on the field of honour for their Fatherland.” After Consul von Plönnies had pinned the medals on the old soldiers, veteran A F Müller gave a vote of thanks on behalf of his comrades although, as the reporter wryly remarked, “he threatened to succumb to the grandeur of the occasion at times.” The ceremonial address was given by Dr Eugen Hirschfeld. He expressed the firm conviction “that, should an enemy ever threaten Queensland, the Germans in the colony would take their places in the foremost ranks of the defenders.”

Veterans of the 1870-71 Franco-German war were both honoured and moved when, on 26 August 1899 aboard the Senator Versmann in Brisbane, they were awarded medals beneath ensigns and strings of black, white and red bunting. Among the 500 invited guests who witnessed the ceremony on board the vessel were Sir James Dickson, the Queensland Premier, and the Mayor of Brisbane. A huge crowd, whose attention had been drawn to this unusual spectacle by not uncritical newspaper comments, stood watching from the shore at a distance. A reporter from the Deutsch-Australische Post wrote, on 6 October, of “the stirring parade of the veterans, some thirty in all, included white-haired old boys who had seen active service in the 1864, 1866 and 1870-71 wars. They had fallen in under the command of veteran Schneider in the shipyard.

The presentation ceremony on the quarterdeck of the Senator Versmann . Image (neg.no. 12036) courtesy John Oxley Library, Stete Library of Queensland

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