QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Internment (I)

Peter Ludlow sketches events closer to home as the world slid into the abyss of the First World War. Australia’s War Precautions Act 1914 provided that citizens of enemy countries could be interned for the period of the war. Internment was not applied universally; some enemy aliens merely had their movement within the country restricted and were required to report weekly to police. During the First World War, 6,890 Germans were interned, of whom 4,500 were Australian residents before 1914; the rest were sailors from German merchant ships who were arrested while in Australian ports when the war broke out, or German citizens living in British territories in Asia and transported to Australia at the request of the British government. In Brisbane, the Enoggera

Many of the men were married, but their families were not taken into the camp. For the first five months, the internees were able to leave the camp during daylight hours and they could be employed. The camp was closed in August 1915 and the internees were transferred to the Holsworthy camp in New South Wales. The Australian government also sought to prevent companies in Australia run by businessmen of German descent from competing with ‘British’ companies. So the directors and managers of such companies were also interned, even if they were naturalised British subjects. Queensland examples included Carl Zöller, a successful and popular member of the Brisbane German-Australian community and importer and maker of medical and surgical equipment, and Frederick Monzel, publisher and printer of the Queensländer Herald . The Australian government also saw Germans as troublemakers in workplaces, who encouraged strikes to weaken the war effort of the British Empire. Ernst Buchwitz, a worker at the Baffle Creek Sugar Mill near Bundaberg and an organiser for the Australian Workers Union, was interned and later deported for having “caused disruption between the men and the mill”, a charge Buchwitz denied; and C S Schache, a waterside worker in Gladstone, and “a second-generation Australian with a German grandfather”, was interned because he was the local secretary of the Workers’ Political Organisation. After the closure of Brisbane’s German Club, the leaders of the German community were interned, including Dr Eugen Hirschfield, Queensland’s Consul, and nine Lutheran pastors. A pair of interned German steamers rafted together off Brisbane’s Botanic Gardens; the twin-funnelled ship looks very much like NDL’s Prinz Sigismund , which some sources report seized in Australia in 1914 and renamed Bambra in 1915. On the far side of the river are the cliffs of Kangaroo Point. Image (neg.122991) courtesy John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland

(Gaythorne) internment camp was sited next to an existing army camp. It housed 137 internees, including the non-military officers and crew of civilian German ships docked in Brisbane after the outbreak of war.

Letter from Lieutenant Colonel Wallace Brown, Commonwealth Military Forces 1st Military District, to the Commissioner of Police, Brisbane, listing prisoners of war transferred to Liverpool, New South Wales. List includes names of German people Queensland State Archives Item ID 1623133 Police Department, Police Service Commissioner’s Office

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