QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

und Lecker! Brisbane Deutscher Turn Verein

Brisbane writer David Malouf enjoys drawing a distinction between the European and the Australian landscapes. In Europe, when we travel outside the cities, we feel secure in a landscape that humans have carefully moulded over the centuries. In Australia, we feel insignificant and irrelevant! If this is the case today, then it doesn’t take much to imagine the Fifth Continent’s effect on the first German immigrants. They arrived in a wild land bereft of many familiar German comforts and customs and had to integrate into a society where the inhabitants spoke an unfamiliar dialect. And their first Queensland summer would have shocked even the most hearty of German pioneers! No wonder then that there was a great desire amongst Queensland’s German immigrants to form an organisation where they could meet to share their common heritage. But it was not until 1883, when 40 German men met on 27 May in the Bowen Hotel in South Brisbane that the first formal club was established. At the meeting, R Jäschke, editor of Brisbane’s Nord-Australische Zeitung, proposed forming a gymnastics club, and the purchase of an allotment in Melbourne Street where a clubhouse could be built. A second meeting was held on 7 July, where a constitution based on that of the German Club in Melbourne was adopted, and Herr Jäschke was elected President for two years. By organising masked balls, concerts, and other functions (no doubt publicised widely in his newspaper), enough capital was accumulated to purchase land in Manning Street, South Brisbane.

Finally, on 4 May 1887, amid great public acclaim, the first German Club House was officially opened. Membership grew very rapidly and the events staged by the gymnastic team, the concerts, and other functions became the talk of Brisbane – not only for Germans, but for Australians as well. A choir and bowling club were founded, a piano acquired, and a library established. Regrettably, a fire razed the wooden building on the night of 15-16 February 1889. After this massive blow, the club was forced to hold its meetings on the Palace Hotel premises in South Brisbane. The then-German Consul, J C Heussler, offered to purchase a new allotment for £850, which the club gratefully accepted. The second building, with its distinctive pair of cupolas, was designed by architect Edward Kretshmer, (who was permitted to describe the project in his promotional literature, below) and officially opened by President Jürgens on 24 May 1890.

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