Somes Prisoners

Chapter Two

FROM VALUED SETTLERS TO ‘ENEMIES WITHIN’?

With the outbreak of war, the New Zealand Government responded immediately to its German-born population. Within days, it closed the German Consulates and seized their papers. It had individuals considered a potential threat arrested and interned, a few lucky ones being released on a restrictive parole. Throughout the war, and even after its conclusion, a range of anti-alien legislation controlled them. This control even involved forced repatriation to Germany for some after the war.

The German Consulates

When war broke out, the British Government stated that it no longer recognised consuls throughout the British Empire who represented Germany or Austria-Hungary. Furthermore, it insisted that consuls holding the nationality of those two countries were to leave its territories. It also terminated the positions of British subjects who acted as consuls to either country.[i]

On 9 August 1914, New Zealand’s Minister of Internal Affairs instructed the Police to visit the five German Consulates, those of Carl Seegner (Auckland), F.A. Krull (Wanganui), Eberhard Focke (Wellington), Karl Joosten (Christchurch) and Willi Fels (Dunedin). Thus on 10 August, the police informed these men, all naturalised British subjects, of their changed circumstances in accordance with the British request, adding that any future communication they had with Germany became a treasonable offence. Furthermore, they seized and sealed up all archival material held at the consulates in the four main centres that related to consular activities. The material was to remain in custody, they explained, until the war ended. Any consul claiming German nationality could have left the country with his papers.[ii]  The books and documents, in three boxes and a hamper, were deposited at the Public Trust Office in Wellington.[iii] The fifth Consul, F.A. Krull, formerly senior German Consul and latterly Consul for the Wanganui district, had actually retired from the position about two years earlier. Krull had been influential during much of his fifty-year career as Consul in matters relating to Manawatu-Rangitikei.[iv] The Minister of Internal Affairs was especially interested in the possibility that these archives contained the names of German Army Reservists living in New Zealand. He anticipated breaking the containers’ seals at some future time to search for such lists.[v]

The German Government considered this seizure to be a violation of International Law, and by November 1914, it and the Austro-Hungarian Government had invited the neutral United States Government to take charge of their Consulates in New Zealand. The American Consul General, J.I. Brittain, attempted unsuccessfully to recover the material. Although granted permission to inspect it, he could not do so unless a reliable police officer remained with him to ensure that he removed nothing.[vi] The archive of the Austro-Hungarian Consulate in Auckland had not been seized.[vii] In June 1917, the German Government again attempted to recover the material. This time it requested the help of the British Government (via the Swiss Government) to pressure the New Zealand Government. Again, the effort proved in vain.[viii] When Seegner’s widow made inquiries about it four years later, the archive remained in storage at Wellington.[ix]

At least three of the former consuls (Seegner, Joosten and Focke) suffered internment during the war. The former obtained a controversial early release due to terminal diabetes.[x] In fact, he survived until 1920.[xi] Focke and Joosten actively represented their fellow internees on Somes Island and later at Featherston.[xii] The Government revoked the naturalisation papers of all three men in 1918,[xiii] but apparently spared the same fate, the fourth former consul, Willi Fels, had his naturalisation endorsed under the Imperial Certificate Act, 1928, in 1932.[xiv] Krull suffered a stroke and died in November 1914, leaving his family believing his premature death to be a consequence of the war.[xv]

Anti-Alien Legislation

The Government also introduced legislation to control the activities of aliens within New Zealand. Most targeted enemy aliens, but some, such as the Registration of Aliens Act, 1917, inadvertently had a much wider reaching effect. The War Regulations Act, 1914, and its successors permitted the Government to regulate the powers and duties of the Defence Forces, the Police and others acting on “His Majesty’s behalf.” Regulations under this Act also prohibited activities considered injurious to public safety, such as by enemy aliens, and established penalties for wrongdoers.[xvi]

By July 1917, twelve regulations aimed at controlling aliens existed under the War Regulations Acts.[xvii] The 1914 regulations permitted enemy alien to be tried by Court Martial. They required all enemy aliens to report to the Police. They also prohibited them from changing their names. Regulations added in 1915 included the powers to arrest and intern enemy aliens and sons of enemy aliens, to prevent them from leaving New Zealand without the permission of the Minister of Defence, to define the term ‘alien enemy’, and to arrest any alien. Added to these in 1916 were regulations preventing enemy aliens from commencing and operating businesses in New Zealand, or acquiring shares or debentures in a New Zealand company. The regulations also prohibited them from engaging in foreign trade. Furthermore, they stipulated that enemy aliens could not land in New Zealand, and anyone appearing to be an enemy alien would be presumed to be one until “he” produced evidence to the contrary.[xviii]

The 1915 Alien Enemy Teachers Act was the first legislation passed in New Zealand during this period that was aimed entirely at enemy aliens. It banned payment of public money to any educational institution that employed an enemy alien teacher. Furthermore, it prevented such teachers from taking legal action over the termination of their employment.[xix] Although aimed at enemy aliens in general, this Act primarily targeted the German-born, but English-raised Professor George von Zedlitz, a lecturer at Victoria University College. Von Zedlitz was unnaturalised.[xx]

Most of New Zealand’s anti-alien legislation (some unsuccessfully), passed through the House in late 1917. The first to be passed, in September 1917, was the Revocation of Naturalisation Act.[xxi] This Act permitted the removal of British naturalisation from anyone whose activities the Government considered to be outside the best interests of the country. It applied to immigrants born anywhere outside the British Empire, since German migrants had settled throughout the world. For example, the Government was conscious that American-born descendants of German migrants might now be in New Zealand.[xxii]

This Act also ensured that the Government could denaturalise the adult son or daughter of a naturalised immigrant, and even a woman who gained her naturalisation by marrying a British subject. At this time a wife automatically received the nationality of her husband, thus a New Zealand-born woman became an ‘alien’ if she married an unnaturalised man. As only the suspect had his or her naturalisation revoked, partners and children might remain British subjects. What the Act did not allow was the right of appeal by anyone whose naturalisation it revoked. The Government view was that the sources of information it used in such cases, should remain secret.[xxiii]

Although the Revocation of Naturalisation Act affected only a few, the Registration of Aliens Act[xxiv], passed on 29 September 1917, came to affect far more people than the Government ever intended. This Act dealt with people of either sex who were not less than fifteen years old and not British subjects by birth or naturalisation in New Zealand. Thus, naturalised immigrants did not have to register, regardless of their country of origin. The Act permitted the compilation of a Register of Aliens, containing the names and addresses of people born outside the British Empire and who still held ‘foreign’ nationality. Failure to register, at the local police station, could result in a £50 fine.

The War Legislation Act[xxv], passed on 31 October 1917, permitted the Supreme Court to forfeit to the Crown any forfeitable estate or interest in land acquired by an enemy alien since the war began. An Order of Forfeiture on such property could be made during or after the war. The Government retained the right to distribute the proceeds of any subsequent sales as it saw fit. This Act also dealt with the electoral rights of enemy aliens. They could not vote in local authority elections or be elected or appointed as a member of those bodies. Aliens who were not enemy aliens could not be elected or appointed as members of such a body, but were permitted to vote, unless specifically disqualified by statute.

Between 1916 and 1919, John Brown, M.P. for Napier, made four attempts to pass the Naturalised Subjects’ Franchise Bill.[xxvi] This Bill aimed to prevent naturalised people born in enemy countries from voting, occupying a variety of public offices including Parliamentary offices, and from holding liquor licences. The Bill copied almost word for word the Naturalised Subjects’ Franchise Act passed in New South Wales in 1916.[xxvii] While the Bill was never passed, aspects of it were included in the Registration of Aliens Act, 1917, and the War Legislation Act, 1917. Brown also unsuccessfully introduced the Registration of Business Names Bill, another anti-alien bill, on four of the five occasions it appeared between 1917 and 1921.[xxviii]

Somes Island Internment Camp

When war broke out in 1914, the New Zealand Government faced another problem; how to deal with people immediately considered a security threat. A number of German men living in or visiting New Zealand when war broke out were members of the German Army Reserve, and would have served in Germany’s Armed Forces were they not absent. Some of these men were seamen whose ships were simply in the wrong port at the wrong time. Their personal allegiance doubtless rested with Germany. Others were immigrants, whose personal allegiances were a little less certain. The Minister of Internal Affairs had hoped to find the names of these potential threats when he had the German Consulates raided on 10 August 1914.[xxix]

Defeat at the hands of Napoleon in 1806 had led to the reorganisation of the Prussian military and ultimately to the predicament in which these men found themselves. Napoleon told Prussia that in future it could only have a standing army of 42,000 men. To counter this, Prussia’s military reforms of 1814 and 1815 introduced its male population to conscription and lengthy service in the Prussian Army. Thereafter they spent a longer period in the reserves while going about their normal civilian lives. Thus, Prussia’s small ‘official’ army operated alongside a far larger one held in reserve.[xxx]

By 1914, every German man aged between 17 and 45 years, “unless a member of the ruling classes or certain princely families,” was liable for military service. Active service involved two or three years in the standing army and four or five in the reserves. Thereafter men transferred to the Landwehr, or militia, where they spent their first five years in the 1st Battalion. When they turned 38, they transferred to the Landwehr’s 2nd Battalion. From there until the age of 45 they served in the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the Landsturm, which aimed to defend Germany or “in extraordinary circumstances to provide reinforcements for the Standing Army.” As a result, Germany’s peacetime standing army of some 800,000 could expand upon mobilisation to over 3 million.[xxxi] The New Zealand authorities therefore reacted as if they were dealing with a small contingent of trained German soldiers living within New Zealand’s borders.

The Government had selected Somes Island in Wellington Harbour, as a suitable internment camp for civilian prisoners of war. With a tendency to strong winds and frequent rain, the island had previously ‘welcomed’ immigrants and later livestock to the country during a forty-year career as a quarantine station. Large buildings dating back to its human quarantining days had been maintained, if unused, for many years.[xxxii] These then were to be the internees’ homes for the next four years.

New Zealand established two internment camps for civilian prisoners of war. In addition, in April 1916, a detention barracks at Devonport held 13 men. Somes Island, in Wellington Harbour, held the “ordinary grade” internees. Motuihi Island, in the Hauraki Gulf, held those of the “higher grade.” Most of these prisoners entered captivity during New Zealand’s occupation of Western Samoa in 1914. Count Felix von Luckner and some of his raider’s crew also usually resided here. In April 1916, Motuihi held 42 prisoners. By late 1917, it held 55 men and one woman, all but four of them German. [xxxiii]

The commandant of Somes Island throughout the internment period was Major Dugald Matheson.[xxxiv] A former schoolteacher who grew up in the Manawatu, Matheson taught at Stanway School, near Halcombe, between 1894 and 1901. He would therefore have taught the children of, and mingled with, the many Scandinavian and German families living in that district. Possibly this previous experience with these immigrants influenced the decision to give him command of Somes Island. Matheson taught at Wellington Boys College between 1901 and his retirement due to ill health in 1913. His services with the Defence Department appear to have ended around the time the prisoners left and during the 1920s, he returned to primary school teaching.[xxxv]

Immediately war broke out, the Government began seeking those it regarded as potentially dangerous.[xxxvi] On 8 August 1914, the Police Commissioner, J. Cullen, ordered the arrest and detention of all German officers and reservists as prisoners of war. The Police were also to watch Austrian officers and reservists.[xxxvii] In response to a range of confused replies,[xxxviii] Cullen advised his staff that they required no arrest warrant to do this[xxxix] and were to deliver prisoners to the nearest Defence Headquarters. The Defence authorities in turn would deliver them to Wellington.[xl]

Three brothers, Ludwig (c34), Otto (28) and Michael (25) Eder from Lower Bavaria, all flaxmill workers at Foxton and all German Army Reservists, were “captured” on 10 August 1914 and taken to Somes Island. The two youngest Eders were single and had been in New Zealand only 11 months. Ludwig, having spent two years in the German Army, was in its Second Reserves. He and his wife emigrated around 1908 and Ludwig found work in September 1909 at William Ross & Son’s flaxmill. By 1914, they had five children, a section, a whare and no money. He did, however, have the support of his employer, Alexander Ross, several leading Foxton residents and the Sub-Inspector of Police at Palmerston North, all of whom vouched for his character and worthiness to be released on parole. He had an important role in Ross’s business and the Sub-Inspector, also realised that his family would soon be destitute without him. Thus, he received parole on 16 August, no doubt to the great relief of all concerned.[xli] In June 1916, John Payne, M.P. for Grey Lynn and the parliamentary mouthpiece of the Anti-German League, asked the Minister of Defence why Ludwig was released and held an engineering job in Ross’s company that a “Britisher” should have. Sir James Allen spoke of the above arrangements and added that “In this case consideration was given to the position of Eder’s wife and five children, British-born subjects, who were without money and would have become a charge upon the state.”[xlii]

Clearly, the Government recognised that one implication of interning breadwinners was the hardships suffered by families. Thus on 2 October 1914, the Department of Health, Hospitals and Charitable Aid issued a circular to Hospital and Charitable Aid Boards around the country, agreeing to pay half of any relief they supplied to such families.[xliii]

Although no date appears on the list concerned, nine men from Manawatu, Rangitikei and Horowhenua suffered internment in the early days of the war. W.P. Appelt and C. Branckebursch came from Palmerston North, F.L.C. Dorsch from Halcombe; C.N. Eckhardt from Marton, E. Fischer from Feilding, M. and O. Eder and E. Schneider from Foxton, and C. Stamzar from Levin. Of these, Appelt, Dorsch, the Eder brothers and Schneider were Reservists, Eckhardt was considered dangerous and Fischer, a married man, was under suspicion. Branckebursch had criminal charges pending against him and his internment was at the recommendation of the police. Stamzar, an Austrian, had failed to report to the police.[xliv] Only Appelt and the Eder brothers appear in the Alien Register as being on the island by late 1917 (See Appendix Table 5).[xlv] Branckebursch and Fischer, however, were amongst those released in late 1919.[xlvi]

Prisoner numbers gradually increased throughout the war. The 80 shocked and highly agitated internees of 12 August 1914,[xlvii] became the 246 more orderly prisoners of April 1916, 215 (87%) being German.[xlviii] In late 1917 Somes held 277 men, 234 (84%) of them German.[xlix] By May 1918, the camp housed 313 internees.[l] The xenophobia of the time saw the authorities plagued with information on potential internees whose real crime was their ethnicity.[li] Others, such as Mangaweka jeweller Max Bornhold, a former Lieutenant in the Army Reserves, made the mistake of tangling with the New Zealand mail censor.

The Bornhold family arrived in New Zealand in 1898, after five years in Queensland. Max Bornhold was naturalised in 1905 and at about this time he endeavoured to give up his German nationality. He found, though, that an 1869 German law stated that any German subject who lived in a foreign country for ten years, “unless matriculated at the German Consulate of that country,” lost all the rights of his nationality and automatically ceased to be a subject of the German Empire. Bornhold thus considered himself”a full British subject, with all the right, duties and responsibilities entailed by that position.”[lii]

Unfortunately, Bornhold’s pride in his homeland, and the fact that his wife and daughter were in Germany when war broke out, proved to be his downfall. The former came to the attention of the authorities in October 1914 in a letter from an ex-acquaintance. The latter predicament resulted in Bornhold’s internment. In an attempt to provide for his family stranded in Germany, Bornhold sent money to them via a relative in the United States. Unfortunately, the Censor found his wife’s ‘thank you’ letter, sent back by the same route.[liii]

On 7 August 1916, the local constable woke Bornhold and took him to Wellington. After a lengthy wait at the Defence Department, Bornhold discovered he was there to be interned. His tools, repair work and merchandise lay untouched until late February 1917, when he and a camp guard visited Mangaweka to pack them. The guard reported that “Bornhold has had a very friendly reception from the townsfolk generally.”[liv]

Problems on Somes Island

The Hague Convention, otherwise known as the ‘International Convention with respect to the Laws and Customs of War by Land,’ dates to 1899. The revised and renewed 1907 version provided the conditions under which New Zealand was to run its internment camps. Great Britain had signed the Convention on behalf of the British Empire, including New Zealand.[lv] This required that:

 “Prisoners of war must be humanely treated, protected from violence, not subject to reprisals, and supplied with reasonable nourishment as well as medical and sanitary facilities. They are regarded as being in the power of the Government of the captors, and not in that of the captors themselves; their personal belongings (other than arms and military papers) remain their own; they may not be detained in a convict prison; the captor State may utilize their labour, except in the case of officers, with payment according to rank and ability, but they may not be engaged in excessive work or any tasks relating to military operations.”[lvi]

Prisoners of war in New Zealand were the prisoners of the British Government, not of the New Zealand Government. Imperial instructions, as well as the Hague Convention, thus guided New Zealand’s actions regarding their treatment.[lvii] This guidance did not, however, extend readily to the release of internees into private employment. By June 1916, by which time the British Government had freed some 15,000 prisoners under these terms, the New Zealand Government had freed only two. Even the German Government released British prisoners of war under a similar scheme.[lviii]

Allegations of ill treatment on Somes Island led to a Royal Commission, conducted in 1918 by Judge Frederick R. Chapman. According to the Feilding Star of 30 March 1918, Chapman was the only New Zealand judge familiar with the German language. He was also an authority on international law. Despite an earlier attempt by the United States Consul to have the situation examined,[lix] the Swiss Consul only succeeded in this advocacy role after his visit to the island in January 1918. Other pressure had come from Count Felix von Luckner, formerly commander of the German raider Seeadler, but by then a resident of Motuihi Island Internment Camp. A Seeadler crewmember interned on Somes had informed him of conditions there.[lx]

Two small exercise books now held at the Alexander Turnbull Library provide vivid accounts of the prisoners’ perspective of the behaviour of Major Matheson and the guards. Chapman, however, considered much of the evidence presented to him to be unsatisfactory or exaggerated, and that those who complained tended to have flawed characters if he investigated their backgrounds. He branded most as simply troublemakers. He also found that even those with grievances still remarked on acts of kindness they had received from the staff.[lxi] If their claims were true, and they prepared themselves quite well,[lxii] then Chapman often fobbed them off. At the same time, though, he did concede that some guards were probably not “men of such character as to justify placing them in positions of responsibility.”[lxiii]

Karl Joosten, former German consul at Christchurch, served as spokesperson for the internees at this time. He also acted as interpreter at their request. The series of statements recorded in the aforementioned exercise books reveal graphic detail of alleged beatings, abuse and humiliation, and also that some of this punishment was inflicted because non-English-speaking internees did not always understand instructions given by guards.[lxiv]  It also reveals that internees recognised their rights under the Hague Convention and that some of their protests were in response to alleged violations.

Chapman considered that the Somes Island internees had been forced to do work that they should not have been compelled to do. This included road making (other than tracks for their own use as recreation grounds), carrying water and provisions up to the camp, and making and tending a vegetable garden. This had been done from the beginning without remuneration and therefore was a clear violation of the Hague Convention. The spokesman for the Somes Island prisoners, presumably Joosten, remarked in response that, “This question of compulsory work is at the bottom of most of the trouble. If it were not enforced more than half the trouble would disappear.” A report submitted on the largest internment camp in Australia showed that, in exchange for payment, large numbers of internees had volunteered to work. Chapman did not know if payment would be the answer on Somes.[lxv] Certainly, it would have helped.

The transcript of a speech made by Matheson on 16 August 1916, in Karl Joosten’s handwriting, indicates someone acting on unrestrained racism. It also confirms the mutual hatred between gaolers and gaoled. Matheson acknowledged that he made this speech, the contents of which Chapman described as “inexcusable”.[lxvi] Joosten’s statement to Chapman, dated 28 May 1918, reveals the internees’ total lack of respect for Matheson, both as a soldier and as a “gentleman.” Joosten also looked forward to a more dispassionate investigation of conditions at the camp, some time in the future.[lxvii] Chapman concluded his report aware of its many imperfections. After hearing 113 witnesses, he described the inquiry as an unpleasant and “painful task of listening to a contest between men who throughout exhibited much bitterness towards each other, freely imputing bad faith and other offences. In all my career I do not think I have seen so much evidence of bitterness and animosity.”[lxviii]

Despite the problems encountered during internment, life on the outside was at least as difficult. The majority of un-naturalised ‘enemy aliens’ remained at large, reporting regularly to the police. As employment opportunities evaporated, many even asked to be interned and thereby maintained. The Government, to the regret of many in the wider population, could not oblige them all.[lxix]