Loading...

Swiss Settlers in New Zealand

A history of Swiss immigration to New Zealand

by Joan Waldvogel (Author)
©2018 Monographs 408 Pages
Series: Germanica Pacifica, Volume 16

Summary

The book presents the first comprehensive history of Swiss settlement in New Zealand. It describes Swiss settlement in New Zealand from the time of the gold rushes in the 1860s to the present day in a very accessible way. The focus is on the Swiss-born migrants: who they were, why they came, how they have adapted to life in New Zealand, and their ongoing links with their homeland and the Swiss community in New Zealand. The migrants’ stories are set in the historical and social context of the period in which they arrived.
The book is a mixture of archival and other research of primary and secondary resources, and life history interviews. It will appeal to academics interested in the New World and migration studies and to Swiss living in New Zealand and elsewhere.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author(s)/editor(s)
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Contents
  • Preface
  • Acknowledgements
  • Introduction
  • Chapter One The Gold Miners and First Swiss New Zealanders
  • Swiss Italian Identities
  • Chapter Two Two Pioneer Swiss
  • Jacob Lauper
  • Anton Fromm
  • Chapter Three Assisted Immigrants of the 1870s
  • Chapter Four Other Pioneer Swiss
  • The Helvetia Settlement
  • Chapter Five Swiss Settlement in Taranaki
  • Four Pioneer Families
  • Organised Groups
  • Chapter Six The Post-war Years
  • Post-war Settler Stories
  • Chapter Seven Late Twentieth-Century Settlers
  • Late Twentieth-Century Settler Stories
  • Chapter Eight The Millennials
  • Millennial Settler Stories
  • Chapter Nine Becoming Kiwi and Staying Swiss
  • Chapter Ten The Swiss Contribution
  • Appendices
  • Appendix I Swiss registered in New Zealand before 1900
  • Appendix II Swiss assisted immigrants of the 1870s and 1880s
  • Appendix III Swiss population in New Zealand
  • Bibliography
  • Index
  • Series index

ISSN 1439-3387
ISBN 978-3-631-74436-9 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-74632-5 (E-PDF)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-74633-2 (EPUB)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-74634-9 (MOBI)
DOI 10.3726/13282

© Peter Lang GmbH
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Berlin 2018
All rights reserved.

Peter Lang – Berlin · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

This book is part of the Peter Lang Edition list and was peer reviewed prior to publication.

www.peterlang.com

About the author(s)/editor(s)

Joan Waldvogel has a PhD in Applied Linguistics and worked as a teacher and social researcher.

About the book

The book presents the first comprehensive history of Swiss settlement in New Zealand. It describes Swiss settlement in New Zealand from the time of the gold rushes in the 1860s to the present day in a very accessible way. The focus is on the Swiss-born migrants: who they were, why they came, how they have adapted to life in New Zealand, and their ongoing links with their homeland and the Swiss community in New Zealand. The migrants’ stories are set in the historical and social context of the period in which they arrived.

The book is a mixture of archival and other research of primary and secondary resources, and life history interviews. It will appeal to academics interested in the New World and migration studies and to Swiss living in New Zealand and elsewhere.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

| 119 →

Chapter Four Other Pioneer Swiss

Outside of Taranaki, Swiss naturalised before 1914 settled in smaller numbers in the growing urban areas and in other parts of the country. This chapter discusses a number of these settlers.

South Island pioneer farmers

Three pioneer farmers in the South Island were Henry Feutz, George Golay and Emil Schlaepfer. Henry Feutz arrived in Lyttelton at the end of May 1876, on the Wairoa, having set sail from Gravesend in England on 14 March.360 He appears to have returned to Europe at some stage in the next ten years, as he came back to New Zealand with his wife in 1886, the same year in which he became naturalised. He had a sizeable farm in North Canterbury where he took an active part in community affairs. In 1909 he moved with his family to Christchurch.361

George Golay is known to have been in New Zealand in 1874.362 A beneficiary of the Lands for Settlement Act, he was successful, in 1894, in a ballot for the village homestead and rural lands thrown open for lease in perpetuity at Lake Ellesmere. This enabled him to get an advance from the government for house building and clearing the land.363 He died in 1908.

Emil Schlaepfer, a brother of Jacob and John who took over most of the Helvetia lands in Pukekohe, was a large landholder in the South Island. In the early 1900s he owned Lake Tekapo Station, one of the original Mackenzie Basin Pastoral Leases. In 1905 he was involved in an extraordinary accident. He was driving up the Mackenzie Country Road with an acquaintance, who was leading his horse behind, when

[…] without previous warning two cyclists overtook the buggy and swept past one on each side, yelling out as they did so […] The startled horse made a frantic leap and landed actually in the buggy with three of its legs: the horse in the shafts bolted and Mr Schlaepfer and Mr Lorgelly were thrown out, both being slightly stunned. Mr Schlaepfer also received such serious wounds from the stem of his pipe, which was driven in the fall ← 119 | 120 → into the roof of his mouth, that he is only slowly recovering from them.[…] The cyclists did not stop to assist, nor did they even go after the bolting horse […]364

In 1911, when the big farm stations were being broken up as part of the Liberal government’s attempts to bring about closer settlement, Tekapo Station was divided into two. Emil took over the homestead run which he sold three years later.

illustration

Nicholas Alexander Niederer (above) was one of Southland’s best known residents. As a young lad, he left his home canton of Appenzell and walked to Hamburg, in Germany, where he worked for a while before crossing to England and later sailing to New Zealand. When he arrived in 1874 aged twenty-two, he found employment on a sheep station in the Wanganui district, but a year later moved to the South Island to help build the Dunedin-Invercargill railway line. Bush work followed ← 120 | 121 → and then a store-keeping business. For seventeen years Nicholas hawked goods throughout Southland before taking up a block of land and going farming, as well as becoming involved in saw-milling and flax. A lover of native bush and wildlife, he preserved a section of his land in its native state. Nicholas was very involved with local community affairs. A widely read and self-taught man, he had decided views on religion, politics and prohibition which he expressed in the local press. In 1898, he took up the cause of the many Crown land tenants who felt they were paying too much rent for poor-quality land.365 Nicholas married the Scots widow of one of the workers killed in an accident at his sawmill.366

An academic and a clairvoyant

On 15 January 1887, the Otago Daily Times reported:

[…]much regret is expressed amongst scientific men that an interesting language should have become extinct. To prevent a similar fate overtaking the Maori language a Swiss gentleman, with linguistic capabilities, is about to visit Auckland. Dr R. Haeusler, a resident in the canton of Aargau, is a passenger by the Rimutaka, and it is said his chief object in visiting the Antipodes is to acquire the Maori tongue.

Rudolf Haeusler was a graduate of the Universities of Zurich and Vienna and had taught in England and Switzerland prior to settling in New Zealand.367 A friend of the famous Swiss palaeontologist, Henry Suter who is mentioned later in this chapter, Rudolf, his wife and son came to New Zealand on the same boat as Suter. The family lived in a number of places. Initially Rudolf offered private tuition in modern languages, the violin, drawing and painting, and evening classes for older boys and young men. In 1891, he was in Wanganui making a collection of fossils from the Tertiary Period for the Zurich Museum.368 By 1894, he was operating a boarding and day school in Hamilton, the Waikato College, which offered the basic subjects of the curriculum.369 His interest in the natural sciences is reflected in the letters he wrote to newspapers on topics such as weasels,370 the courting behaviour of the morepork, the New Zealand ← 121 | 122 → owl,371 the changed song habits of introduced birds, and marine phenomena.372 Three years before his death in Auckland in 1929, aged seventy-one,373 he made a second gift of Palaeolithic flint implements, found in moraines near Schaffhausen, to the Auckland Museum.374 Rudolf’s wife, Emily, and his son Rudolf Hans (Hans), were also teachers. Hans served in World War I and rose to the rank of major. He shared his father’s love of the natural world, and his observations on the kiwi375 and the shining cuckoo376 when he was teaching in rural areas in Northland and the East Coast, were published in the newspapers. Hans was well known for the lightning sketches he made. His son Jack, a pilot officer, was killed in action in 1942.

Amongst the early Swiss was ‘The Medical Clairvoyant, Signor Otto Bernard Hug. Although mainly living in Australia, Hug practised in New Zealand for a number of years in the 1880s and took out New Zealand citizenship. In the 1890s, he appears to have moved permanently to Australia where he died in 1901377 aged about forty-five. In New Zealand he had rooms in Wellington, and from there went as far afield as Marton and the West Coast to give consultations. An obituary which appeared in the Port Pirie Recorder on 30 January 1901, stated:

He was known as a medical clairvoyant and many incidents have been related to his wonderful ability while in a trance to diagnose the complaints of his patients. It has been said that his income at one time must have equalled the salary paid to the state governor, if not that of the governor-general. Yet such are human knowledge and skill, even when believed to approach the miraculous, that they are not able to prolong the days of the possessor […]

Watchmakers, hairdressers and others

A number of the urban dwellers were watchmakers. Apart from two of the earliest Swiss settlers, Paul Berthold and Paul Droz who carried out a watchmaking business in Auckland, and Emil Cattin who had a business in Wellington, there was James Hugli, ‘watchmaker, jeweller and optician’, who had a business ← 122 | 123 → in Feilding in the early 1880s.378 After the death of his wife in 1896, and the loss by fire of buildings he owned there, he sold up379 and returned to Switzerland.380

Gottfried Wahren operated a hairdresser and tobacconist shop with Jacob Staub in Wellington for over thirty years. Gottfried was one of a number of Swiss who were called on to interpret or translate for their fellow countrymen, or for people who spoke European languages with which the Swiss were familiar. One incident shows not only how high anti-German feelings ran during the war, but also that the Swiss could, inadvertently, be victims of these feelings.

A man named John Weston, imagining that he was upholding the prestige of the Empire, went into the shop of Gottfried Wahren, tobacconist, on Lambton Quay, yesterday, quarrelled with the proprietor on the ground that he was ‘only a German’, and struck him violently on the face. The logical consequence was his arrest, and the dumbfounded British champion discovered in the dock this morning that in his drunken zeal he had assaulted a native of Switzerland. He apologised profusely, but if the victim’s feelings were thereby soothed, the wrath of the law was only appeased when Mr. D. G. A. Cooper, S.M., had fined him £1, with the alternative of a fortnight in gaol.381

Gottfried’s brother, Theodore, was a plumber in Whangarei.

Adolf Herzog, a consulting engineer originally from Basel, also lived in Wellington before moving to Inglewood. He applied for at least two patents, one for injecting gas and air through a combination injector,382 and another for an auxiliary sawdust furnace-box with automatic feeding attachments for boilers.383

Jacob Bauer, who had joined the Waikato Militia and been wounded in one of the engagements, had a cabinet-making, upholstery and undertaking business in Hamilton after the New Zealand wars. It was said that there was no longer need to send to Auckland for ‘furniture of superior make’ as tradesman like Jacob Bauer had turned out:

really well finished and handsomely designed articles of furniture […] the kauri is worked up to an exquisite polish, the carving is thoroughly well finished, well-seasoned wood only used, and the nicety of work, especially in the fitting of drawers, so exact as to ensure comfort in using them.384 ← 123 | 124 →

The following year, beehives that he had made were very favourably commented on.385 In spite of all this, and possibly because of his bad leg, Jacob appeared to have difficulty in providing for his family, who, on at least one occasion, were left destitute.386

Another couple who settled in South Auckland were Charlotte and August Bay. Auguste was a dispensing chemist for Raglan and Kawhia settlers.387

A Swiss who lived on the East Coast was John James (Johann Jakob) Waldvogel who was farming in Kaiti in the late 1800s. During this time he and his wife also spent several years in Honolulu.388

Unhappy endings

Most of the early Swiss lived full and satisfying lives in New Zealand, but a small number had tragic endings. One of these was George Jecklin, a butcher in Kawhia, who had previously lived in the Waikato for a number of years. At the age of eighty-one and suffering failing health, he was found in his shop, a revolver in his hand.

He was highly respected for his exceedingly upright character. He was a fluent linguist in English, German, French and Italian, and acted as interpreter in the last-named language years ago in the Auckland courts. So far as is known he has no relatives in New Zealand, but is believed to have corresponded with a sister in Switzerland.389

George may have been related to Alphonso Jecklin, a miner on the West Coast.

In 1906 human remains were found in a creek near Masterton. The body was identified as that of John Hartmann who had mysteriously disappeared some two months previously. The inquest returned a verdict of suicide while temporarily insane.390 At the time of his naturalisation in 1905, John was a cabinet maker in Masterton.

The Helvetia Settlement

The Christchurch Exhibition of 1882 brought Ernst Eugster, an Appenzeller, to New Zealand. Eugster’s arrival set in motion the development of an Appenzell ← 124 | 125 → settlement in New Zealand. Ernst, the Executive Commissioner for the Swiss Government at the Sydney, Melbourne and Christchurch Exhibitions, was in charge of his country’s entries and had to report on the capabilities of New Zealand as a place for Swiss immigration and industrial enterprise.

In a letter to a friend in Adelaide, Ernst wrote: ‘with her Swiss-like scenery, silver streams, mountain lakes, snow-capped peaks, green pastures, fertile soils and her kindred people, New Zealand had charmed him the most’.391 Ernst was so enthusiastic about the country and its future that, on behalf of a syndicate of Swiss gentlemen, he purchased a block of nearly 4,000 acres of virgin land in the Pukekohe area, thirty miles south of Auckland and on the railway to Hamilton. A portion of the land was first class with the remainder undulating and of fair quality. The intention was to subdivide the block into small farms which the syndicate would lease and sell to: ‘bona fide settlers from my own and other countries who are anxious to throw in their lot with the noble people of New Zealand’.392 The new settlement was to be called Helvetia. Ernst believed that there was more scope for hard-working farmers in New Zealand, which he referred to as the fairy isles,393 than in Switzerland or the Australasian colonies, and that the country needed to be promoted more by the government.

All that New Zealand wants is proper advertising, to let intending emigrants abroad know all about her, and she is bound to get her full share of the exodus from the overcrowded parts of Europe. I am glad to see that New Zealand has some thorough champions abroad […] and I shall deem it as one of my most pleasant duties, on my return home, to join them, as much as time, ability, and opportunity may permit, in recognition of the boundless kindness and hospitality which I experienced at the hands of nearly all the inhabitants of this colony I came in contact with, as well as in that cosmopolitan feeling in which New Zealand ranks indeed foremost in the number of new countries fit for immigration, and which has only to be more fully known to be better and more universally appreciated.394

Details

Pages
408
Publication Year
2018
ISBN (PDF)
9783631746325
ISBN (ePUB)
9783631746332
ISBN (MOBI)
9783631746349
ISBN (Hardcover)
9783631744369
DOI
10.3726/b13282
Language
English
Publication date
2018 (November)
Keywords
Language maintenance Swiss contribution Migration reasons Assisted immigrants Integration Heritage maintenance
Published
Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2018., 407 pp., 59 fig. b/w, 2 tables
Product Safety
Peter Lang Group AG

Biographical notes

Joan Waldvogel (Author)

Joan Waldvogel has a PhD in Applied Linguistics and worked as a teacher and social researcher.

Previous

Title: Swiss Settlers in New Zealand