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Experts et expertise dans les mandats de la société des nations : figures, champs, outils

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Philippe Bourmaud
, 
Norig Neveu
, 
Chantal Verdeil

L'internationalisation des mandats : processus normatif et constitution de champs des savoirs

(Un-)mixing in the Mandate: purity and the persistence of “German-time” in New Guinea

(Dé-)mêlés dans le mandat : pureté et maintien à « l’heure allemande » en Nouvelle-Guinée

Christine Winter

Zusammenfassung

The crisis of the League of Nations destabilized the legitimacy of mandate rule in the Pacific during the mid‑1930s. Purity and persistence of Germanness became a theme for both the mandate Administration and the Third Reich. In this chapter I explore the role and function of Germans of ambiguous racial belonging, namely mixed‑race German Pacific Islanders, in a wider contest of expert advice and policy development. Racial scientists, German missionaries and ex‑colonial officials all had a stake in the future of the mandated Territories, and its mixed‑race German population. Depending on the argument and on their place of residency—Germany or the Pacific—mixed‑race German‑Pacific Islanders were used as fellow Germans or as “natives” to legitimize German claims.

Volltext

  • 1 “To You, whom I found as Germans in the South Sea”; 3.9.1930 Walter Rothe, dem Deutschen Klub Raba (...)

Let further sound your German melodies,
Continue to speak your mother tongue’s sweet sound,
So you can prove it to the world with pride,
that in Germany’s future again you count.1
(Walter Rothe to German Club Rabaul, 1930)

1During the mid‑1930s the crisis of the League of Nations accelerated, and the future of the Pacific mandates seemed uncertain. With a return of colonies to Germany possible, local German residents were courted by Germany, while Australia and New Zealand respectively kept a close and watchful eye. Purity and persistence of Germanness became a theme for both the mandate administration and the Third Reich. In this chapter I will explore the role and function of Germans of ambiguous belonging, namely mixed‑race Germans, in a wider contest of expert advice and policy development.

2Throughout the interwar period the Mandated Territories in the Pacific, administered by Australia, New Zealand and Japan, were ambivalent possessions, dependent of the strength and legitimacy of the League, challenged by Germany as colonies to be returned. That Germany was primarily interested in keeping a strong German presence in South‑West Africa but that it had very little interest in its former Pacific possessions was not necessarily clear at the time to the Mandate Administrations, or to the local German population. The remaining Germans in New Guinea and Samoa, and the validity and value of German colonialism, became an undercurrent to contested claims and visions. I mainly focus on the C Mandate of New Guinea, with references to developments in Samoa and South‑West Africa. I explore these debates, underpinned by desires for pure categories, as legitimatization for colonial ownership. In the contest of colonial ownership expertise of various kinds assisted in erasing or asserting Germanness and German claims to rule.

Disappearing Germans

3After the initial negotiations leading to the creation of the special case of C Mandates the three white dominions, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand parted in regard to their dealings with the remaining German population of their new territories. South Africa deported only a small minority. The remaining Germans were given an ultimatum to accept citizenship—the status of British subjects—or leave the Mandate.

4Australia and New Zealand in contrast expropriated plantations and other landholdings, and deported the majority of Germans, with the exception of Germans with local marriage ties. Officially “German time” was over in the Pacific Mandates. In Samoa, due to a longstanding German presence that predated German formal colonialism, there were numerous families with local ties, “mixed‑race” Germans in the second or third generation. Because of the post‑war deportation of Germans the German community in Samoa transformed into a unique mixed‑race community.

  • 2 For the period of military occupation of ex‑German New Guinea see Rowley, 1958 and Mackenzie, 1987 (...)

5German influence in New Guinea also subtly persisted. Due to the terms of surrender in German New Guinea German rules and regulations had to be left in place until the war ended. Between 1921 and 1924 gradually and slowly German structures, regulations and laws were modified or replaced. Removing all things German was not easy: the patrol stations, for example, remained very much the same, dense in some regions, patterned sparsely in the hinterland, where German plantation owners, missionaries and traders continued to control the lives of the locals. In theory all Germans were repatriated, unless they were married to a British or New Guinean spouse (woman). By 1918, however, already a fair number of the 660 Germans in the territory suddenly discovered that they were really Czech or Dutch, or, being Samoan‑German, were actually Pacific Islanders. A number of Germans had come to German New Guinea during the 1890s as a secondary migration, lured away from cane growing in Queensland by promises of riches and low‑interest credit in the new German colony. When Germany lost the war, they produced earlier naturalization papers, and reverted back to being British Naturalised Subjects.2

  • 3 Australian War Memorial (henceforth AWM) AWM 33, 56/4, Administrator to Secretary, Department of D (...)

6Local Samoan‑Germans were members of the family of American‑Samoan businesswoman Emma Coe, who had assisted them to come to New Guinea from Samoa. There they had married German planters or government officials. In legally recognized marriages, they and their children retained German citizenship, but endeavored to join the new Australian‑dominated colonial elite. During 1918 Etti Kaumann, for example, divorced her husband, Georg Paul Kaumann, securing her share of the Kurakakaul Plantation, near Rabaul, and avoiding being deported with him to Germany. She sought to establish friendly relationships with the Administration, and gifted with purpose, donating for example several masks and a costume worn by dancers in ceremonies of the Tolai “Duk Duk” society to the Australians for their newly established War Museum. That German‑Samoans were perceived as racially ambiguous by the Australians strangely aided a reclassification from German enemy to fellow “near white” colonisers. An application to allow a boy, Eric Rondahl, to proceed to Sydney for schooling was supported by the Administrator. He explained to the Department of Defence: “Eric Rondahl’s mother is a half caste Samoan. He is essentially a Pacific Islander, and as I have already issued a Passport to his father as a Swede, I propose to treat him in the same way.”3

  • 4 Politisches Archiv der Auswärtigen Amtes, Berlin (henceforth AA), Deutsche Botschaft London, Paket (...)

7Germanness receded from visibility. The German Consul Koeltsch, who visited New Guinea and the Australian territory of Papua in 1933, commented, that the Germans in New Guinea were low in numbers and in a weak economic position. The second generation, those born in New Guinea, had either little or no feelings for “their old home land.” “One can in general speak about a decline of Germanness.”4 Many of these no‑longer Germans, however, reappeared during the mid‑1930s, when claims for a return of German colonies intensified. They became a focus for German consular representatives in search of Germans loyal to Reich and Führer, and a concern for the Mandate Administration, anxious about foreigners disloyal to Australian rule.

  • 5 National Archives of Australia (hereinafter NAA), MP 508/1, 52/701/154, District Censor, Brisbane (...)

8In addition, Australia hesitated to remove German missionaries, opting for a transition period for two reasons. Firstly, a hand over period was seen as necessary to train up Australian and American missionaries. And secondly Australia was unsure how to interpret the Mandate’s guaranteed “freedom of conscience and religion,” and decided to err on the side of caution. By 1927, when the transition period was set to end, Germany was certain to join the League of Nations in the near future, and thus German missionaries were allowed to stay, and new ones were admitted. At the outbreak of the Pacific War, according to official figures 473 Germans resided in the Territory, of whom 412 were employed by missions.5

  • 6 Kaima, 2000.
  • 7 The themes of “loyalty” and “disloyalty” are central of Australian colonial discourses. See Nelson(...)

9With the removal of German officials, who had undertaken linguistic and ethnographic work, these German missionaries with long‑standing ties to New Guinean villagers became the local experts on “native” culture. For German‑based ethnologists unable to easily access the “field,” they were important informants and collaborators. As Australian patrols only slowly expanded on the mainland, they were also in some regions the de‑facto colonial rulers well into the early 1930s. The New Guinean historian Sam Kaima, set out how New Guineans on the Huon Peninsula witnessed and remembered the realities and impact of the Pacific war. New Guineans developed their own chronology: taim belong faet [fighting time], succeeded by taim bilong Australia na kipa [Australian and Kiap time]; and preceding World War II German taim [German time].6 In other words, in some parts of New Guinea Germans were seen by local villagers as the colonial rulers right up to World War II. With the advent of the Mandate the Australian Administration imposed a declaration of loyalty (to Australia) on all German missionaries in an attempt to control their influence and conduct.7

The role of the legal expert in erasing Germans

10Amongst the disappearing Germans in ex‑German New Guinea were individuals and families whose mixed‑race heritage allowed legal categorisations to remove them from Germanness. But while mixed‑race Germans of Samoan‑Polynesian background were incorporated as (near) white, New Guinean‑Melanesian background invoked a different treatment.

11From March 1921, Brigadier General Evan Wisdom made it his priority as civilian Administrator to convert the improvised military administration into a professional public service. He urged the Australian government to expel and remove all Germans, and sought to replace German laws and regulations.

12In October 1921, he brought to the attention of the mainland bureaucracy an oversight in Mandate Ordinances. They were “silent” on the status of what he called “civilized half‑castes.” He wrongly assumed that there had been no legal marriages between Germans and New Guineans and that therefore all offspring had been illegitimate and were classified according to the “status” of their mother, namely as “natives.” Wisdom supported the introduction of an exemption clause to cover all half‑castes of what he called “part European” origin:

  • 8 NAA, A1, 1925/4666, Administrator Wisdom to The Secretary, Prime Minister’s Department, 3 November (...)

I am quite willing for the half‑caste who lives European‑wise to have a European status as I consider that he [sic] should have some goal to reach for if he is to be classed as a native in all events there is no inducement to rise.8

  • 9 The Permanent Mandates Commission, granting an exemption to South Africa for the collective natura (...)

13The mainland bureaucracy explained to Wisdom that the relevant Ordinance, modeled on the Papuan Native Regulation Ordinance 1908, already allowed for all that Wisdom wanted. The privilege of European status for half‑castes could be granted or withdrawn at anytime, based on an assessment of perceived life‑style. Such privileged status had been a birth right under the German colonial system, a legal entitlement that was for life, as long as parents registered their marriage; it now became a temporary reward, a means of controlling behaviour. Wisdom’s classification of the “civilised half‑caste” as “European” was a moral and social construct. It avoided concepts of citizenship. One could ask if Wisdom’s assumption that no registered mixed marriages existed was really a mistake, or more a pragmatic oversight. By defining the children of German fathers not as “part‑German” but as “part‑European” German citizenship was removed from people who could not be expelled from the territory. Curiously, their racialised New Guinean descent led to a de‑nationalisation and an erasure of their German heritage. At the same time Wisdom (unsuccessfully) lobbied for a total removal of all Germans from the Mandate, including missionaries.9

14The Commonwealth crown solicitor took the argument one step further, by subordinating foreign citizenship under Australian racial laws in the new legal entity of the Mandate of the League of Nations. In New Guinea, as Australia interpreted it at the time, no naturalization was possible and in regard to acquiring citizenship through birth or marriage international law applied, which at times was difficult to interpret, contradictory and confusing. The Mandated Territory’s Acting Crown Law Officer wrote in exasperation:

  • 10 NAA, A1, 1925/4666, Administrator Wisdom to The Secretary, Prime Minister’s Department, 5 November (...)

The whole question of nationality is perplexed, owing to the peculiar terms of the mandate. […] Owing to the lack of text‑books and recent authorities dealing with this subject, I am unable to give a more definite opinion.10

  • 11 NAA, A1, 1925/4666, Solicitor‑General to The Secretary, Department of Home and Territories, 16 Feb (...)

15The Mandate Administration sought clarification from the Commonwealth Solicitor‑General as the legal expert, who responded that a native woman marrying an alien, who had a nationality other than British, acquired her husband’s nationality. This, however, did not exempt any native of alien citizenship or her children from the Ordinances of the Territory relating to natives.11 Citizenship was irrelevant when it came to classifying a “native” and her “half‑caste” children. In other words, racial classifications were used to remove all traces of foreign (German) nationality and accompanying rights.

“Our German”: the Unserdeutsch community

16In Samoa, a German colony from 1900, and in control of New Zealand from 1914, there was a mix of legally registered mixed marriages, and local custom marriages. Marriage prohibitions, that have received a lot of attention in academic writings on German colonialism in Samoa, actually came late, namely in 1912, and ended in 1914 with the military occupation by New Zealand. In contrast in New Guinea legally registered marriages were the exception, and the majority of mixed‑race children of German and New Guinean descent were the offspring of unregistered partnerships. The majority of their German fathers, unprotected by local marriage ties, were subsequently deported at the end of the war. The children were left bereft and without the support of their white parent, sheltering them against the whims of a regime that was based on racial inequality. For some of these children Germanness became a valued treasure, that despite legal reclassifications, they were not willing to forgo.

  • 12 See Volker, 1991; Mühlhäusler, 2012.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬ (...)
  • 13 See Winter, 2012.
  • 14 Copy in private possession of author.
  • 15 Janssen, 1932, p. 151.

17In New Guinea a specific Catholic‑German identity originated at the Catholic mixed‑race school at Vunapope. Linguists have identified the unique German “Creole” langue spoken by the children amongst themselves in the dormitories as “Rabaul Creole German” or Unserdeutsch. Volker and others have argued that it originates during the 1890s, or at about 1903, when the school transformed from a day school into a boarding school.12 The precise origins of the language are, however, somewhat guesswork. German government reports on schooling in New Guinea from 1903 and 1906/7 stress a lack of spoken German amongst half‑caste children. At Vunapope the children were reported to speak “Pidgin‑English” amongst each other, the local language of trade and commerce. An upsurge of Unserdeutsch as a private in‑group language might well have been connected to endeavors to assert a German identity at a time of change, that included the deportation of German fathers and more importantly a switch of the official school language from German to English. I have elsewhere detailed cases of assertion of Germanness and dignity after the loss of the father after World War I, expressed for example in rituals of washing.13 However, as the school register shows,14 a number of the defiantly German speaking children were not of German heritage, but of New Guinean and Filipino, Malay or Japanese descent. Germaness provided an identity option beyond the “civilised European halfcaste” on offer by the Australian Administration. When I met members of the Unserdeutsch Diaspora in Australia in 2014, I heard two strong themes expressed: Unserdeutsch is the language in which the speaker can be and say anything “freely,” and, it provides an identity apart from a New Guinean (“Schwarze”) and an Australian‑British identity. German was no longer the official school language at Vunapope, but it remained as Unserdeutsch the chosen language of the Rabaul‑educated mixed‑race community for the next five decades. The German Catholic missionaries, in contrast, adjusted quickly to the Mandate and Australian rule. Catholicism and a Catholic education was, as the director of the school Pater Arnold Janssen declared, the priority.15

The racial expert: colonial desires and the new aryan community

  • 16 Pedersen, 2015, pp. 196‑7; quote footnote 9.
  • 17 See Walther, 2002.
  • 18 Pedersen singles out in particular Edmund von Brueckner, former Governor of Togo and from 1924 to  (...)
  • 19 For examples of relationships of ex‑colonial officers and Africans from the ex‑German colonies see (...)

18Pragmatism, as Susan Pedersen summarizes, dominated Weimar Germany’s approach to colonialism. Instead of a return of colonies, as some pro‑colonial German movements argued and demanded, repurchase on a local level and economic penetration seemed more promising. Germans were encouraged to buy plantations in the Mandates. The foreign office assisted Germans to migrate to Namibia, in order to keep it “an essentially German land.”16 With a focus on individuals as the German colonial presence Germany used networking and information flow, publications and education subsidies to keep Germans abroad German.17 The Colonial Association under the presidency of Theodor Seitz, suggested even more pragmatically to support the principle of self‑determination. African nations, discontent with present Mandate rule, on gaining self‑determination would turn to Germany for economic and political guidance. The debate was all about influence, not ownership. The main drivers of this strategy of informal German colonialism were former colonial officers within the foreign office.18 Like with other ex‑colonial networks there was an emotional quality palpable underneath the pragmatic veneer, that expressed itself as care and concern for people—colonizers and colonized alike—connected to the old German colonies, though it was at times patriarchal and patronizing. The mythical figure of the “true Askari,” developed in post‑World War I Germany, standing by his German colonial master until the end and beyond, had a projecting mirror‑image: the ex‑colonial official.19

  • 20 See Winter, 2012.

19In 1933, the new National Socialist government set out to rapidly reform and alter Germany. The new race laws hastily put in place after the Boycott that, starting with the civil service, endeavored to redefine Germanness as a race‑based Aryan community. These new laws, however, had consequences beyond the nation. The immediate concerns of the colonial networks within the foreign office were two‑fold: firstly the new laws ill‑defined who was Aryan, and potentially disadvantaged and denigrated people from the former colonies living in Germany, and thus secondly undermined German arguments for increased colonial influence and a return of colonies.20

  • 21 See Fischer, 1913.

20Under the leadership of Heinrich Schnee, last German governor of East Africa and president of the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft, and Erich Schultz‑Ewerth, last German governor of Samoa, an argument was put to the ministry of the interior that pragmatically stayed within the racial paradigm of the new laws. As racial theories existed, yet had to be scientifically verified or disproved, that New Zealand Maori and Polynesians were considered descendants of a side‑branch of the Indo‑Germanic migration, so individuals of Samoan or Tongan heritage residing in Germany in small numbers should be exempt from the race laws. They were quite likely to be Aryan‑related. After receiving favorable notice that exemptions would be granted, but on a case‑by‑case basis only, Schnee enlisted Eugen Fischer, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, whose 1909 research in German South‑West Africa on a community of multiple racial descent (the so‑called Rehobother bastards) had developed a groundbreaking new theory on mixed‑race inheritance, to write the occasional racial profile for selected individuals.21 The National Socialist regime opened up unprecedented career opportunities for racial scientists, with new institutions, and special research grants. It seems, however, that scientists such as Fischer, who had established their early career and research projects in the German colonies, remained loyal to former colonial officials. A kind of informal support network persisted based on associations with former colonies.

  • 22 Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 1001/5433 Blatt 3–5. An attempt by the Foreign Office in 1934 to gain exemp (...)

21In late 1933 Schnee proceeded to gain similar exemptions for members of the German‑Japanese community. The files on the struggle for exemptions for Pacific Islander‑Germans seems not to have survived, thus it is difficult to reconstruct Schnee and Schulz‑Ewerth’s arguments in detail. In the file on Japanese‑Germans, however, a double strategy is documented, namely biological migratory descent and foreign political implications. A surviving attachment by Schnee to argue the value of Polynesians is a newspaper article on New Zealand Maori and their civic achievements. An argument for Melanesian‑Germans was, as far as archival documentation shows, never made, as no Aryan race links could be argued.22 While Schnee used Fischer as racial expert for individual cases, Fischer’s theories were secondary for Schnee’s political battle for exemptions from the 1933 race laws. Schnee operated pragmatically in order to convince a regime that preferenced racial descent and Aryanism. Married to a New Zealander, he drew on New Zealand racial theories that legitimized dispossession and settlement by racially linking British settlers to Maori, local people of Polynesian descent. Schnee cleverly turned this Southern theory around. If Europeans had a racial claim and destiny colonizing the Pacific, Polynesians were legitimately at home in Northern hemisphere Aryan lands. Racial expertise that created inclusive categories in the Southern hemisphere was brought “home” to Germany to challenge exclusionary models of citizenship and belonging.

22By 1935, Italy’s take‑over of Abyssinia swept aside the foreign offices pragmatic strategy of informal colonialism combined with international good‑will. With the League of Nations and its Mandate system in crisis, Germany might recover a colonial Empire in Africa through negotiations based on show of strength, and expansion within Europe through will and military might. In the ensuing debate about a return of German colonies the focus was on a middle‑African Empire. The former German South Seas colonies were hardly ever officially mentioned. On one hand Germany was careful not to alienate Japan, and on the other it did not want to weaken its case for a return of colonies against Britain by forfeiting any part of its colonial claims. Germany thus decided neither to deny nor confirm colonial aspirations in the Pacific.

  • 23 See Winter, 2012; see also Winter, 2010.

23That same year, 1935, the department of the Interior, in response to new citizenship laws, reconfirmed exemptions for Germans of Polynesian descent, while the foreign office begun to receive increased requests from people of German and mixed‑German descent residing in Oceania to clarify their citizenship status. Where they still German, or entitled to apply for German citizenship? The foreign office’s answers adhered to a strict legal application of citizenship in an old‑fashioned way: paternal descent counted, irrespective of racial mixture. In a climate of uncertainty the wise thing was to be prepared for any eventuality. It was better to organize a German passport just in case colonial rule in Samoa or New Guinea turned German again, and it was prudent of the German government to validate German‑Pacific Islanders in case they were needed to legitimize German claims to Pacific possessions.23

Reappearing Germans, and the native expert

24It was during this period of uncertainty that the German consulate in Sydney sent two consular representatives to visit the Mandated Territory of New Guinea—consul Seelos in 1935, and consul Hellenthal in 1936.

  • 24 See Winter, 2008.

25One theme that had come to the fore in the reignited debates about a return of German colonies was what Germans termed the Kolonialschuldlüge, the assertion by the former enemies that Germany had not colonized well. In countering such aspersions main arguments from pro‑colonial Germans were that colonized people wanted the Germans back. Political desires were often projected onto fictional “natives” as experts.24

26Dr Gebhard Seelos, Vice‑consul in Sydney from 1931, was a conservative Bavarian‑born diplomat who had studied law and economy, and was later in his career to fall out with the National Socialist regime. He was rehabilitated after World War II, and served as a member of the German Parliament and as consul general in Turkey, Portugal, Greece and Brazil. In his report on his visit to the Mandated Territory of New Guinea in early 1935 the 34 year‑old conservative German nationalist expressed a strong outrage about the status quo. Australia had failed in its 20 years of administration. In Seelos’ opinion a country had received a Mandate to colonize that had not develop its own continent. In Australia Indigenous populations had either died out or were in decline. He boldly declared that “a colony should not colonize.” In addition Australia’s overly democratic nature lacked a Herrenbewusstsein (awareness of being masters) that was necessary to colonise successfully. Seelos continued with a detailed inventory of conditions in the Mandated Territory. Most official buildings were German built, the roads were constructed during German time, the plantations planted by Germans, and the wharfs and harbors hardly improved since World War I. That “this experiment sanctioned by the League of Nations” had not gone broke, Seelos concluded, was due to prior German work. German residents had declined in numbers, and the main German influence were mission staff. By undertaking colonizing work, however, “they are a constant exemplar” for German endeavors in the colonial sphere. An appreciation of all things German by New Guineans reflected well on past and present German colonizing. Seelos invoked New Guineans he met as kind of expert witnesses for Germany’s achievements. He had a particular positive view of Catholic New Guineans:

  • 25 NAA, C443, G2. Digital archive pages 57‑65, Consul Seelos, Report on visit to the Mandated Territo (...)

[T]he natives have retained strong impressions from the German time. They still sing songs with German melodies, and at the mission school in Vunapope coloured boys were able to give information in the German language about Hitler and Hindenburg.25

27Seelos made only fleeting references that could be interpreted as a desire for a return of the colony. He operated in the earlier frame of a transformed German colonialism through enduring German influence. His successor as deputy consul general in Sydney, who traveled to New Guinea one and a half years later, was imbued with a different spirit. Dr Walter Hellenthal, five years older than Seelos, and on his fourth position after postings to Sweden, Hungary and Switzerland, had joined the NSDAP a few months after the elections in March 1933 that confirmed and consolidated Nazi power. He attempted to Nazify German communities in Australia, and at the time of his visit was in conflict with his more moderate superior, Dr Rudolf Asmis. Asmis supported Hellenthal’s promotion to New Zealand, and at the same time arranged the organizational separation of the Australian and New Zealand consulates. Involved in deportations of Jews from Monaco during World War II, Hellenthal was denazified and briefly left the diplomatic service. He was appointed the first post‑World War II consul to Japan in 1953, before being posted to Portugal. A German investigation into war crimes committed by Hellenthal in France begun in 1965 but ended with his death by natural causes.

28Hellenthal’s trip to New Guinea was his last official duty as Australia’s deputy consul. He used it to show Asmis and the German foreign office that he was a dedicated National Socialist on the side of the foreign organisation of the NSDAP (Auslandsorganisation), an organization that just at that time was in a struggle with the foreign office over who dominated foreign affairs.

  • 26 There were about the same number of German citizens who were eligible for NSDAP memberships in Sam (...)

29Who is not for us is against us became the motto of Hellenthal’s visit to New Guinea. He announced to the German residents of the Mandate that Germany would regain her former colony soon, and then all non‑party members would be expelled. Shortly after three NSDAP strongholds were established in the Mandate and NSDAP party membership applications soared.26

30Like Seelos, Hellenthal criticized Australian rule, but he added observations about local expectations that the Mandate would be returned to Germany soon. At one place, Hellenthal wrote, he arrived by plane unannounced. Local New Guineans soon congregated in their hundreds and started performing a war dance. Hellenthal was informed by one New Guinean that prophecies they had received were all coming true: in June there had been an earthquake, and now, in July, the Germans were returning.

31Hellenthal attached to his report a letter by local “half‑blood Germans” of the Rabaul area, a group most likely educated at the Catholic mixed‑blood school at Vunapope, and thus all fluent in German and its local variation Unserdeutsch. The spokesperson for the group, Max Schneider, was the son of a plantation owner, Karl Schneider, and a local New Guinean woman, Luisa Ikovue. His father had died when he was 10 years old, and he had received his education together with his brother Robert, at the Catholic mixed‑blood school. His farewell letter thanked the parting German consul for his visit, and expressed the hope that German rule might return to New Guinea:

Even if not much in life was given to us half‑blood Germans, one treasure has remained: it is a “German‑thinking” and “German‑feeling” heart that we want to, and will, retain to the end.

  • 27 NAA, A518, BG836/3, Max Carl Schneider to Consul Hellenthal, 20 August 1936.

32Schneider finished with a “cheer to the German fatherland and Heil to our Führer Adolf Hitler!”27 Schneider had amended and updated a Catholic imbued Germanness, that developed at the Vunapope mission during the end of German rule as an assertion of distance to colonized New Guineans, and had acquired an additional identification as not‑British at the beginnings of the Australian Administration. In the colonial sphere characterized by divisions and hierarchies, where rights and opportunities were linked to racial descent, the Catholic educated multi‑racial community formulated an identity that asked for dignity, rights and respect. Evacuated to the mainland of Australia during the Pacific War as a German enemy alien, Schneider would forge a life in New South Wales and Queensland. His niece describes him as a devout Catholic man of impeccable manners and dress sense, firm principles, and a strong sense of independence.

33Max Schneider was not on a list Hellenthal compiled of local Germans. The concept of Germanness that Hellenthal applied interweaves three models of Germanness: those identifying as German, who were either Reich‑citizens or German nationals, and ethnic Germans. In the list were a number of families and individuals of mixed background, including three German‑New Guineans. Hellenthal stretched the inclusion criteria the foreign office deployed for Germans by listing ethnic Germans, that is Volksdeutsche, but when it came to people of German‑New Guinean descent, Hellenthal stuck to a narrow legal framework of Germanness as patrilineal descent within a legitimate marriage. He thus excluded not only Schneider, but a number of German‑New Guineans who self‑identified as Germans. This exclusion went hand in hand with his racial views on Melanesians, and ideas how and by whom they were best ruled:

  • 28 See NAA, A4311/1, 102/6, Walter Hellenthal, „Politischer Bericht über das Mandatsgebiet Neuguinea” (...)

While the German native policy tried to fit the developmental stage of the natives and went ahead only slowly, the Australians attempt to jump over some hundreds of years of development of the Kanakas and to treat the natives of the Mandated Territory [in a way] which would perhaps befit a highly developed Polynesian.28

34While Hellenthal used Max Schneider’s letter as an example of local longing for a return of the Germans, Schneider was not part of the core of Germans identified by the consul. Instead he became another example of the legacies of German colonialism and the impact of German rule. Hellenthal’s use of Max Schneider and of New Guineans as “half‑German” and “native” experts was somewhat opportunistic. Paradoxically those identified as racially inferior were the good reference for a return of colonies to Third Reich Germany. Local “natives” wanted the Mandate experiment to end, and Germany return. And the German Reich proclaimed to last a thousand years was ready and best equipped for “some hundreds of years of development of the Kanakas.”

Mission expertise: purity and nation building

35One of the three NSDAP strongholds that consul Hellenthal’s visit initiated in New Guinea was exclusive to German Lutheran Missionaries of the Huon Peninsula. While the Catholic Bavarian diplomat Seelos had good things to report on Catholic influence, Hellenthal criticized the lack of support for National Socialism by Catholic missions. In his view only the Lutherans were true German patriots. Hellenthal wrote about his visit:

  • 29 See NAA, A4311/1, 102/6, Walter Hellenthal, ‘Politischer Bericht über das Mandatsgebiet Neuguinea’ (...)

The Lutheran Mission in Finschhafen over which reigns an excellent National Socialist spirit, had decorated the stations I visited with Swastika flags. At the main station a native shell‑band greeted me with the Horst‑Wessel song.29

36The stronghold’s existence remained initially unknown to the Australian government, a wider Australian public and the mission organization in Germany and Australia—though many in the Mandate knew about it, including the Administration.

37When the Australian newspaper Smith’s Weekly in March 1936 sensationally broke the story of the stronghold, everybody involved went into damage control:

  • 30 Smith’s Weekly, 20 March 1936.

Startling disclosures from New Guinea […] Hitler’s talk of getting the German colony back was no idle threat. The “white‑anting” of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea has begun […].30

  • 31 See Winter, 2010.

38Administrator McNicoll declared that the stronghold was harmless and an internal affair of the Germans, as there had been no attempt at ideologically influencing New Guineans. The acting superintendent of the mission, Georg Pilhofer, an ordained clergy and son‑in‑law of the mission’s founder, in turn declared that his motivation had been patriotism, and gratitude to Hitler rescuing the fatherland from Bolshewism. Though both McNicoll’s and Pilhofer’s self‑interested explanations sound rather disingenuous, there was some truth to their arguments: the stronghold was indeed mainly a patriotic affair with little impact on the colonial status quo of the Mandate.31 The real challenge to the Mandate Administration by Pilhofer was far more subtle and far more daring in its ambitions and scope.

39Attempts at direct criticism of Australian rule by Pilhofer, ranging from allegations of the mistreatment of natives, indifference towards native welfare to the detrimental effect of taxation and recruiting on native health and social life came to naught. A formal complaint to the Administrator in 1930 was elegantly and comprehensively rebutted, in the process humiliating the Australian based mission representative, Friedrich Otto Theile. Since then the German and Australian mission leadership felt it unwise to openly challenge the Mandate Administration. In 1931 Theile warned the German director, Friedrich Eppelein, not to contact the League of Nations:

  • 32 Mission Archives Neuendettelsau, ND 25/31, Theile to Eppelein, 3.10.1931.

I have the impression that government circles here have an extraordinary fear that they might one day be attacked in Geneva. It is very important to them to be held in high esteem there, and without doubt they would take it out on anybody who would give them a bad name there.32

40With limited avenues left, Pilhofer set out to undermine and erase the Administration’s influence on the future of New Guinea through mission internal methods. He advocated congregation building that would link disparate communities, and ultimately facilitate the formation of a unified “Papuan” nation. Pilhofer thus combined the mission theories of his teacher, missionary Christian Keysser, with the German colonial movement’s inter‑war ideas of sustaining German influence through the support of self‑determination. His plans were underpinned by racial ideas of purity. The central tool for achieving a “Papuan” unified nation was the creation of an indigenous lingua franca.

  • 33 For further details see Radford, 1987.

41The mission was initially established at the coast, at Finschhafen in the 1880s, and from there fanned out into the interior of the Huon Peninsula. The move into the interior created problems for Neuendettelsau’s language policies that had been based on the sole use of local languages: there were too many local languages to adequately manage. Languages had to be erased. There were supporters of a bi‑lingual solution, using the two main coastal languages, the Papuan language Kate, and the Melanesian or Austronesian language Jabim. Accelerating the urgency of these debates was the introduction of Christianity into the populous Markham Valley, where the main language spoken was Azera. Also the Lutherans were just making contact with the numerous peoples of the Eastern Highlands, speakers of non‑Austronesian languages, which supported arguments that there was a case for a third or fourth mission lingua franca.33

42Pilhofer boldly suggested erasing all local languages but one, namely Kate. He asserted that the number of Melanesian speakers were much lower, and Papuan tribes much more numerous and geographically united:

  • 34 January 1929 Georg Pilhofer, Koreferat „Das Problem des Kate als Einheitssprache”, ND 55/10.

Spoken from the perspective of human beings the future of N. Guinea belongs to the Papuan tribes, not only because they are the majority, but also because they are more “vital.”34

43Pilhofer took from a German medical doctor and linguist, Otto Dempwolff, several ideas about biological characteristics of Melanesians and the origins of the Austronesian languages they spoke. Through culture contact Melanesians in New Guinea had inherited Austronesian languages, such as Jabem, which were not from the same Non‑Austronesian languages their biological forefathers and foremothers had spoken.

44Referring to Dempwolff, Pilhofer explained that Jabem was a mixed language with Papuan components, which exist unconnected alongside Polynesian language elements, the latter being of a “foreign type.” It was thus Kate which should be brought to the inland natives of predominantly Papuan blood, as Jabem would introduce foreign elements and never reach the inner being of the people. Once Kate was wide spread, the Administration would have no choice but to make it the official language of New Guinea. A lingua franca that created unity was necessary to aid their survival as a people, Pilhofer asserted:

Whether our natives will stand their ground, and will lead a successful war for their existence, which like that of the African and Asiatic peoples will also not be spared them, depends on the question of their unity.

  • 35 See for example Spengler, 1918 and 1922.

45As two groups, Pilhofer dramatically concluded, they would remain “bond‑slaves, serfs, of the master‑race”, and ultimately perish. Using contemporary ideas of the rise and fall of peoples35 Pilhofer thus set the question of unity of the mission and future nation within the wider context of a worldwide crisis.

46For Pilhofer a pre‑existing soul of a Volk was tied to Papuan “blood,” and it was only through a Papuan language that New Guineans could come to an actual, lived unity which was always inherently theirs. The mission was to prepare New Guineans for becoming a Volk. A pure Papuan Volk would replace the Mandate, and erase English ways, English education and language that were ruining the very essence of this Volk. While at times Pilhofer’s plans seem to resonate with later ideas of self‑determination or independence, his vision was that of apartheid, and a racially and cultural exclusive theocracy.

47While Pilhofer’s vision was only partly implemented in New Guinea—fellow missionaries objected, and the outbreak of World War II brought the spread of Kate into the interior to a halt—it became a central argument in the repositioning of the mission in Germany.

48Despising democratic rule and cultures of modernity, the mission in Germany supported the nationalistic right during the period of the Weimar republic. With the rise of National Socialism it saw its chance to reform the nation, and act as an expert in making a new united community:

  • 36 Eppelein, 1931.

Such community‑organisms as National Socialism envisages as the ideal have blossomed within the communities in New Guinea under the influence of Christianity.36

49The mission had proven in New Guinea that it could make a Volk that respected racial purity that God had created and that the mission knew how to foster and protect.

  • 37 Ibid.

In the same way as individual plants and flowers have and are meant to keep their distinct kind, […] individual races and peoples shall grow according to their kind and distinctiveness in the big Völker‑garden of the world, blossom and bear fruit according to God’s will…37

  • 38 For a detailed analysis see Winter, 2012.

50The mission expertise developed in the Mandated Territory was to be transplanted and implemented at home to make the German Volk pure, and successful.38

Conclusion

  • 39 Bauman, 1991.

51Ambiguity, as Zygmunt Bauman has analysed, cannot be tolerated by modernity. In response modernity will accelerate the making of categories, and subcategories, creating firm boundaries, dichotomies and binaries.39 The Mandate system and its implementation in New Guinea was caught between ambiguous overlapping spheres of rule, and visions of a future in flux on one hand, and a firming up of claims of ownership and a narrowing of ideas about its destiny. During the inter‑war years Weimar‑collaboration in the League of Nation and its Mandate system disappeared, and German separateness asserted itself.

52In the process people of multiple racial descent had un‑ambiguous identities ascribed to them. Purity and clear divisions became more and more the leitmotiv for the Mandate, as its crisis of legitimacy accelerated. Racial and legal expertise was employed by Australia to strip them of their distinct Germanness, and make them (pan)‑European, and—if they behaved properly and civilized—almost white. Germany oscillated between incorporating mixed‑race colonial families as almost Aryan, and thus part of the Volk, or seeing them as part of an indigenous population that reflected positively on the impact of past German colonialism. Without direct colonial rule, a remnant colonial department within its foreign office, German racial scientists and missionaries, staked expert claims for a reinvigorated German colonialism. During the time of formal German colonialism these groups, all experts in their own right, had criticized each other. Missionaries had questioned the commitment of anthropologists and ethnologists to Indigenous peoples. Colonial officials had voiced concerns over ambitions of missionaries to control and rule. During the Mandate period common interest brought them all together. They combined their expertise for a shared cause, and argued with Mandate governments and their own National Socialist government for the value of German colonialism and the value of German experts.

Literaturverzeichnis

Sources

Eppelein Friedrich, 1931, „Streiflichter auf den Nationalsozialismus von meiner Australien‑Neuguineareise her” in Freimund, vol. 77, no 7, s. 50‑53.

Fischer Eugen, 1913, Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardisierungsproblem beim Menschen, Gustav Fischer, Jena, 323 s.

Janssen Arnold, 1932, „Die Erziehungsanstalt fuer Halbweisse Kinder” in Hüskes Joseph (ed.), Pioniere der Suedsee. Werden und Wachsen der Herz‑Jesu Mission von Rabaul zum goldenen Jubilaeum 1882‑1932, L. Schwann, Duesseldorf, s. 150‑155.

Spengler Oswald, 1918 and 1922, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline Of The West), C. H. Beck, München, 421, 458 s.

Archives

AWM, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, Australia: Series AWM33 [New Guinea campaign records, 1914‑18 War], Item 56/4, Reports and memoranda concerning administration of German New Guinea from Brig‑Gen G JOHNSTON, Administrator, Rabaul to Department of Defence (October‑December 1919)

Bundesarchiv, Berlin‑Lichterfelde: R1001, Reichskolonialsamt

Bundesarchiv, Berlin‑Lichterfelde: R57, Deutsches Auslandsinstitut

AA, Politisches Archiv der Auswärtigen Amtes, Berlin:

AA, Politisches Archiv der Auswärtigen Amtes, Berlin: Deutsche Botschaft London, Paket 42: Generalkonsulat Sydney ‑ Personalien Bd. 2 (1932‑39).

Since my research the archive of the Neuendettelsauer Mission has been incorporated into the archive of the Bavarian Lutheran church, and the signatures have changed. For a conversion list see Brigitte Hagelauer, Findbuch des Schriftgutes von Gesellschaft, Missionsanstalt, Missions‑ und Diasporaseminar und Missionswerk ab 1824, TB 7 Neuguinea, April 2015 [online: https://mission-einewelt.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/teilbestand7.pdf].

NAA, National Archives of Australia, Canberra and Melbourne, Series A1,Department of Home and Territories, Correspondence files, Item 1925/4666, Home and Territories Dept. Foreigners. Half Castes. New Guinea

NAA, National Archives of Australia, Canberra and Melbourne, Series MP 508/1, Department of the Army, General correspondence files, Item 52/701/154, [Papua and New Guinea‑ Censorship In]

NAA, National Archives of Australia, Canberra and Melbourne, Series C443, Investigation Branch, New South Wales, Consular investigation files, Item G2, German Consulate Records ‑ miscellaneous papers

NAA, National Archives of Australia, Canberra and Melbourne, Series A518, Department of External Territories, Correspondence files, Item BG836/3, New Guinea ‑ Miscellaneous ‑ Political report on New Guinea from the German point of view

NAA, National Archives of Australia, Canberra and Melbourne, Series A4311/1, Department of External Affairs, 'Cumpston Collection' of documents relating to the history of Australian foreign policy, Item 102/6, Official visits of the Consul Hellenthal to New Guinea

ND, Mission Archive Neuendettelsau, Archiv Mission Eine Welt, Landeskirchliches Archiv der Evang.‑Luth. Kirche in Bayern, Nuremberg: ND 25/31., Missionsanstalt: Kirchliche Dienststellen, VELKA, Theile (1930‑1932)

ND, Mission Archive Neuendettelsau, Archiv Mission Eine Welt, Landeskirchliches Archiv der Evang.‑Luth. Kirche in Bayern, Nuremberg: ND 55/10., Manuscripts and Papers: Conference Papers.

References

Bauman Zygmunt, 1991, Modernity and Ambivalence, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 285 p.

Bechhaus‑Gerst Marianne, 2007, Treu bis in den Tod: Von Deutsch‑Ostafrika nach Sachsenhausen. Eine Lebensgeschichte, Christoph Links Verlag, Berlin, 208 s.

Craig Barry, Vanderwal Ron & Winter Christine, 2015, War Trophies or Curios? The War Museum Collection in Museum Victoria 1915‑1920, Museum Victoria, Melbourne, 281 p.

Kaima Sam, 2000, “Ammak Tapduk: Kaiapit‑Saidor Track during the Second World War” in Remembering the War in New Guinea, Symposium papers, 19‑21 October 2000, Autralian National University, Canberra, http://ajrp.awm.gov.au/ajrp/remember.nsf/pages/NT0000114E.

Karsten Linne, 2008, Deutschland jenseits des Aequators? Die NS‑Kolonialplanungen für Afrika, Christoph Links Verlag, Berlin, 216 s.

Liedtke Wolfgang, 2005, „Die Ueberschreitung der ‘colour line’: Mischehen und Mischlinge in der deutschen Kolonie Samoa” in Katja Geisenhainer & Katharina Lange (eds), Bewegliche Horizonte: Festschrift zum 60, Geburtstag von Bernhard Streck, Leipzig, s. 283–308.

Mackenzie Seaforth Simpson, 1987 [1927], The Australians at Rabaul. The Capture and Administration of the German Possessions in the Southern Pacific, University of Queensland Press in assoc. with the Australian War Memorial (Series: The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914‑1918, vol. 10), St Lucia, 412 p.

Mühlhäusler Peter, 2012, „Sprachliche Kontakte in den Missionen in Deutsch‑Neuguinea und die Entstehung eines Pidgin‑Deutsch” in Engelberg Stefan & Stolberg Doris (dir)., Sprachwissenschaft und kolonialzeitlicher Sprachkontakt: Sprachliche Begegnungen und Auseinandersetzungen, Akademie Verlag, Berlin, s. 71‑100.

Nelson Hank, 1978, “Loyalties at Sword‑Point. The Lutheran Missionaries in Wartime New Guinea, 1939‑1945” in Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 24, n°2, pp. 199‑217.

Pedersen Susan, 2015, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 592 p.

Platt Anthony M. and O’Leary Cecilia E., 2006, Bloodlines: Recovering Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws, From Patton’s Trophy to Public Memorial, Paradigm Publishers, Boulder, 268 p.

Radford Robin, 1987, Highlanders and Foreigners in the Upper Ramu. The Kainantu Area 1919‑1942, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 220 p.

Rowley Charles Dunford, 1958, The Australians in German New Guinea 1914‑1920, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 371 p.

Volker Craig, 1991, “The Birth and Decline of Rabaul Creole German” in Language and Linguistics in Melanesia : Journal of the Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea, vol. 22, n°1‑2, pp. 143‑156.

Walther Daniel Joseph, 2002, Creating Germans Abroad: Cultural Policies and National Identity in Namibia, Ohio University Press, Ohio, 296 p.

Winter Christine, 2008, ‘“A Good Will Ship’: The Light Cruiser Köln Visits Rabaul (1933)” in Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 54, n°1, pp. 44‑54.

Winter Christine, 2010, “The Founding of the NSDAP Stronghold in Finschhafen” in Turner‑Graham Emily & Winter Christine (ed.), National Socialism in Oceania: a Critical Evaluation of Its Effect and Aftermath, Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main/New York, pp. 31‑47.

Winter Christine, 2012, “Changing Frames: Identity and Citizenship of New Guineans of German Heritage during the Inter‑War Years” in Journal of Pacific History, vol. 47, n°3, pp. 347‑367.

Winter Christine, 2012, Looking after One’s Own: the Rise of Nationalism and the Politics of the Neuendettelsauer Mission in Australia, New Guinea and Germany (1921‑1933), Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 238 p.

Winter Christine, 2014, “Disloyalty at Sword‑point: an Ongoing Conversation about Wartime New Guinea, 1939‑1945” in Journal of Historical Biography, vol. 16, pp. 202‑222.

Anmerkungen

1 “To You, whom I found as Germans in the South Sea”; 3.9.1930 Walter Rothe, dem Deutschen Klub Rabaul ins Stammbuch, file R57 Neu/1216 DAI, Vereins‑Archiv: Australien, Neuseeland, Samoa, Bundesarchiv Koblenz. This translation, and all others in this article are, if not indicated otherwise, by the author.

2 For the period of military occupation of ex‑German New Guinea see Rowley, 1958 and Mackenzie, 1987.

3 Australian War Memorial (henceforth AWM) AWM 33, 56/4, Administrator to Secretary, Department of Defence, Melbourne, 4 November 1919. See also Craig, Vanderwal & Winter, 2015.

4 Politisches Archiv der Auswärtigen Amtes, Berlin (henceforth AA), Deutsche Botschaft London, Paket 42: Generalkonsulat Sydney—Personalien Bd. 2 (1932‑39), Report by Consul Koeltsch, Aufzeichnung, Reise nach Neuguinea, 23 January 1933.

5 National Archives of Australia (hereinafter NAA), MP 508/1, 52/701/154, District Censor, Brisbane to The Controller of Postal and Telegraph Censorship, Melbourne, 6 Dec. 1941. See also Winter, 2012, pp. 29‑38.

6 Kaima, 2000.

7 The themes of “loyalty” and “disloyalty” are central of Australian colonial discourses. See Nelson, 1978; Winter, 2014.

8 NAA, A1, 1925/4666, Administrator Wisdom to The Secretary, Prime Minister’s Department, 3 November 1921.

9 The Permanent Mandates Commission, granting an exemption to South Africa for the collective naturalisation of Germans in Southwest Africa, decided that overall Germans should not automatically lose their nationality in other mandates.

10 NAA, A1, 1925/4666, Administrator Wisdom to The Secretary, Prime Minister’s Department, 5 November 1924.

11 NAA, A1, 1925/4666, Solicitor‑General to The Secretary, Department of Home and Territories, 16 February 1925.

12 See Volker, 1991; Mühlhäusler, 2012.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

13 See Winter, 2012.

14 Copy in private possession of author.

15 Janssen, 1932, p. 151.

16 Pedersen, 2015, pp. 196‑7; quote footnote 9.

17 See Walther, 2002.

18 Pedersen singles out in particular Edmund von Brueckner, former Governor of Togo and from 1924 to 1935 head of the Colonial Department within the foreign office. See Pedersen, 2015, pp. 196‑7.

19 For examples of relationships of ex‑colonial officers and Africans from the ex‑German colonies see Bechhaus‑Gerst, 2007.

20 See Winter, 2012.

21 See Fischer, 1913.

22 Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 1001/5433 Blatt 3–5. An attempt by the Foreign Office in 1934 to gain exemptions for Africans from former German colonies failed. See Karsten, 2008; Winter, 2012; Liedtke, 2005.

23 See Winter, 2012; see also Winter, 2010.

24 See Winter, 2008.

25 NAA, C443, G2. Digital archive pages 57‑65, Consul Seelos, Report on visit to the Mandated Territory, 1935, 9 p.

26 There were about the same number of German citizens who were eligible for NSDAP memberships in Samoa and New Guinea. The NSDAP in Samoa stagnated with a maximum of 12 members, while NSDAP memberships in New Guinea were about 50, not counting applications still not processed by the outbreak of World War II. See Winter, 2010.

27 NAA, A518, BG836/3, Max Carl Schneider to Consul Hellenthal, 20 August 1936.

28 See NAA, A4311/1, 102/6, Walter Hellenthal, „Politischer Bericht über das Mandatsgebiet Neuguinea”, 22 September 1936, p. 8. A number of copies and translations can be found in the National Archives of Australia, for example in NAA, C443, G2. The original consular papers have been repatriated to Germany, and are held in the Politisches Archives des Auswaertigen Amtes in Berlin.

29 See NAA, A4311/1, 102/6, Walter Hellenthal, ‘Politischer Bericht über das Mandatsgebiet Neuguinea’, 22 September 1936.

30 Smith’s Weekly, 20 March 1936.

31 See Winter, 2010.

32 Mission Archives Neuendettelsau, ND 25/31, Theile to Eppelein, 3.10.1931.

33 For further details see Radford, 1987.

34 January 1929 Georg Pilhofer, Koreferat „Das Problem des Kate als Einheitssprache”, ND 55/10.

35 See for example Spengler, 1918 and 1922.

36 Eppelein, 1931.

37 Ibid.

38 For a detailed analysis see Winter, 2012.

39 Bauman, 1991.

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Flinders University

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