The irrational anti-German sentiment in Manly during World War 1
Nearly 1500 men from the northern beaches enlisted for service during World War I and nearly 200 of them lost their lives.
Manly
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Nearly 1500 men from the northern beaches enlisted for service during World War I and nearly 200 of them lost their lives.
The scale of the death toll was a tremendous shock to those at home in Australia, especially as many political leaders had predicted in 1914 that the war would be over by Christmas.
But the war raged on and the casualty list skyrocketed after the Gallipoli landings and the stalemate on the Western Front, leading to a growing tide of anti-German sentiment in Australia.
Former local historian Terry Metherell and former Manly local studies librarian John MacRitchie investigated the sad story of the misguided passions and the calculated bullying that occurred in Manly.
What they found was a glimpse of a distant age, when ignorance, intolerance and misinformation fed the home-front hysteria.
Street names were altered and businesses and families were forced to change their name to prove their loyalty to King and Country to avoid being caught up in the anti-German sentiment.
Vienna St at Balgowlah was renamed Kitchener St, after the senior British officer who won fame in the Sudan campaign and the Second Boer War.
Streets in new subdivisions were named after other military figures, such as the Rosyth Estate at Forty Baskets, where the streets were named after men who served in the British Admiralty – Beatty, Jellicoe, Geddes and Fisher.
Manly was one of the first suburbs in Sydney to establish a branch of the Anti-German League, which called for the internment of enemy aliens – which meant anyone of German, Austrian or Turkish background – and the dismissal from the public service of anyone whose surname sounded even remotely German.
At a public meeting in the Victoria Hall in Manly organised by Manly Council on May 25, 1915, Manly alderman John Patison moved: “That, in the opinion of this meeting, the time has arrived for action to be taken by the Federal and State Governments for the internment until the war is over of all persons of a military age born in an enemy country and now residing in the Commonwealth.”
Alderman Adam Ogilvie, in seconding the motion, described the Kaiser as ‘William the Murderer’. He said a German spy system had been in operation in NSW and that, when the war started, there was a rush of Germans to all the coastal towns, of which Manly had more than its share.
Manly Council also competed with other councils to “de-Germanise” their local communities, stoke patriotism and embarrass “slackers” who did not enlist.
The council was so “patriotic” that when the Manly Municipal Band applied to stage a concert, it was told that permission would only be granted if none of the band’s members were single and of enlistment age.
The council also informed local sporting and social clubs that it would not extend to them any privileges if single men of enlistment age were among their membership.
Not that clubs like Manly Rugby Club needed any encouragement – there was an unhealthy competition between club sides in Sydney as to which could boast the greatest number of enlistees and Manly was often at the top of that macabre ladder.
Surf clubs also engaged in this unhealthy competition to prove their worthiness as subjects of the British Empire.
Manly Council also called for the compilation of a list of enemy subjects so they could be purged from the electoral rolls and thus be prevented from voting in the referendums on conscription in 1916 and 1917.
The Manly Daily also did its bit to whip up patriotic fervour.
In June 1916, it published a letter from Fairlight resident Lieutenant Humphrey Watson, who was fighting on the Western Front.
“We will be, long before this reaches you, flogging away at our mutual rotten enemy,” he wrote from the trenches.
“If only those young fellows in England and Australia who require so much pleading to come over here could see some of the scenes we have seen and are seeing here, they would not hesitate a day but would buck in at all costs to try to bring this thing back to their old ways.”
Watson enlisted in May 1915 and served on the Western Front, where he was killed on October 4, 1917.
His body was never recovered so his name is listed on the Menin Memorial Gate near Ypres in Belgium.
At the street level in Manly, the Frankfurt Sausage Company on The Corso was forced to change its name to Cambridge Delicacies, while another business on The Corso owned by the Homburg family was forced to close.
The stupidity of the hysteria was highlighted by the fact that at least two employees of the Frankfurt Sausage Company service – Thomas Digby and Bertie Morgan – enlisted for service and listed the Frankfurt Sausage Company as their home address, while another man, Reg Daley, listed his address upon enlistment as c/- Mrs Homburg, The Corso.
Thomas Digby was a fireman who enlisted on May 26, 1916, served on the Western Front and returned to Australia in July 1919.
Bertie Morgan enlisted on September 20, 1915 aged 26, and served as a driver with the Army Service Corps. He returned to Australia in May 1919.
Reg Daley was born at Redfern but his family was living at Manly at the time he enlisted on July 2, 1915, aged 23.
He served with the 5 Battalion Australian Machine Gun Corps and promoted to Lance Corporal in July 1916 but was fatally wounded on September 2, 1918, aged 26.
In November 1915, Antonio De Fina’s shop on Manly Wharf was wrecked by rioting soldiers, even though Italy was an ally during World War I.
The fact his name was foreign was enough for some people.
But at least two local families with German names escaped harassment or were treated with greater tolerance.
One who survived the war was Fritz Schwarz, the first captain of Manly Life Saving Club, who enlisted on August 26, 1914 – just four weeks after the war began – and served with the 1st Light Horse Field Ambulance, first at Gallipoli and then in Palestine.
He returned to Australia in November 1918 and changed his name to Fred Campbell just before he was discharged in January 1919.
Another local with a German name was native-born William Holtsbaum, who was a clerk with Manly Council and had undertaken his Town Clerk’s certificate prior to the war.
He enlisted on August 6, 1915, aged 21, giving as next of kin his father at 31 Alexander St, Manly.
He embarked on May 1, 1916, and served on the Western Front with the Field Ambulance.
He was reported wounded in action in June 1917.
He returned to Australia suffering from debility and was discharged from service on 21 November 21, 1918.
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