Tag Archives: anti-semitism

Why did my great grandfather leave Germany for Africa in 1880?

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In 1880 at the age of 18, my great-grandfather, Franz Ginsberg (1862-1936) left Germany and migrated to King Williams Town (now ‘Qonce’) in the Cape Colony, which, after 1910, became incorporated into the Union of South Africa. In what is now South Africa, he became a successful industrialist as well as a politician – both at local and national levels. This essay discusses why a German Jew left Germany in 1880, and why he chose to go to a part of Southern Africa where there were few of his co-religionists – and to an area where neither gold nor diamonds were being mined, rather than to the USA, where many other Jewish people from Germany and other parts of Central Europe tended to migrate.

To begin to understand why Franz left Germany in his late teens in 1880, it is helpful to know something about his father Dr Nathan Ginsberg (1814-1890).

Nathan was born in Breslau (now ‘Wroclaw’ in Poland). At school, according to his school report which I have seen, he was recognised by his teachers as being a brilliant student. Based on this report, he was admitted to the University of Breslau. After graduating at Breslau, again with great reports from those who taught him, which I have read, he wished to apply to be awarded with a doctorate (‘PhD’). However, the University of Breslau did not permit Jewish people to be awarded with doctorates unless they converted to Christianity, which was something Nathan did not want to do.

Nathan ‘shopped around’, and applied to the University of Halle, which he discovered would award a doctorate to unconverted Jewish candidates. I have seen his letter of application and the various theses he had written in subjects including mathematics and astronomy. Halle awarded Nathan a doctorate. Next, Dr Nathan Ginsberg, being an academic, attempted to apply for teaching posts in German universities.

In those far-off days, German universities did not admit Jews as members of their academic staff unless they had first converted to Christianity. Several of Nathan’s teachers at the University of Breslau had been born Jewish, but had converted to Christianity. As the author Amos Elon pointed out in his excellent book about Jewish life in Germany, “The Pity of it All”, many of these converts working as university were non-practising Christians.

Nathan Ginsberg was unwilling to convert to Christianity, and had to forego his ambition to become a university teacher.  After working for some years in the observatory at Breslau, he moved to Beuthen (now ‘Bytom’ in Poland), where he became a founding member of a new school for Jewish children. It was a school for educating Jewish children, rather than a religious school, one of which already existed in the town. In 1870, when restrictions on the activities of Germany’s Jews eased considerably, the school was adopted by the state, and became known as the Städtisch jüdische Volksschule. It was in Beuthen that my great-grandfather was born. He was one of 12 children born to Nathan and his second wife, Rosalie (née Berg). He had a half-brother, Leo, who was born in Breslau when Nathan was married to his first wife, who died young.

During Franz’s childhood, Germany experienced economic problems that were blamed on the Jews, and this led to an increase in anti-Semitism. Before this became serious, Prussia and France went to war in 1870. Leo, who was old enough to do so, enrolled in the Prussian Army and took part in the invasion of Alsace and Lorraine, which became German territory after 1871. When he married, he and his wife were obliged, as were all newlyweds, to buy a set of chinaware from one of the Royal Prussian porcelain factories. They settled in German occupied Strasbourg (or ‘Strassburg’ as the Germans called it), where they produced four children.

Nathan, a far-sighted person, realised that the future of Jews in Germany was likely to deteriorate. That he did so as early as in the 1880s is indicative of his great wisdom. From the mid-1870s, German anti-Semites regarded the emancipated Jew as (to quote the historian Heinrich von Treitschke {1834-1896}):

“…a symbol and profiteer of modernity, of liberalism and capitalism.”

As well as stating:

“Die Juden sind unser Unglück!” [‘The Jews are our misfortune!’]

Nathan must have realised that as the Jews acquired more equality in Germany, hostility to them would grow. Many other Jews discovered this much later; some too late. Franz and some of his siblings left Germany when they were old enough to do so. The atmosphere of anti-Semitism in late nineteenth century Germany was likely to have been a potent reason for Nathan’s children to seek a better life elsewhere. Another reason might well have been the difficulties of achieving his ambitions Nathan, a Jewish man unable to give up his religion, had already encountered.

But why did Nathan Ginsberg’s children head for Southern Africa rather than the USA or elsewhere?

I cannot answer this question for certain, but can suggest the following.

Nathan Ginsberg, who was born in Breslau and lived in Beuthen, must have known the Friedlander and Goldmann families – Jewish people – living in those cities. He would have known that some of their offspring had gone to South Africa in the 1860s and before, and had done well.

And what attracted Franz to King Williams Town?

Whatever was the actual reason for leaving Germany, Franz set off for, and arrived in, South Africa in 1880, aged eighteen. His destination was not one of those most chosen by nineteenth century migrants. It was neither the diamond-rich area in the Cape Colony nor the goldfields of the Boer Transvaal Republic. Instead, he headed for King Williams Town, a small town in the eastern part of the British Cape Colony.

To understand why Franz chose to go to King rather than Kimberley or the Witwatersrand, we must turn the clock back to before his birth. Long before the arrival of Europeans in what was to become the Cape Colony, there were few inhabitants in the area. As time went by, this land was colonised from the sea by first the Dutch and then the British, and from the north by various African peoples. Where the Africans and Europeans met, there were frequently territorial conflicts. One of these trouble spots was the Eastern Cape, and in particular the part that became known as ‘British Kaffraria’, in which King Williams Town – founded in 1835 – was located.

Just before British Kaffraria became a British colony, a huge conflict was taking place far north of the Equator in and around Southern Russia. This was the Crimean War (October 1853 to February 1856). The armies of Great Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia, were pitted against that of the Russian Empire. As the war dragged on, the British need additional manpower.

The British Government decided to recruit men from neutral European states to strengthen its forces in the Crimea. The German States provided a number of soldiers, who came to England, and were formed into the British German Foreign Legion (the ‘Legion’). Only a small part of the British German Legion had reached the Crimea when the war ended. The British Parliament was now faced with the problem of what to do with the men. They had all joined for the duration of the war and for one year after.

After some discussions between the Government in London and the authorities in the Cape Colony, it was decided to recruit as many as possible of the Legion to become military settlers in British Kaffraria. These settlers were offered land and help to build homes on condition that they would be available for military purposes when the need arose. Before departing for Africa, the men were encouraged to marry if they were not already espoused, because this was thought to be good for encouraging stability and also an increase in the European population of the area. Despite the prospects of good conditions in the Cape presented to the men, only 2362 officers and men out of a possible 8000 took up the offer, and of these only 361 of them were married. Many of the Germans left the Cape to fight for the British in India in 1857, when the so-called Indian Mutiny commenced.

It was believed that one of the reasons for the limited success of the settlement of British Kaffraria by the members of the Legion was the general lack of wives amongst them. Sir George Grey (1812-1898),

Sir George Grey, the Governor of the Cape Colony from 1854 to 1859, proposed re-settling the area with emigrants from the German States. He felt that those of the Legion who had decided to settle in the area would welcome them, and then help them to establish livelihoods. Using an agent, JC Godeffroy of Hamburg, Grey managed to help German families circumvent the laws that discouraged their emigration, and thus they made their way to the colony. After much hardship at first, they became good hardworking residents of British Kaffraria.

When the author Anthony Trollope arrived in King in 1877, three years before Franz Ginsberg, he found it to be:

“… a thoroughly commercial little city with a pleasant club, with a railway to East London, and with smiling German cultivation all around it …”

Some of the Germans were distributed to settlements around King Williams Town. Many of these were given German names such as Frankfort, Berlin, Braunschweig, Potsdam, and Stutterheim.

Franz Ginsberg, whose mother tongue was German, might have chosen to move to King – the town in the heart of British Kaffraria – because it was in an area full of German speakers. The Suez Canal, which had not been open when the German settlers arrived in the late 1850s, was in use by the time that Franz set sail. Whether or not he sailed through it, thus making a faster voyage than by the Atlantic route, and where he disembarked in South Africa, remain unknown. Other questions that remain unanswered are: was he travelling with a companion or alone, and did he know someone who was already there? These are not idle queries because their answers might establish how he came to know his first business partner (or maybe employer) Jakob Rindl (1853-1937).

I will end here, but in future publications, I will reveal how my great-grandfather made his fortune, and something about his political activities. I will also, eventually, discuss his attitudes towards his African, Indian, and Chinese neighbours, but this must wait for another day.

This article about Franz Ginsberg has been written with reference to my biography of Franz Ginsberg, “Soap to Senate: A German Jew at the dawn of apartheid”, which is available from Amazon.

A twentieth century American artist who seemed to have lost his way

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THE EARLY WORKS OF artists, who became famous for their successful experimentation in style and expression (such as Matisse, Picasso, Van Gogh, Miro, and Hockney), began by making quite conventional figurative pictures – always competently executed. Such was also the case with the artist Philip Guston (1913-1980), who was born in Canada, son of Jewish parents who had migrated from Czarist Russia. Born ‘Goldstein’, he later changed his surname to ‘Guston’. His family moved to Los Angeles (USA) in 1922. His childhood was filled with trauma: his father committed suicide, and soon after that his brother was killed in a motor accident. He began to be involved with art as a way of dealing with these sad events. In the 1930s, he engaged with political activity, fighting racism and anti-Semitism at a time when the Ku Klux Klan was enjoying some prominence. Several of his paintings depict hoods, such as were worn by the Klan.

There is a retrospective exhibition of Guston’s works at London’s Tate Modern until the 25th of February 2024. The paintings are exhibited chronologically on the walls of eleven interconnecting display areas. Like the artists listed at the beginning of this piece, Guston’s early works are figurative and very beautifully painted. Many of these powerful images reflect his concerns about the adverse political developments he observed during the 1930s. Later, in the 1940s, he became friends with artists like Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning, and he moved successfully from figurative painting to abstraction. He became well-known as an abstract artist. After that, in the 1960s, his art seemed to my eyes to go downhill.

Guston’s later works, which are partly figurative and partly abstract, and created in and after the late 1960s, were undoubtedly created to send messages to the viewer. However, I found them to be crudely executed in comparison with his earlier abstract and much earlier figurative works. Whether this crudeness was deliberate or reflected a decline in the artist’s ability I cannot say. These later works express the artist’s personal crises and his reaction to injustices and other global catastrophes, but they did not do much for me from an aesthetic point of view. Had I left the exhibition without seeing them, my admiration for Guston would have been higher than it is having seen them.

Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard

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Wyndhams Theatre, London

I HAVE WATCHED AND GREATLY enjoyed many plays by Tom Stoppard. So, it was with high expectations and great excitement that I booked good tickets for his latest play, “Leopoldstadt”, which is about a tragic period during Austria’s history, a time that interests me greatly. The play follows the history of a Jewish family living in Vienna between the late 19th century and about 1955. Like many Jewish families living in Germany and Austria, they were determined to appear increaslingly less Jewish and ever more like their gentile neighbours, a process known as ‘assimilation’. As Amos Elon demonstrates in his wonderful book, “The Pity of it All”, the more assimilated the Jewish people became, the less they were tolerated by their mostly anti-Semitic neighbours. Stoppard’s play attempts to portray this sad state of affairs in “Leopoldstadt”. His play was more like a history lesson than a compelling work of drama.

“Leopoldstadt” was being performed in London’s magnificent Wyndhams Theatre. Frankly, although there were a few wonderful scenes in the play, I was mostly disappointed. Although it was clearly a heartfelt and moving exploration of part of his family’s history, Stoppard has written far better and subtler plays in the past.

Preaching prejudice

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BLOG XMAS St Georges Day_1024

 

MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS have passed since I spent Christmas very enjoyably with my good friends, ‘X’ and his wife ‘Y’. After breakfast on the morning of Christmas Day, all of us except the housekeeper, who considered that most churches were not sufficiently devout for her to attend, used to set off for the pretty church in the nearby village of ‘H’. Some of the party, including Y, travelled by car but I joined X and some others, who preferred to tramp the mile or so across the countryside that separated the house from the small hill-top church. We occupied more than two complete bench-like pews in the small, crowded edifice.

The service was traditional with Christmas carols. When it came to the singing of “Come all ye faithful”, X sung it loudly in Latin whilst all around him the rest of the congregation were singing it in English. Like him, I was introduced at private school to the Latin version, which commences with the words “Adeste fideles…”. Once, when Y was bemoaning the use of English instead of Latin in church services, someone pointed out to her that unlike the rest of the congregation, she was in no position to complain because she only attended church at Christmas and for christenings, weddings, and funerals.

The Christmas morning service at H, which was held for families with young children, included a sermon. The vicar of H started his sermon something like this:

“Christmas is a happy time of the year for everyone apart from the Jews. However, there is one exception. And that exception is Lord Sieff, the Chairman of the Marks and Spencer’s retailing firm.”

I was horrified by this and sat fuming throughout the rest of the service. When it was over, we shuffled towards the door where the vicar was receiving greetings from those who had attended. One by one people wished him ‘Merry Christmas’ and hoped that he would enjoy his Christmas meal. When I reached him, I refused to shake his outstretched hand. I said:

“Even if I had not been born Jewish, I would have found the beginning of your sermon to be in the worst of taste.”

The cleric did not reply, but Y, who heard me say this, told me afterwards that I had said the right thing.

Writing this many years after that memorable Christmas service, I cannot imagine what was going through the vicar’s head when he composed the sermon. If a man of the church, which encourages brotherly love between all men, can say those words about Lord Sieff and the Jewish people to his congregation and, more recently, a prominent cosmopolitan, expensively educated personality in British politics has characterised black Africans as “‘piccaninnies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’”, gay men as “bumboys”, and women wearing hijab as “looking like letter boxes”,  is it surprising that so many people in Britain harbour prejudice in their hearts, even if they do not always express their feelings openly?

The pencil and the peas

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PENCIL 2

I spent three years working on the experimental aspects of my PhD topic at University College London (‘UCL’) in a laboratory in the Physiology Department. Throughout that time there were always one or two other PhD students working in the same room. ‘Wink’, our supervisor’s wife, was a chemist. She often worked alongside us. Generally, the atmosphere in the laboratory was very congenial.

We were joined by a new PhD student sometime during my second year in the lab. Fortunately, I cannot recall her name, but let’s call her ‘June’.

One morning, June asked me whether she could borrow a pencil from me. As pencils were few and far between in our lab, I said to her: “Make sure you give it back, please.” To which she answered in an unfriendly tone: “Don’t be so Jewish.”

Now, it so happens that I am born Jewish. Although I am the least observant (in religious terms) Jewish person you are ever likely to meet, I am not happy when the word ‘Jewish’ or ‘Jew’ is used pejoratively. Wink must have seen my face flush, because she said to June: “That was unnecessary.”

Although it was almost innocuous, the pencil incident made me wary of June.

Some month’s later, Wink and her husband invited all their PhD students to be their guests at the annual Physiological Society Dinner, which was being held at UCL. I was seated beside Wink and opposite June. When the main course arrived, there were green peas on our plates. I do not like these small round spheres at all.

June noticed me pushing them aside on my plate, and said: “Is your religion also against peas? I must remember that when I invite you around to my place for dinner.” Feeling my face warming, I said to June: “Even if you were to beg me to come to eat at your place, I would have no hesitation in refusing.” Hearing that, June’s face turned bright red. She stood up and without saying anything, left the dining hall. Wink turned to me, and whispered: “Well said, Adam.”

June abandoned her PhD and our lab not long after this dinner.

PENCIL 1

Now, many years later, I am still sensitive about anti-Semitic remarks, but also deeply curious as to why European people make them, often when they have had little or no contact with Jewish people. In India, which I visit often, although there have never been many Jewish people there, there is barely, if any, prejudice against them. Often Indian people extol the virtues of Jewish people.