‘Avenge the Lusitania’: The Anti-German Riots in South Africa in 1915

Abstract

The anti-German riots which erupted simultaneously in many countries in response to the torpedoing of the Lusitania by a German U-boat in 1915 reflected shifts in the status of minorities in multi-ethnic societies at a time of escalating nationalist emotions. This article shows that the situation of the Germans in South Africa differed in important respects from the dilemma in which Germans found themselves in other parts of the world during the First World War. The dominion of the Union of South Africa was embroiled in a struggle between Afrikaners and English-speaking settlers for the definition of white South Africanism. Since most German immigrants had previously tended to amalgamate with the Afrikaner section of the colonial society and had not laid claims to a hyphenated identity, many Afrikaners perceived the attacks on German residents as an assault by urban English-speakers on the Afrikaner community, and Afrikaner public opinion requested that Germans should be treated in a fair manner. The intra-white dispute about a shared South African identity prevented, therefore, the state from sustaining the kind of assimilationist or even discriminatory pressure which German residents had to face in countries such as the USA or Brazil during and after the Great War.

Keywords::

• First World War
• South Africa
• German minority
• xenophobia
• white South African identity

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and criticisms. I also wish to express my gratitude to Alex Mouton for many in-depth discussions.

Notes

^[1] South African National Archives Pretoria (NA), South African Police (SAP), box 27, folder 6/245/14/350, 1 June 1915, Commissioner SAP, Truter, to Attorney-General, 17 August 1915.

^[2] The vulgarised version of the poem was not out of tune, however, with Kipling's Own ‘half-mad imprecations against the Germans’ during the First World War as Dan Jacobson has stated, Jacobson, “Kipling in South Africa,” 60.

^[3] A veritable Lusitania industry, comprising scholarly publications, coffee table books, Internet sites and DVDs, has arisen which partly reverberates with the great public interest in maritime disasters, although not quite at Titanic level. See Bailey and Ryan, The Lusitania Disaster; Ramsay, Lusitania: Saga and Myth and Preston, Lusitania. An Epic Tragedy.

^[4]Trommler, “The Lusitania Effect,” 241–66.

^[5]Stibbe, “Civilian Internment,” 52–3.

^[6]Guelke, “Freehold Farmers,” 103, fn. 9.

^[7]Scriba, “Lutheran Mission and Churches in South Africa”, 174.

^[8] See Luebke, Germans in Brazil.

^[9]Officieel Jaarboek van die Unie, No.7 – 1924, 118.

^[10] Ibid., 134.

^[11]Star, 8 September 1914.

^[12]Dubow, “How British was the British World?” 19.

^[13] See Bender, Der Burenkrieg and Rosenbach, Das deutsche Reich.

^[14] See Dedering, “The Ferreira Raid 1906” and Giliomee, The Afrikaners, 380–3. On coloured and black South Africans during the First World War: Grundlingh, Fighting their Own War and Nasson, Springboks on the Somme.

^[15] Giliomee, The Afrikaners, 379–84.

^[16]Star, 29 September 1914 and ibid., 11 September 1914.

^[17] Ibid.

^[18] Ibid., 10 September 1914.

^[19] Ibid., 12 September 1914.

^[20] Ibid., 21 August 1914.

^[21] Stibbe, “Civilian Internment,” 55–6.

^[22]Star, 1 September 1914.

^[23]Hermannsburger Missionsblatt, Vol. 2, February 1915, 37.

^[24]Buxton, General Botha, 266.

^[25]Star, 4 September 1914.

^[26] Ibid., 28 September 1914.

^[27] Ibid., 16 October 1914 and ibid., 13 October 1914.

^[28] Ibid., 8 September 1914.

^[29]Allgemeine Missionszeitschrift, Vol. 42, 1915, 216. For similar responses of the German community in Britain to anti-German public pressure, see Yarrow, “The Impact of Hostility,” 104.

^[30]Star, 19 September 1914; NA, SAP, box 27, folder 6/245/14/349, ‘Anti-German Demonstrations’, Henley, 20 May 1915.

^[31]Union of South Africa, “Report of the Select Committee,” 43.

^[32]Thurlow, Fascism in Britain, 51.

^[33] Union of South Africa, “Report of the Select Committee,” 42.

^[34] Thurlow, Fascism in Britain, 42.

^[35]Dorril, Black Shirt, 425.

^[36] This author could not find any references to Beamish's early career as an anti-German agitator in South Africa in the relevant literature, which seems to indicate that he was not keen to advertise this part of his biography to his fascist friends. In the 1940s, Beamish settled in Southern Rhodesia/Zimbabwe where he died in 1948. See Linehan, British Fascism, 52. See also Pugh, Hurrah for the Blackshirts, 28–9.

^[37] NA, Ministry of Justice (JUS), box 223, folder 4/225/15, Baumann to Minister of Justice, Pretoria, 1 June 1915; ibid., box 402, folder 1/137/15, ‘Speeches delivered at a meeting at the town hall Durban’, 30 November 1915.

^[38] Ibid.

^[39]Ticktin, “The War Issue,” 69–70.

^[40]Star, 3 September 1914.

^[41] NA, Governor-General (GG), box 616, folder 9/64/120, Lord Buxton to Lewis Harcourt, 15 May 1915.

^[42] NA, GG, box 617, folder 9/64/141, Pilkington to P. Horsfall, 15 June 1915.

^[43]Star, 16 September 1914.

^[44] Ibid., 18 September 1914.

^[45] NA, SAP, box 27, folder 6/245/14/349, Henley, 20 May 1915.

^[46]Star, 19 September 1914.

^[47] NA, JUS, box 401, folder 1/137/15, Hyde to Beamish, 26 May 1915.

^[48] NA, JUS, Box 402, folder 1/137/15, Beamish to Colonel Douglas, 14 June 1915.

^[49] The employee reported that the Committee members were ‘very bitter against the Jewish people’. ‘NA, SAP, box 27, folder 6/245/14/349, Henley, 20 May 1915.

^[50] Ibid., Vachell to Secretary SAP, 26 May 1915.

^[51] Ibid., Henley, 20 May 1915.

^[52] Ramsay, Lusitania: Saga and Myth, 43.

^[53]Eksteins, Rites of Spring, 228.

^[54] Ibid., 222.

^[55] Ibid., 227–8. See also Audoin-Rouzeau, “Combat,” 174.

^[56]Preston, Lusitania. An Epic Tragedy, 40.

^[57]Panayi, “Anti-German Riots,” 190.

^[58]Gullace, “Friends, Aliens, and Enemies,” 350 and Preston, Lusitania. An Epic Tragedy, 296–7.

^[59] Quoted in Panayi, “Anti-German Riots,” 191.

^[60]Panayi, “Intolerant Act,” 56.

^[61] Panayi, “Anti-German Riots,” 201–2.

^[62] Ibid., 189.

^[63] Panayi, “Intolerant Act,” 57–9.

^[64]Evans, Fighting Words, 95–110; Latter, “The Night of the Stones” and Francis, ‘Anti-Alienism in New Zealand’, 251–76.

^[65]Lohr, “Patriotic Violence,” 607–26.

^[66] For example Star, 8, 10 May 1915.

^[67] Ibid., 11 May 1915.

^[68] Ibid. The same source reported that the petition carried 10,000 signatures. Presuming that only the white population of Johannesburg enjoyed the privilege of signing the anti-German petition, this would have constituted a sizeable portion of the 151,836 white inhabitants of the city who were recorded in 1921, especially when taking into account that the total of urban whites had increased from 766,849 by the end of the war to 847,508 in 1921. See Officieel Jaarboek, 129–130.

^[69] NA, SAP, box 27, folder 6/245/14/349, Vachell to Secretary SAP, Pretoria, 26 May 1915.

^[70]Star, 12 May 1915.

^[71]Star, 13 May 1915.

^[72] Ibid.

^[73] Ibid.

^[74] Both British and German sources continually lamented that the First World War, which was routinely depicted as an exclusive white affair, could undermine the prestige of the European colonial powers in the eyes of their African subjects. See Strachan, “The First World War in Africa,” 2.

^[75] See for example Allgemeine Missionszeitschrift, 42, 1915, 453.

^[76] According to Louis Grundlingh, only 180 participants in the riots were sentenced, mainly to fines, Grundlingh, “n Aspek van Blanke Suid-Afrikaanse Groepsverhoudinge,” 80.

^[77] NA, JUS, box 401, folder 1/137/15, Sub-Inspector, Acting District Commandant to Deputy Commissioner SAP, 22 May 1915.

^[78] NA, JUS, Box 401, folder 1/137/15, Boydell to De Wet, 14 May 1915.

^[79] NA, SAP, box 27, folder 6/245/14/349, Giles to Deputy Commissioner, SAP, 28 December 1915.

^[80] NA, SAP, folder, 1/335/15/7 [in NA, JUS, box 401, folder 1/137/15], ‘Return shewing [sic] damage done to premises and stock during the Anti-German Demonstrations in District 38’, 15 May.

^[81] NA, SAP, box 27, folder 6/245/14/349, Giles to Deputy Commissioner, SAP, 28 December 1915.

^[82] Ibid.

^[83] Boydell, My Luck Was In, 108–9.

^[84] NA, JUS, box 401, folder 1/137/15, ‘Memo of a meeting Minister for Justice, SAP Commissioner, and deputation from Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce’, n.d. [15 June 1915].

^[85] NA, SAP, box 27, folder 6/245/14/349, Roos to Commissioner SAP, 12 November 1915.

^[86] NA, JUS, box 401, folder 1/137/15, Minister of Justice, ‘Appeal to the Citizens of the Rand’, 13 May 1915.

^[87] NA, JUS, box 223, folder 4/218/15, Assistant Magistrate, Roodepoort, to Secretary for Justice, 25 May 1915.

^[88] These concerns are reflected in a number of police documents in: NA, SAP, box 33, folder 6/361/15, ‘Instructions to Police in event of further Anti-German riots’.

^[89] NA, SAP, box 27, folder 6/245/14/349, ‘Summary of Damage done to Property in the Anti-German Riots of 13 May, 1915’, n.d. [April–May 1916].

^[90] In the aftermath of the Lusitania Riots the South African press claimed that the damages done in the riots in Britain amounted to the much smaller sum of £250,000. NA, JUS, box 402, folder 1/137/15 (Sunday Times, June 27 1915). According to the South African statistics quoted above, the total of damages in South Africa amounted to £676,314.

^[91] In England, too, the crowds attacked naturalised Russian Jews, Scots and other on-German residents, see Panayi, “Anti-German Riots,” 197; Gullace, “Friends, Aliens, and Enemies,” 352.

^[92]Star, 12 May 1915.

^[93] NA, SAP, box 27, folder 6/245/14/349, Deputy Commissioner of Police to Secretary SAP, 4 June 1915.

^[94] NA, JUS, box 401, folder 1/137/15, Belgian Consul General to Minister for Justice, 14 May 1915: NA, Prime Minister (PM), box 1/1/38, folder 4/26/1915, Acting Secretary to the Prime Minister to the American Consul, 2 June 1915.

^[95] Ibid.

^[96] NA, JUS, box 401, folder 1/137/15, American Consul to Minister for Justice, 14 May 1915.

^[97] On good offices in international law see Poeggel and Oeser, “Methods of Diplomatic Settlement,” 515–6.

^[98] NA, GG, box 617, folder 9/64/143, Murphy to Governor-General, 9 June 1915.

^[99]Ons Land, 20 May 1915.

^[100] Botha promised to look into the matter although he gruffly commented on the prisoners’ complaint about the lack of underwear that many internees were not accustomed to wearing it anyway, NA, GG, box 617, folder 9/64/140, Botha to Governor-General, 10 August 1915.

^[101] NA, GG, box 616, folder 9/64/138, Prime Minister's Office, Minute, 18 June 1915.

^[102] NA, JUS, box 401, folder 1/137/15, Acting District Commandant to Deputy Commissioner SAP, 22 May 1915.

^[103] Ibid., Acting District Commandant, 21 May 1915.

^[104] ‘There is no doubt that these disturbances were the result of the lead given by Johannesburg in the matter’, opined the Police Deputy Commissioner in Kimberley, echoing similar statements made by other government representatives and observers; NA, JUS, box 401, folder 1/137/15, Deputy Commissioner SAP to Secretary to SAP, 22 May 1915.

^[105]Cape Times, 13 May 1915.

^[106]Cape Times, 14 May 1915.

^[107] NA, JUS, box 401, folder 1/137/15, Commissioner SAP to Secretary for Justice, 28 May 1915.

^[108]Cape Times, 14 May 1915.

^[109] NA, JUS, box 401, folder 1/137/15, Commissioner SAP to Secretary for Justice, 28 May 1915.

^[110] NA, JUS, box 401, folder 1/137/15, Acting Magistrate to Secretary for Justice, 18 May 1915.

^[111] Ibid., District Commandant, Port Elizabeth, to Deputy Commissioner SAP, Grahamstown, 18 May 1915.

^[112] On the internment camp at Fort Napier and the xenophobic atmosphere in Pietermaritzburg see Dominy, “Pietermaritzburg's Imperial Postscript,” 36–8.

^[113] NA, SAP, box 27, folder 6/245/14/349, n.d., presumably April–May 1916.

^[114] For example: NA, JUS, box 401, folder 1/137/15, Acting Magistrate, Port Elizabeth, to Secretary for Justice, Pretoria, 18 May 1915.

^[115] NA, JUS, box 402, folder 1/137/15, ‘Speeches delivered at a meeting at the town hall Durban’, 30 November 1915.

^[116] Ibid.

^[117] Ibid., Chief Magistrate, Durban, to Secretary for Justice, Pretoria, 5 November 1915.

^[118] Petitions from public meetings and town councils poured in from Johannesburg, Uitenhage, Oudtshoorn, Molteno, Kingwilliamstown, Kokstad, Pietermaritzburg, East London, Port Elizabeth, Bethlehem, Springs, Alice, Cradock, Britstown, Port Alfred, Clanwilliam, Molteno, Harrismith, Port Alfred, Stutterheim, Somerset West, Vryburg and Newcastle. Similar resolutions were also launched by settler communities in Rhodesia. See the correspondence in NA, PM, box 1/1/38, folder 4/26/1915. See also Ons Land, 18 May 1915; ibid., 20 May 1915 and ibid., 22 May 1915.

^[119] For example NA, PM, box 1/1/38, folder 4/28/1915, Fredr. L. Gregg, to Acting Secretary to the Prime Minister, 23 June 1915.

^[120] NA, JUS, 401, folder 1/137/15, Secretary for Justice, Roos, to Smuts, Cape Town, 14 May 1915.

^[121] Ibid., Minister of Justice, ‘Appeal to the Citizens of the Rand’, 13 May 1915.

^[122] NA, GG, box 616, folder 9/64/120, War 1914-15, H.B. Shawe, Acting Secretary for the Interior, to all Magistrates in the Union, 18 May 1915. The decree also stipulated that Germans who had been previously released on parole were to be re-interned.

^[123] NA, JUS, 401, folder 1/137/15, Secretary for Justice, J. De V. Roos, to Commissioner SAP, Pretoria, 21 May 1915.

^[124] The Empire bioscope advertised ‘Exciting scenes in Johannesburg yesterday. Special film. Showing German properties receiving the attention of the crowd’, Star, 13 May 1915.

^[125] For example: NA, JUS, box 220, folder 3/994/15, P. Dedlow versus Minister of Defence, re Internment, 1915; NA, JUS, box 223, folder 4/218/15, Chief Magistrate, Durban, to Secretary for Justice, Roos, 3 July 1915. In his pioneering account of the anti-German riots, L. Grundlingh seems to have underestimated the ease with which the boundaries between naturalised and non-naturalised Germans became blurred in the public perception. See Grundlingh, “n Aspek van Blanke Suid-Afrikaanse Groepsverhoudinge,” 68.

^[126] NA, GG, box 616, folder 9/64/116, W.F. Hufeland, Pietermaritzburg, to Lord Buxton, Pretoria, 26 March 1915.

^[127] NA, SAP, box 27, folder 6/245/14/349, E. Rose to General Botha, 20 November 1915.

^[128] NA, SAP, box 33, folder 6/361/15, ‘Afrikander’ to Minister of Justice, Pretoria, 9 January 1916.

^[129] NA, PM, box 1/1/151, folder 51/60/1915, A. Korte, Durban, to General Botha, Pretoria, 30 July 1915.

^[130] NA, JUS, box 223, folder 4/225/15, J.C. Baumann to Minister of Justice, Pretoria, 1 June 1915. See also NA, PM, box PM 1/1/151, folder 51/60/1915, Gundelfinger to General Botha, Pretoria, 3 August 1915.

^[131] NA, JUS, 220, folder 3/1020/15, J. de V. Roos to Attorney General, C.W. de Villiers, 3 November 1915; Clipping (Sunday Times, 31 October 1915).

^[132] NA, SAP, box 33, folder 6/361/15, unidentified newspaper clipping, n.d. [1915].

^[133] MacMillan, Peacemakers, 360–1.

^[134] NA, JUS, 220, folder 3/1020/15, Commissioner SAP to Secretary for Justice, 3 November 1915 and Cape Times, 3 May 1917.

^[135] Luebke, Germans in Brazil, 1.

^[136] Ibid., 69–72.

^[137] Ibid., 177, 218.

^[138] Quoted in: Trommler, “Lusitania Effect,” 249.

^[139] Keller, States of Belonging, 161.

^[140] For example: NA, PM, box 1/1/38, folder 4/28/1915, Fredr. L. Gregg, to Acting Secretary to the Prime Minister, 23 June 1915.

^[141] See NA, GG, box 616, folder 9/64/130, ‘Petition from inhabitants of Dewetsdorp that Mr G.C.T. Dieterich may be permitted to remain at large’ [1915].

^[142] NA, SAP, box 27, folder 6/245/14/349, Secretary for Justice to Commissioner SAP, 1 June 1915; ibid., Hertzog to Minister for Justice, Pretoria, 14 May 1915 and ibid., Hertzog to Secretary for Justice, Pretoria, 17 May 1915.

^[143] See for example Gerstenhauer, ‘Smuts in Südwestafrika’, in: Zeitschrift des Deutschnationalen Kolonialvereins, 20. Jahrg., 14/15, 15 November 1920, 88–92. While still in opposition, Hertzog promised that his party would fight ‘on behalf of our German citizens and will continue to do so’, NA, PM, Box PM 1/2/389, folder 110/3/1920–1931, Secretary to General Hertzog, C.R. Swart to Adolf Seehoff, 24 March 1920. His attitude changed, however, when he became Prime Minister in 1924. He advised his ministers to reject all submissions, which reached him until 1931, from German residents for compensation for damages suffered in the Lusitania Riots: ibid., Private Secretary to Seehoff, 13 February 1925; Secretary to the Prime Minister to Secretary, Deutsch-Afrikanischer Huelfs Ausschuss, 22 May 1925. See also correspondence from the period 1924 to 1938 in NA, Treasury series (TES), box, 6214, folder 42/116, Compensation. Claims in Respect of losses sustained during the Anti-German Riots.

^[144] NA, PM, box 1/1/151, folder 51/60/1915, Bonar Law to Governor-General, 13 January 1916.

^[145] Ibid., Botha to mayors of Pietermaritzburg and Durban, 10 June 1916.

^[146] NA, JUS, Box 402, folder 1/137/15, J.M. Bakkes, F.J. Potgieter, to Minister for Justice 17 June 1915.

^[147] Ibid., Acting District Commandant SAP to Deputy Commissioner SAP, Transvaal Division, 30 May 1915. The pamphlet was adorned with a photograph of a burning building.

^[148]De Burger, 7 August 1915.

^[149]Hermannsburger Missionsblatt, 7 July 1915, 189–90. The author stated with remarkable self-confidence that the German mission communities were of such importance and ‘power’ that the Union Government did not dare to increase pressure on the Germans.

^[150]Richter, Die deutsche evangelische Mission im Weltkrieg, Koloniale Rundschau, 2/3 (1916) 111–112.

^[151]Ons Land, 18 May 1915, see leader: ‘Na Vernieling en Brand’.

^[152] Ibid., 20 May 1915.

^[153] Lavin, Friendship and Union, 307.

^[154] “Debates of the House of Assembly of the Union of South Africa” (Cape Times, 4 (part 1), 152, 17 January 1919 to 20 June 1919, State Library Pretoria, 1968).

^[155]Eberhardt, Zwischen Nationalsozialismus und Apartheid, 99–110.

^[156]Kramer, Dynamics of Destruction, 183.

^[157]Cape Times, 11 May 1915.

^[158]Hirschfeld, “Germany,” 434–5.

^[159]Prochasson, ‘Intellectuals and Writers’, 323–37.

^[160]Kramer, Dynamics of Destruction, 18, 56.

^[161]Ons Land, 18 May 1915.

^[162]Natal Advertiser, 18 April 1917, clipping in NA, JUS, Box 404, folder 1/137/15.

^[163] NA, JUS, Box 402, folder 1/137/15, ‘Speeches delivered at a meeting at the town hall Durban’, 30 November 1915.

^[164] Kramer, Dynamics of Destruction, 183.

^[165]Grams, “The Deportation of German Nationals.”