2. Re: Reason for diverting from South Africa (Anna Bell) I have found the article below that was printed in a South African newspaper The Daily Dispatch two years ago. While it does not indicate why some migrants approved to go to Africa came to Australia, it does indicate the reasons why the British Governor was seeking German migrants. John Heinemann 2008/07/07 SO WHAT did the Germans ever do for us besides bratwurst and beer? Quite a lot actually, say the experts. This month marks the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the German Settlers in the Eastern Cape - and there is a host of celebrations and exhibitions to commemorate their contribution to the Border region. >From villages and towns such as Berlin, Stutterheim, Breidbach, Potsdam and Hamburg, to the distinctive white Eastern Cape accent and shweshwe fabric, these settlers have exerted more influence on our neck of the woods than many people know. "From the historical, agricultural and community development perspective they had a role to play," said Mark Pautz, a descendant of the German settlers who has researched his family tree back to the 1700s. Pautz will be presenting a talk, A Personal Journey through Genealogy, at the Amathole Museum in King William's Town today. "They were brought in by the British colonialists as a buffer in the Border wars. The fact that there are places like Berlin in the middle of Africa is kind of weird. It adds a bit of colour," he said. East London historian Dr Keith Tankard said the history of the Germans was alive in East London today. "Have you ever noticed the accents of the whites in the Eastern Cape? It's what we call the East Cape accent. You go across to the West Bank and speak to the children and they've all got a strange accent. That accent is the remnants of German," he said. Tankard also said what we know today as shweshwe fabric originated in Germany and it was later adopted by the Xhosas. "The original German print would be blue pictures on white cloth but then it changed to red and other colours," he said. German surnames are common in this part of the Eastern Cape and many people of German descent are not aware of their roots and family history. One such East Londoner, Samantha Kretzmann, was surprised when 200 people turned up at a Kretzmann family reunion in Gonubie two years ago. "It was such a magic moment," she said. "The interesting part was to see all these people and to see where my history all started." Pautz was born in East London in 1961 and grew up listening to stories about the family history from his father - former Daily Dispatch journalist Beau Pautz. When his father - who had an old sword that a family member had brought to East London in 1858 - passed away, it was up to him to find the missing pieces of the puzzle. "As a young boy I used to see the War Memorial in King William's Town," said Pautz. "The interesting story for me is that my grandfather from my mother's side was part of the team that built the memorial ... The brass plaque of the memorial had the name William Albert Pautz. He is my great uncle who died in the First World War. That always fascinated me and I wanted to know more about these stories." According to Tankard, the first group of Germans was brought to the Eastern Cape by the Cape Colony's governor, Sir George Grey, as a means of creating peace on the frontier by non- military means. He wanted retired military officers aged about 45 who were married with children, to come to the region. The idea was to settle these families in villages across British Kaffraria, to create schools, hospitals and mission stations. Grey believed such a move would help convert the Xhosa to western ways and to Christianity - and create employment for them. But less than 100 soldiers volunteered, says Tankard. The government was unwilling to provide the money for their immigration. But Grey used scare tactics to get it to comply, saying another war with the Xhosa was imminent. To make up the numbers, adverts were soon placed in Britain for thousands of pensioners to take up the offer - but there were few takers. So the British sent Grey 2 362 German soldiers, of whom only 362 were married. These were mercenaries recruited by the British German Legion during the Crimean War. In the Eastern Cape, they separated into three legions: the first went west of the Keiskamma River in Hamburg, Wooldridge and Peddie, the second found a home in Berlin, Postdam and Breidbach, and the third legion was stationed in the Stutterheim area. But Grey still needed women and so followed the Lady Kennaway - a ship loaded with single women from Northern Ireland. Only a few of them ended up marrying the soldiers as they had little to offer them, said Tankard. Grey then created another scheme. "He arranged with a German company to recruit German peasant farmers. "He wanted 2000 families a year to be sent out. The advantage is that they were farmers," said Tankard. "The legions were made up of soldiers and they didn't know how to farm. "They (peasant farmers) would teach the soldiers how to farm, and would be married." The first ship carrying the peasant farmers, the Caesar Godeffroy, arrived on July 7, 1858. Pautz has discovered that his family arrived on August 28, 1858, on the La Rochelle, a ship which sailed with 463 passengers. The three- month voyage claimed the lives of 23 passengers - including 17 children and six adults. The Pautz family history came to light when he contacted the Amathole Museum in King William's Town. They sent him background information on his family and one of the names that cropped up was Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Pautz, who was born in the 1850s in Wisbu, Pomerania. He could not, however, locate the place on modern maps in the early 1990s when he started his research. "It took me another 10 years," said Pautz. " I had a German friend at the University of Pretoria and we were drinking extensively one night and he pulled out a pre- Second World War map of Germany. It transpired that this place is now in western Poland." In the 1850s Pomerania was part of Prussia. Pautz's journey into his family history even took him to Prague in the Czech Republic where he lived and found employment. Eventually, he learned that his family split in three directions in the 1850s: to South Africa, France and America. In South Africa, Pautz's forefathers lived in Braunschweig, north of King William's Town and their gravesites are still in the area. Recently there have been calls to remove colonial memorials in East London - including the German Settlers Memorial on the Esplanade. Pautz, however, said the removal of the monument would not change history. "You can remove the statues because they are just symbols but you can't do away with history," he said. "That's the underlying factor in it. Regimes and symbols come and go. I think we are in a time and a place where we need to embrace our own history and not try to pigeon- hole it. "It's all our history and in it there are common things that bind us together, whether good or bad. Let's learn from the bad things that have happened, pick the good things and move ahead."