Enemy Aliens in the Family

Following the outbreak of World War 1 the Australian Government declared all Australian residents who had a father or grandfather born in either Germany or Austria as resident aliens whether or not they were Australian citizens. As such they were required to register their addresses with the Government. Because there were too many to lock up the Government pursued a policy of selective internment.

Some of the men were imprisoned at Trial Bay Gaol, a picturesque spot just south of South West Rocks on the New South Wales Mid North Coast. Women and children of German or Austrian descent detained by the British in Asia were also held in camps around Australia.

A significant number of the residents of Lower Clarence Valley (NSW) were German immigrants or descended from them. By definition most, if not all of these, would have been resident aliens and therefore considered a national threat. But no one from this area was interned during the war.

Names like Busch, Englert, Fischer, Giese, Grebert, Hoschke, Kempnich, Klotz, and Kratz live on. Unlike many parts of Australia where many of German descent anglicised their names because of the prevailing anti-German sentiment these families retained their distinctive German names. And when their young men, many, if not all, who without doubt qualified as resident aliens, responded to the Nation's call they enlisted under their German name. I’m sure that if I knew my family history thoroughly there would be more than one connection to these families.

Anton Kempnich was aged 7 when he arrived in Australia with his German parents and older siblings. He later married Elizabeth Davis, the eldest daughter of my great X 3 grandparents John and Johanna Davis. Perhaps part of Elizabeth’s attraction to Anton lay in the fact her Mother was a native of Germany.

John and Johanna’s second child was John Davis, my paternal grandmother's father. John and Eliza (nee Orr) had three children, John dying before my grandmother was born.

Their eldest and only son, my great-uncle Roy enlisted in WW1 and served in France where he was severely wounded, requiring considerable time in England to recover before being sent back to the front. He was one of the lucky ones, not like his uncle George, the youngest child of John and Johanna. George, legally a ‘resident alien’ was killed in action in France on 25th June 1917.

Roy on the right. I assume George is the other. Nana Marsh on Roy's right and Aunty Ethel behind.I assume the girl behind George is his daughter and the woman on his left the one that cared for his daughter when he enlisted.

The tragedy of this is that my uncles, and many young men like them, may at times have been facing their cousins in the opposite trenches. Young men who were considered a risk to Australia because of their German heritage.

But what of Johanna and others like her, men and women who came from Germany and Austria to call Australia home. Their sacrifice for Australia as seen in the deaths and wounds of their sons and grandsons was no less than that of any other Australian parent or grandparent. They may have been born in a foreign land, but the vision they had for their future and that of their children and grandchildren lay in this nation, the land that was now their home. And yes, I am sure they shed tears over the suffering of their German relatives as well, something that probably made their grief more intense than that of other Australians.

Ironically at the same time our ‘resident aliens’ were facing our national enemy the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne was publicly advocating that members of his flock should avoid involvement in England’s war. Now, without wanting to debate the rightness or wrongness of the war, many of those ‘resident aliens’ demonstrated a much greater commitment to what the majority of Australians saw as their patriotic duty than the Archbishop and those who fell in with him. In fact, it could be argued he was working against the national interest.

Today we still have young men and women engaged in conflict on foreign shores. Among them are those who came here as children with their refugee parents, or were born to parents who had arrived here as refugees from those places they now find themselves in. How do we see these these men and women today, men and women who according to the standard applied 100 years ago would be classified as ‘resident aliens’? Is it not possible that like those of former years these people see their future and that of their families in this land and are as committed to those same ideals held by former generations of Australians?