Showing posts with label Germany Berlin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Germany Berlin. Show all posts

Tuesday, 4 July 2017

Trove Tuesday: Flying the Kangaroo route in 1949

Qantas Kangaroo Route Advertisement 1948 retrieved from Pinterest


Most migrants to Australia, including immigrants in my family, came here by sea. My grandfather is an exception. He arrived by air.

Hans Boltz was born on 4 July 1910 in Berlin, where he trained at the State Institute for map drawing as a cartographer. From 1930 to the beginning of World War II he worked for the Prussian Geological State Institute (Geological Survey of Prussia or Preußischen Geologischen Landesanstalt). After the war, when he found his way back to Berlin, he discovered that this building, in Invalidenstraße 44, was situated in the Russian zone. Hans lived in the American zone and, reluctant to travel every day into the Russian-occupied part of the city or move there, he resigned. In 1948 he applied for work with the Australian government, which at the time was recruiting Germans with qualifications and skills in short supply in Australia. He got a job as a cartographer with the Australian Bureau of Mineral Resources.

Berlin, Mitte, Invalidenstraße 44, Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Bau und Stadtentwicklung
Invalidenstraße 44 in Berlin-Mitte, the building of the former Geological Survey of Prussia. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Hans Boltz's file created by the Department of Post War Reconstruction includes the dates of his journey from Berlin to Canberra:
  • Wednesday 13 July 1949 left Germany for London
  • Sunday 7 August 1949 left London
  • Thursday 11 August 1949 arrived Canberra via Sydney
  • Friday 12 August 1949 commenced working for the Bureau of Mineral Resources.


NAA: MT105/8, 1/6/4531 Page 2 of 143 (click to enlarge image)

In the late 1980s with the help of my grandfather Hans I spent some time compiling my family tree on my mother's side. I had bought a book in 1978 called The History of our Family, published by Poplar Books of New Jersey. This had a series of templates for recording family history. One of these was for immigration.

Decades afterwards, my grandfather remembered very clearly his trip from Berlin and his arrival, on 11 August 1949.







I summarised my grandfather's recollections as follows:
Hans Fritz Boltz emigrated from Berlin to Canberra 11 . 8 . 1949
Aeroplane - Berlin - Hamburg - London 4 weeks London
museums / concerts ... wandering around sightseeing
London - Cairo - Karachi - Singapore - Darwin - Sydney -
Helopolis Hotel Cairo  Raffles Hotel Singapore  Qantas flight
In London my grandfather was given English lessons. He was not just a tourist.

Qantas Sydney-London Constellation route map retrieved from Pinterest


On Trove I have found an advertisement for the route in August 1949.

AUSTRALIA-ENGLAND CONSTELLATION SERVICE (1949, August 4). Daily Commercial News and Shipping List (Sydney, NSW : 1891 - 1954), p. 4. Retrieved July 4, 2017, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article163836624

A Qantas Empire Airways Constellation airliner, photographed by Frank Hurley retrieved from http://trove.nla.gov.au/version/40487425


In 2007 Qantas celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Kangaroo route. This video includes footage of the journey on the Lockheed Constellation aeroplanes. The first flight on the route had departed 1 December 1947.





The journey took four days, 55 hours of flying time. There were two overnight stops, one in Cairo and the other in Singapore. In Cairo my grandfather stayed at the Heliopolis Palace Hotel. In Singapore at the Raffles. There were 29 passengers and 11 crew.

Poster for the Heliopolis Palace Hotel retrieved from Palace intrigue: Egypt in the Golden Age of Travel

COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Entree van het Raffles Hotel Singapore TMnr 60018239
Raffles Hotel in 1932. Image from Wikimedia Commons


The airfare in 1949 was £260 sterling. By way of comparison my grandfather's salary on starting with the Australian Public Service as an experienced cartographer was £222 a year and the average earnings for men in Australia was about £220 a year. The Australian government paid my grandfather's fare.






Sources
Related posts

Posted by at 5 comments:
Labels: , , ,

Saturday, 29 April 2017

Z is for Zehlendorf

My maternal grandparents, Hans Boltz (1910-1992) and Charlotte  Manock (1912-1988) were married in 1937.

Their first home was in Eschershauser Weg 27, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Berlin. Zehlendorf is a district in the south-west of Berlin near the Krumme Lanke lake, on the edge of the Grunewald forest.

They lived in a  flat (apartment) in a housing estate known as Onkel Toms Hütte, served by a  U-Bahn station named after the 1852 anti-slavery novel. The estate, designed by several by well-known architects, among them Bruno Taut and Hugo Härings, was built between 1926 and 1932 . The apartment blocks had communal back gardens that led into the forest.

My grandmother, Charlotte Boltz, outside her new home in 1937

Eschershauser Weg in 1937

Eschershauser Weg in the snow about 1937




from Google maps
A satellite view of Eschershauser Weg showing how it is set in the forest and the communal grounds surrounding the flats from Google maps



According to Google Maps a U-Bahn leaves for Berlin Zoo every ten minutes. The journey takes just over half an hour. Charlotte's parents lived near Berlin Zoo.


Public transport from Eschershauser Weg to Berlin Zoo from Google maps

Hans's parents lived at Florastraße 13 in Steglitz. His father, Fritz Boltz (1879-1954) was a live-in janitor at a school there. There is still a school at that address. Florastraße is about six kilometres away from Eschershauser Weg and it takes about half an hour to get there by public transport.


From Eschershauser Weg, Zehlendorf, to Florastraße, Steglitz per Google maps
I visited Eschershauser Weg in 1982



The back of the flats overlook a communal garden with a sand pit and play space. Each flat has a balcony. Photographed 1982.


The sandpit at the back of the flats in 1982


My mother playing in the sandpit at Christmas time. She was three years old.

My mother playing in the sandpit aged 4


My mother on her sled at Christmas when she was three years old. The balconies at the back of the flats can be seen.

My mother told me about tobogganing on her sled down a very steep slope with two stones at the bottom of the path that you had to avoid. I found the path and stones in 1982. The slope was not big but it must have seemed so to a small child.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Wednesday, 13 April 2016

K is for Kennengelernt

My grandparents Hans Boltz and Charlotte Boltz née Manock recalled and celebrated the day they met, 24 January 1930, for the rest of their lives. The day of such first meetings is known in German as Kennengelernttag, 'the day of becoming acquainted'. I recall it being a special day with them making toasts at each anniversary.

Charlotte Manock as a young woman
Charlotte, eighteen at that time, had gone with her family to a tea-dance, Tanztee , possibly at a restaurant by one of the Berlin lakes. Hans went up to the group and asked Charlotte to dance, and from that time they were committed to one another.

A five-o´clock tea and dance at the Berlin Eden Hotel in the 1930s. Image from https://kreuzberged.com/2016/03/30/berlin-past-five-oclock-at-the-eden/
The Hotel Eden would have been close to where the Manock family lived near the Berlin Zoo.

My grandparents would not have been dancing outside in January.
Tea Dance, Tegernsee 1932 photographed by Alfred Eisenstaedt and in the collection of Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, Gift of Lufthansa German Airlines retrieved from http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/art/221655

Charlotte and Hans were from different backgrounds. Charlotte's father was a prosperous businessman and Hans's father, who had been in the army, worked as a school caretaker.

In 1931 Hans was a cadet [Anwärter] in the Prussian Geological Survey [Preussischen Geologischen Landesanstalt]. He had spent four years at the Technical School of Cartography in the State Institute for Mapping, and joined the Geological Survey in 1930. His training lasted another three years until he took and passed the examination for the Cartographic Service in March 1933. He was then appointed to a non-tenured post, on three months notice, which he held until May 1937, when he received a permanent position, subject to formal confirmation which was given in January 1938.

Charlotte and Hans married in April 1937, not long after he had received his appointment in the cartographic service. They had been engaged for four years and known each other for seven.

Charlotte and Hans following their marriage in 1937 outside the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche


Related post
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Friday, 8 April 2016

G is for great grandmother from Germany

My great grandmother, the mother of my maternal grandfather, was Hedwig Anna Bertha (known as Anna) Boltz née Bertz (1885 - 1961).

Anna was born at Trechwitz near Götz fifty-five kilometers east of Berlin and about seventeen kilometers west of Brandenburg an der Havel. Her father Karl Bertz (1854-1932) was a bricklayer. Her mother was Henrietta Bertz née Ritter (1862-1942).

Anna had one brother, Paul, born in 1888.

In 1909 she married a soldier, Fritz Herman Boltz (1879-1954), at Brandenburg an der Havel. They had one son, my grandfather, Hans (1910-1992), who was born at Brandenburg.

Anna Boltz née Bertz, Hans Boltz, Fritz Boltz in 1911. Fritz Boltz is in the dress uniform of an Unteroffizier (NCO) [lace at collar, single cuff stripe] of the 35th Prinz Heinrich von Preussen Fusilier Regiment.


When Fritz left the army in 1912, Fritz and Anna lived in an apartment in Florastrasse, Berlin Steglitz, attached to a public school, where he worked as a caretaker. This was his address when he was called up in 1914. He returned to the same address after the war and Fritz and Anna were still living there in the 1940s [as recalled by their grand-daughter, my mother]. Fritz retired about 1949, aged 70. He died 6 April 1954 at Berlin Zehlendorf.

Easter 1941: My mother sitting on the knee of her great grandmother Henrietta Bertz née Ritter. and with her mother and her Boltz grandparents.

My mother with her grandmother outside the Sommerfeld bakery shop in Berlin in November 1943.


In 1949 Hans, the only child of Fritz and Anna, emigrated to Australia. His wife and daughter followed him a year later.

In 1960 my great grandmother emigrated. Anna Boltz came on the Australia probably embarking at Genoa and arriving on 29 February 1960. The MS Australia belonged to the Lloyd Triestino line..


National Archives of Australia: Incoming passenger list to Fremantle "Australia" arrived 29 February 1960 (K269, 29 FEB 1960 AUSTRALIA Page 3 of 33). Anna is passenger 49 on the list.

The shipping list records Anna as German, travelling tourist class . Her port of landing was Sydney, and her address in Australia was 19 Ridley Street, Turner, Canberra, A.C.T. This was the address of my grandparents.

Anna was 75 when she made this journey to the other side of the world. After she had sold and packed all her possessions in Berlin, she made her way from Berlin to Genoa at a time when Berlin was isolated in East Germany (although the Berlin Wall had not yet been built). This was quite an undertaking for an elderly woman travelling by herself. She had little English or Italian.

I looked at the other passengers on the "Australia" and found that Frieda Gunther, passenger 269 on page 9, also disembarked at Sydney. Her address in Australia was 3 Myall Street, O'Connor, Canberra, ACT. I recognised both the surname and address. Hans Gunther, like my grandfather, was a cartographer from Germany, and in fact I think from Berlin. My grandparents were good friends with the Gunthers. We often visited them at their house and they came to the Boltz's.

Frieda died in 1982 aged 87 years. (Family Notices. (1982, November 16). The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995), p. 15. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article130829619) This means she was born about 1895 and ten years younger than Anna. It seems likely that Hans Boltz and Hans Gunther made plans for their mothers to travel together from Berlin to Australia.

My mother remembers that Anna brought a tea chest of possessions. They included:
  • a tea set with a rose design and also a white china dinner set;  I can remember my grandparents using these in later years
  • an ashtray with the shoulder strap of the 35th Prinz Heinrich von Preussen Fusilier Regiment, the regiment of my great grandfather
  • a device in the shape of an owl which was meant to remove the smell of cigar smoke from a room. My great grandfather had liked to smoke cigars. My grandparents however did not smoke so I think it did not get much use in Canberra.
The ashtray with the shoulder strap of the 35th Prinz Heinrich von Preussen Fusilier Regiment

Anna died on 29 April 1961, a year after arriving in Canberra to be with her son. She is buried at Woden Cemetery, Canberra.

Further reading
Related post
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Saturday, 5 December 2015

Kanu-Club Wannsee

My maternal grandparents, Hans Boltz (1910-1992) and Charlotte Manock (1912-1988), were members of the Kanu-Club Wannsee in Berlin before they were married.  The following pictures are photos from their photo album.

Wannsee is in the south-west of Berlin, Germany. The River Havel forms two lakes separated by a bridge: the Großer Wannsee (Greater Wannsee) and the Kleiner Wannsee (Little Wannsee).  There is still a Wannseer Kanu-Club located on the Kleiner Wannsee which takes canoe hiking trips.

Kanu-Club Wannsee 1931
1931- Hans Boltz is in the middle back (wearing glasses)

Hans Boltz is second from the front
1935

Kanu-Club Wannsee 1935
waterfight
Hans Boltz is in overcoat with glasses
Charlotte Manock at the Kanu-Club
Hans and Charlotte
camping with canoes
Charlotte camping
Charlotte camping

canoes in a lock
Charlotte




This week's Sepia Saturday blogging theme is Robinson Crusoe. There seems to be some mention of canoes in the novel giving my post a tenuous link to the theme.













Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)