Arbeit macht frei: - Fredrick Töben

Chapter 16
THINKING ABOUT
CADELL TRAINING CENTRE
An 1880 encounter with South Australian justice
In many ways South Australia has always been at odds with the other
Australian colonies that federated into the Commonwealth of Australia in
1901. It was never a penal colony. And a large percentage of its migrants
were German. The Germanic influence of hard physical and mental work
and personal cleanliness was a characteristic noted by visitors who reported
their impressions as they travelled throughout Australia.
In 1886 the Leipzig publisher, Wilhelm Friedrich, published Reinhold
Graf Anrep-Elmpt’s Australien. Eine Reise Durch Den Ganzen Welttheil
in two volumes. In his foreword the author stressed that his aim in writing
about his 3-year sojourn in Australia was to be truthful and humane. Truth
telling requires objectivity and being humane in judgment requires
disciplined compassion where there is no claim for infallibility. Indeed, he
admitted that some impressions might not be accurate because as a reporter
and not a moraliser he attempted to be a ‘Berichterstatter der Humanität’.
At Stawell, Victoria Anrep-Elmpt avoided the bar rooms and declined to
accept ‘Come have one drink’, which caused locals to distrust him. At
Horsham Railway Station he saw many German blonde faces but tailored in
Australian cut, tanned and colonial demeanour and ‘bushman’ posture,
which he described as often being a combination of sensitivity, pedantic
sense of duty and inherited sentiment with raw decadence and bestiality.
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