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CHAPTER FOUR: Friedrich August Krull (1836-1914)
German Immigration and the ‘New Zealand Wars’
Even though the New Zealand Company image was directed specifically towards the British
market, German immigrants mostly from North Germany, including Prussia, Mecklenburg,
Hanover, Hamburg, Holstein, Pomerania, Posen, West Prussia and Bremen, as well as from the
Rheinland, Bavaria and other German-speaking regions such as Austria, Switzerland and
Bohemia, were also considered valuable through their supposed inherent reliability,
industriousness and soberness. 1 The main immigration periods took place in 1842-45, 1861-67
during the height of the ‘goldrush’ and chain migration, and peaked between 1872-86 through Sir
Julius Vogel’s ‘assisted immigrants’ and public works scheme, which sought potential
immigrants from not only Great Britain, but also Northern Europe, specifically Germany and
Scandinavia, in order to build roads and railways with the aim of opening up the land for
agricultural and farming settlements which had previously been inaccessible bush. 2 Possible
reasons for their emigration include religious or political persecution, and especially material and
economic factors, such as poverty, the division of labour and forced demographic changes
resulting from rural overpopulation and the transformation from a rural agricultural economy to a
more urban and industrialised one. As far as the Company is concerned, several efforts were
made during their tenure to secure German settlers. After the failed plans for a German colony on
1 “In time, German settlers were regarded almost without exception by their new countrymen as loyal, law-abiding
citizens; and they were also praised for their hard work and their resourcefulness, but above all for their quiet and
sober habits. For these reasons, Germans, and in particular those who came from rural areas, were regarded by the
New Zealand authorities as being particularly suitable for the difficult life in a young colony” (James Braund,
“Forgotten Germans, Ugly Germans, Unknown Germans: Some Observations about New Zealanders’ Image of
Germany and the Germans”, in: North and South: Proceedings from the First New Zealand-Scandinavian
Conference on Ethnicity and Migration. The University of Auckland, October 29-31, 1997. Ed. Ivo Holmqvist.
Västerås: Mälardalen University, 1999, 135f.). The New Zealand Journal also records the following: “We have a
high opinion of German emigrants; they are sober, industrious, and Christian men, and we gladly hail their
introduction among our own countrymen as likely to lead to the happiest results. There is none of that jealousy in an
Englishman towards a German, which he considers, somewhat absurdly, that it is necessary to his reputation for John
Bullism; that he should show to a Frenchman or a Spaniard, both of whom he considers to be his natural enemies,
and we must confess, not without good reason. But to a German he holds out the right hand of fellowship as readily
as he would to a fellow countryman. We belong to a common race; we are, despite our English pride of nationality,
governed by German monarchs; so that the fellow-feeling between Germans and Englishmen is easily accounted for,
and sorry should we be were it otherwise, for the German is in all his social relations as estimable a character as any
among our own nation” (“German Emigration to New Zealand”, in: NZJ 5:117 2 June (1844): 494).
2 See, for example, James N. Bade, “Deutschsprachige Siedler in Neuseeland: Einleitung”, in: Welt für sich, 48-51;
Marian Minson, “Tendenzen in der Immigration Deutscher nach Neuseeland”, in: ibid., 53-59; David McGill, The
Other New Zealanders. Wellington: Rendel, 1982, 45-60; P. L. Berry, Germans in New Zealand: 1840-1870. MA
Thesis. University of Canterbury, 1964.
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