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drowning. However, probably the worst example of the negative development of the Maori
through European contact is the “Stadt-Maoris”: “Zu stolz oder zu faul, um bei Europäern Dienste
zu nehmen und durch regelmäßige Arbeit sich den Lebensunterhalt zu verdienen, lungern sie in
den Straßen und Wirthshäusern herum, physisch und moralisch verkommene Proletarier, die den
Europäern eine Last und ihren eigenen Landsleuten ein Gräuel sind” (478f.).
Hochstetter sees the fundamental failure of the Maori to advance past the threshold of
civilisation at the heart of their downward slide towards extinction, in spite of their being “das
muthigste, tapferste und intelligenteste der Südsee-Völker” (480f.), which exposes their
intellectual shortcomings and inability to fully learn and comprehend the ideas behind European
knowledge. This belief, however, conflicts with the picture he gives of the two Ngati Apakura
chiefs, Wiremu Toetoe and Hemara Te Rerehau (Wilhelm Toetoe and Samuel Rerehau to their
Austrian friends), 104 who were taken back to Vienna on the Novara under the supervision of
Scherzer. 105 Toetoe is described as an influential thirty-two-year-old with a full facial ‘moko’,
who was instructed in reading, writing and agriculture, and had worked for the Government as a
postman and later postmaster, while the twenty-year-old Te Rerehau, the son of a wealthy relative
of Toetoe, was skilled in the art of writing in Maori, partial English, arithmetic, geography,
history, ploughing, cultivating wheat and flour, and bread-making. 106 Despite the reported fear of
some Maori that they would become fresh provisions for the crew when they ran out of supplies
along the way, 107 both chiefs proved to be more than simple “Wilden” when conversing with the
Viennese upper-class or visiting palaces, theatres and museums:
Mancher, der die Beiden auf ihren Wanderungen durch Wien näher beobachtete, mochte sich
wundern, wenn er sah, wie diese braunen Menschen aus der Südsee, die wir so gerne zu den
‘Wilden’ rechnen, wo sie etwas besonders interessirte, ihr Notizbuch aus der Tasche nahmen und
104
While the latter is often referred to as ‘Te Hemara Rerehau Paraone’, his full name was Hemara Rerehau Te
Whanonga Takawe, with Paraone (Brownie) reportedly being a nickname (Hogan, Bravo, Neu Zeeland, iii-v, ix, 116;
see also Anne Morrell, Wiremu Toetoe Tumohe and Te Hemara Rerehau Paraone: Two Maori in Vienna. Auckland:
Research Centre for Germanic Connections with New Zealand and the Pacific, Dept. of Germanic Languages and
Literature and Slavonic Studies, University of Auckland, 2002; John Fletcher, “From the Waikato to Vienna and
Back: How Two Maoris Learned to Print”, in: Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin 8:3
(1984): 147-55; Georg Sauer, Der Aufenthalt zweier Maoris aus Neuseeland in Wien in den Jahren 1859-1860: Eine
ethnographische Darstellung. PhD Dissertation. University of Vienna, 2002, 211-48; Georg Sauer, “Zwei Maoris in
Wien in den Jahren 1859-1860 im Spiegel zeitgenössischer Pressestimmen”, in: Novara: Mitteilungen der
Österreichisch-Südpazifischen Gesellschaft 1: Österreicher im Pazifik I (1998): 57-70).
105
These were not the first Maori, however, to visit Germany. Two chiefs returned to Bremen on the North German
ship Virginia in 1838: one known as ‘Charlie’, who later returned to New Zealand, the other ‘Emmeti’ (but later
baptised ‘Gottlieb Carl Neumann’) who died alone in Germany in early 1841 (see Peter Oettli, “Two Early Maori
Travellers in Germany”, in: Archifacts Oct (1991): 1-11).
106
Scherzer, Reise (1864-66), II:369-71.
107
Ibid., II:349.
187