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The German presence in the Hawaiian islands is a long and venerable
one.
Aboard Captain Cook's ships there were already three Germans and a Swiss when
0'ahu and later Kaua'i appeared on the horizon on January 17, 1778, and the
first Europeans to land officially in the most isolated archipelago in the world
stepped ashore at Waimea, Kaua'i, two days later. The Germans were sailors; the
Swiss was no other than the famous painter and draftsman John Webber, spelled
Johann Waber in his native Beme, who with his excellent illustrations and
paintings introduced Hawai'i pictorially to Europe and America.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the intellectuals in
Germany looked at the far-flung Pacific islands with great curiosity and
profound interest There, under a tropical sun, they hoped to find a kind of
earthly paradise, a latter-day Garden of Eden blessed with abundance, a benign
climate and friendly inhabitants. The poets Goethe, Schiller and Chamisso, the
philosopher Immanuel Kant, and other luminaries all discussed the Pacific
intensively and wrote about this wondrous world. Cham'@, who had visited Hawai'i
aboard the Russian brig Rurik towards the end of the reign of Kamehameha the
Great described vividly the meaning of aloha, or "arocha" as he heard it found
moving words for the "huffahurra" and wrote the first grammar of the Hawaiian
language, in German of course, published in Leipzig in 1837.
Thus sprang up a kind of South Sea romanticism which in many forms has
persisted in German-speaking Europe to this day. "Hawal'i" in particular has
proved to be a magic word, manifested in the ever increasing numbers of German,
Austrian and Swiss tourists flocking to the islands.
The Germans did not arrive only as
explorers; they also came to settle in Hawai'i. In the 1850's there were a number of flourishing German firms in the
area bordered by Merchant and Bethel Streets in the center of Honolulu. The
leading enterprise was H. Hackfeld & Co., named after its founder Heinrich
Hackfeld, originally a sea captain on the Hamburg to Canton run, who parlayed
his original wares valued at $8,394.50 in 1849 into the largest firm in all
Hawai'i. Under the name of Amfac, Inc., Hackfeld's creation is still the biggest
of the "Big Five". Its subsidiary, Liberty House, was once called "B. F.
Ehlers", after Hackfeld's nephew.
In government the Germans played a role as well. Hermann Widemann was
minister of the interior under King Kaltikaua and minister of finances under
Queen Lfli'uokalani; Paul Neumann held the position of atterney general; Henry
Bertelmann was a major attached to the personal staff of the queen; and
other Germans held equally exalted positions. Germans also represented a number
of European nations diplomatically, in the capacity of consuls.
The German influence in nineteenth century Hawai'i was so strong that
Kalakaua often appeared in the uniform of a German cavalry general, and his
palace guards wore essentially Prussian tunics tailored by Paul Lemke, who had
arrived in Hawai'i from Soldin near Berlin in 1877. The national anthem, "Hawai'i
Ponoi", now the state song, was derived from the Prussian anthem "Hefl
Dir im Siegerkranz", rearranged by Heinrich Berger of Potsdam, bandleader of the
famous Royal Hawaiian Band. The bands were composed by King Kalakaua.
The Germans were also noteworthy because they were the only sugar planters to
bring in laborers from their own nation. Particularly on Kaua'i some 1400
Germans eventually toiled in the fields, the first contingent having arrived on
the ship Ceder on June 18, 1881.
In Lihu'e there was an excellent school for their children where both German
and English were used in class. The Germans also organized their own church, of
the Lutheran denomination, in Lihu'e and in Honolulu.
World War I proved catastrophic for the Germans in Hawai'i who with the entry
of the United States into the war, had become enemy aliens overnight Many left
for the mainland, others stayed but often anglicized their names. Today, however, their valuable contributions are again remembered and their descendants
and other Germans, Austrians and Swiss who arrived in recent years play once
more an important role in the Land of Aloha. |
