DURING THE First World War many countries and communities sought to eradicate all associations with Germany, and Australia was as quick as any other to Anglicize anything that sounded Germanic. Even the popular cake the Jam Berliner was
renamed the Kitchener Bun. It has been reported, however, that campaigners in South Australia are considering reviving the German titles of some locations whose names were changed. The effects of the anti-German sentiments following the outbreak of war in 1914 were often profound. In South Australia, for example, a German-language newspaper, as well as schools and clubs, were closed down. Many residents of German descent were interned or imprisoned. Other “Germans” lost their jobs, leaving their families in financial difficulties. Hermann Robert Homburg, born 1874 in Norwood, a suburb of Adelaide, to a father who had arrived twenty years earlier, was forced to resign in 1915 – and he was the Attorney-General. Homburg wrote of a “campaign of lies and calumnies against me ... because I am not of British lineage”. Germanic place names in Australia became to be seen as offensive and the names of a large number of locations were changed. This was not done on a whim; in South Australia, for example, it was a carefully-considered operation undertaken by a Nomenclature Committee.
No comments:
Post a Comment