Franz Pfeil Collection
Kurt and Clementine ’ s mother , Catherine Betham Hufnagel , the Mistress of Vailele , spent her latter years in Auckland and died there in December 1948 . She is shown in the photo sitting on the right on a chair . As with those of her husband , her ashes were returned to Samoa , where they are interred beneath a Hufnagel Family headstone at Magiagi Cemetery ( photo below ).
The German plantations have largely disappeared from Samoa , but the Hufnagel name lives on . It is present in one of the few German street names or place names .
Captain and Mrs Hufnagel bought over 300 acres of land at Lotopa in the late 1890 ’ s . There they built a family home and started a plantation , called Sugafou (’ new Suga ’), which was worked independently of Vailele . Hufnagel Way , an official street name in Apia , shown on the Google Earth map with a yellow pin , marks an old boundary of the Sugafou plantation .
It is fitting that the family ’ s name has been given official recognition for it can be said that few people of the colonial era made a more positive and sustained contribution to the welfare of Samoa than Kurt Hufnagel .
Tony Brunt
Google Earth image © DigitalGlobe © Terrametrics
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