House of Pereira To Walk Under Palm Trees | Page 196

Alfred Schultz Album , photographer Reinhold Hofmann
Chief Justice , Hans Teklenburg ( at left ), had the misfortune to be posted to Samoa by the German Colonial Office just a few months before the collapse of German rule in 1914 . Five years of internment followed which , according to internment medical records , exerted a tremendous mental strain on Mr Teklenburg .
Prior to his appointment to Samoa , Mr Teklenburg had been a judge and Deputy Governor in South West Africa , where he had acquired a reputation as authoritarian in approach . He may have been favoured as Samoa ’ s next German Governor . It is possible that following criticism in the German press of the mild and malleable administration in Apia , Mr Teklenburg had been selected to give local rule a more pronounced German flavour .
Alfred Schultz Album , photographer Reinhold Hofmann
Dr Kurt Sperling , was appointed as a District Judge in Samoa , taking up his position at the start of 1913 . This photo shows him outside his tent on Motuihe Island , Auckland , during the wartime internments . The internees were moved into tents during the 1918-19 influenza pandemic as a precaution to reduce the possibility of an outbreak spreading among prisoners . Dr Sperling was repatriated back to Germany in May 1919 on board the “ Willochra .”
( Previous page ) This fine photo of Dr Schultz leaning on a stone slab was taken at the ruins of the ‘ Fale o le fe ’ e ’ ( the house of the octopus ), an isolated site in the hills of Vaimauga , east of Apia , which is rich in fable and folklore . The fale or house shows signs of having been partially constructed in quarried stone slabs in ancient times , and its overgrown and fallen remnants were much visited by curiosity seekers and anthropologists in the 19 th and 20 th centuries . Dr Schultz and photographer Alfred Tattersall made the hard 4-hour slog to the site , probably in the 1910-14 period . After 1914 , the German Governor was interned in New Zealand for five years .
Dr Schultz had been a judge in German East Africa but upon appointment to Apia developed almost a mystical attachment to the islands and its people . He learned to speak Samoan fluently and was tattooed with a full pe ’ a . He immersed himself in the local culture and wrote books on both Samoan customary law and proverbs . Despite his prominence , Dr Schultz was a deeply private man who left a limited photographic footprint in Samoa and Auckland ( during internment ). His forced separation from Samoa at war ’ s outbreak sent him into a depression which took some time to shake off . He was a single man until his marriage in Berlin in 1920 to Charlotte ‘ Lotte ’ Schultz , after which he had two sons and a daughter . In December 1919 he was given permission by the German Kaiser to take his mother ’ s family name in a hyphenated surname and was thereafter known as Erich Schultz-Ewerth . For more biographical details of Dr Schultz see chapter 4 on Fatu Frost .
In this beautifully detailed image , Dr Schultz appears to be deep in thought . He is leaning on the seat that was a feature of the site and had been named ,‘ O le nofoa o le fe ’ e ’ ( the seat of the octopus ). Leather leggings or puttees are buckled under his shoes to protect his trousers from dirt or damage . Despite this precaution , Dr Schultz sits on the slab in his bright white suit . The unidentified companion , probably the site guide , holds a machete – a sapelu – and appears to have an ula of banana leaves around his neck , perhaps for cooling purposes .
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