Germans in Burma, 1827-1945

The Journal of Burma Studies

Volume 7, pp. 29-69 Copyright 2002 by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies,

Northern Illinois University.

Germans in Burma, 1837-1945 Hans-Bernd Zöllner*

This article gives and account of the Germans who lived in Burma or visited the country between the beginnings of British rule in 1826 and the end of World War II. After surveying German-Burmese relations from 1826 until today, the manifold German engagement in Burma before World War I is detailed. This time of activity was followed by a sharp decline of Germans living in the country other than for short periods during between the two great wars. After World War II, for Germans in general, there was almost no memory of the activities of Germans in Burma left. By contrast, the Burmese kept and keep this memory very much alive.

This investigation into the Germans in Burma is a result of personal curiosity1. As a German who has visited Burma over the course of 15 years, I have become interested in my predecessors, the Germans who visited and lived in the country before me. Why did they go to Burma? What did they do there? What was their perception of Burma? What did they report back to Germany? These are some of the questions I have tried find answers to in an attempt to fill a void in the histories of both Burma and Germany.

* Hans-Bernd Zöllner specializes in the relations between Germany and Burma and the history of Burma since the colonial period. He obtained his Ph.D. in Oriental Studies at Hamburg University and lectures on Burmese history and Theravada Buddhism at the University’s seminar for Thai, Burma and Vietnam studies. 1 This paper is an enlarged version of a talk given at the residence of the German Ambassador to Myanmar on February 10, 1999. Archival sources as detailed in the footnotes originate from: the Public Record Offices (Staatsarchive) of Bremen and Hamburg; the Public Record Offices (Bundesarchive) of the Federal Republic of Germany in Berlin; Freiburg and Koblenz; Hamburg and Berlin Museum for Ethnology; Handelsstatistisches Amt Hamburg (Office of Trade Related Statistics, Hamburg); and the British Library (Oriental and Indian Office Collection).

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30 The Journal of Burma Studies, Volume 7

There is, of course, abundant literature about the Britons in Burma and Great Britain’s policies towards Burma.2 There has been research on the French and Italian impact on this country during the last century, on the early Portuguese who reached the shores of Burma and the Dutch who succeeded them.3 There have been studies on the Catholic, Baptist and other Christian missions to Burma.4 Even the Scots and the Danish in Burma and Burmese-American relations have received attention, not to mention the impact of Indian, Chinese and Japanese interests in and their relations with Burma.5 Until now however, you will find nothing specific about Germany and Burma. Why is this so? 2 Still valid is the brilliant essay by John S. Furnivall, “The Fashioning of Leviathan: The Beginning of British Rule in Burma,” Journal of the Burma Research Society (JBRS), 29 (1939): 1-137; for the British point of view, see Godfrey Eric Harvey, British Rule in Burma 1824-1942 (London: Faber & Faber, 1946); for a nationalist Burmese, account see Htin Aung, The Stricken Peacock: Anglo-Burmese Relations 1752-1948 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965). 3 Charles Lee Keeton, King Thebaw and the Ecological Rape of Burma: The Political and Commercial Struggle between British-India and French Indo-China in Burma 1878-1885 (Delhi: Manohar Book Service, 1974); “Diplomatic Documents relating to the Burmese-Italian Treaty of 1871,” collected, translated and annotated by Vivian Ba, JBRS 53 (1970):15-55; Min Naing, “Italians in the Service of the Burmese Kings in the late Nineteenth Century,” JBRS 62 (1979): 177-195; John S. Furnivall, “Europeans in Burma of the Fifteenth Century”, JBRS, 29:236-249 (1939); D.G.E. Hall, “The Daghregister of Batavia and Dutch Trade with Burma in the Seventeenth Century,” JBRS 29 (1939):139-156. 4 Paul Ambroise Bigandet, An Outline of the History of the Catholic Burmese Mission (Rangoon: Hanthawaddy Press, 1887); William Gammell, A History of American Baptist Missions in Asia, Africa, Europe and North America (Boston, Ma: Gould, Kendell & Lincoln, 1949), 1-186. 5 Alister McCrae, Scots in Burma: Golden Times in a Golden Land. (Whiting Bay: Kiscadale, 1990); J. L. Christian, “Denmark’s Interest in Burma and the Nicobar Islands,” JBRS 29 (1939): 215-232; B.R.P., “Addenda to ‘Denmark’s Interest in Burma’, ” JBRS 29: 233-234; John L. Christian, “Burma and America State Papers” and “Herbert Hoover and his Connection with Burma,” in: JBRS 26: (1936): 110-115 and 116-118; John L. Christian, “A Diplomatic Mission from Burma to America,” JBRS, 29 (1939):187-192; Nalini Ranjan Chakravarti, The Indian Minority in Burma. The Rise and Decline of an Immigrant Community (London: Oxford

Germans in Burma

Journal of Burma Studies, Volume 7 31

Superficially, this void can be easily explained. Germany became a unitary state only in 1871 and started its endeavors to be a colonial power belatedly, when the spheres of interests in Southeast Asia were already basically fixed between Britain and France. After the annexation of Lower Burma following the Second Anglo-Burmese War in 1852, Germany could use its diplomatic missions in London and Calcutta to ensure its commercial interests in Burma. King Mindon’s interest in diplomatic relations with Germany increased after the German victory in the German-Franco War in 1871, but a treaty between Burma and Germany was signed only in 1885 in Rome, nine months before the Burmese kingdom ceased to exist.6

The fact that Germany had no chance to develop any direct interest as a colonial power in Burma made an important difference. Along with Russia, Germany was the only great European power that had never directly threatened the sovereignty of Burma or any other country in Southeast Asia. One may wonder why this difference has not yet been the subject of historical research. One may also ask if Germans doing business with Burma were conscious of the chances that may have resulted from this difference. Indeed, it was the interests of such German individuals, rather than of the German state or of a state corporation, that established the first German contacts with Burma, and it is behind the record of these individual contacts that we may find patterns of general German attitudes towards this Southeast Asian country.

University Press, 1971), and Uma Shankar Singh, Burma and India 1948-1962: A Study in the Foreign Policies of Burma and India and Burma’s Policy towards India. (New Delhi: Oxord & IBH, 1979); Victor Purcell, The Chinese in Southeast Asia (2nd ed., London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 41-79; Ralph Pettman, China in Burma’s Foreign Policy (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1973); Won Zoon Yoon, Japan‘s Scheme for the Liberation of Burma. The Role of the Minami Kikan and the “Thirty Comrades” (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1973). 6 The English text of the treaty is reprinted in Maung Maung, Burma in the Family of Nations (Amsterdam: Djambatan, 1956), 165-166.

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Periods of German-Burmese and Burmese-German relations What will be presented here is only one part of the story of German-Burmese relations from their beginning until today, and is limited in a two-fold way. First, the presentation looks at the activities of German individuals in Burma, leaving aside Burmese perceptions of Germans and Germany. Second, it covers only the time up to the end of World War II. To convey a fuller picture of German-Burmese and Burmese-German relations, a short characterization of three periods of the history of these relations will be given.

The first period runs from 1824, the beginning of British rule in Burma, to 1914, the beginning of World War I. This period is characterised by a strong and increasing interest in Burma by Germans and almost no corresponding interest in Germany on the part of the Burmese. The second period spans from 1914 to 1945, the end of World War II. During this period, Burmese interest in Germany and German affairs increased with the rise of nationalist movements, whereas German interest decreased at the same time until it came close to zero with the surrender of Germany and Japan. This “End of History” on the German side, to quote the title of Francis Fukuyama’s controversial book, resulted in almost no “historical memory” of Burma being left in Germany after 1945.7

The third period extends from 1945 to 1988. In this period, a mutual relationship in the fields of economic cooperation and aid developed between Burma and the Federal Republic of Germany. State visits of top ranking representatives from one country to the other and the almost annual semi-private stays of General U Ne Win in Germany as a guest of the Fritz Werner company highlight this special relationship.8 To a smaller degree and in different fields, 7 For details see Hans-Bernd Zöllner, Birma zwischen “Unabhängigkeit Zuerst — Unabhängigkeit Zuletzt.” Die birmanischen Unabhängigkeitsbewegungen und ihre Sicht der zeitgenössischden welt am Beispiel der birmanisch-deutschen Beziehungen zwischen 1920 und 1948. [Burma between “Independence First — Independence Last.” The Burmese independence movements and their perception of the contemporary world with special regard to the Burmese-German relations between 1920 and 1948] (Hamburg: LIT-Verlag, 2000). 8 Hans-Bernd Zöllner, Unverstandene Partnerschaft. Die deutsche Firma Fritz Werner in Birma [Partnership, not understood. The German company Fritz Werner in Burma]. (Hamburg: Evangelisches Missionswerk

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there was also a good relationship between Burma and the German Democratic Republic.9 The German communist state provided facilities for Burmese students to study abroad in the field of education, sent teachers for German language courses in Burma, and developed a fine department for teaching Burmese in Berlin. There were exchanges in the fields of health care and sports.

Another period of relations began in September 1988 following the takeover of power in Burma by the military. How this will be characterized by future historians is as yet unclear. Official German policy made an almost complete U-turn after the events of that year and there is disagreement as to the wisdom of this change. Within the German “Friends of Burma/Myanmar” a split has developed with little dialogue between the two sides. As for Burma, while the attitude remains that Germany is a “country with a difference,” it is, perhaps, mingled with confusion over German attitudes as well.

Overall, one may say that while the Burmese attitude towards Germany is characterized by a feeling of historical continuity, on the German side discontinuity prevails. It can also be stated, however, that between the opening of the Suez Canal and 1988, except during times of war, Germany was continuously the second greatest trading partner of Burma, after the British Empire till 1939, and after Japan since 1945. This difference in perspective between Germany and Burma is clearly connected to the very different historical experiences in both countries during the twentieth-century and to

[Association of Churches and Missions in Germany], 1993). For an abstract of the book in English, see Hans-Bernd Zöllner, “Fritz Werner in Burma. A Study on the German-Burmese Relations after World War II,” in Tradition and Modernity in Myanmar: Proceedings of an International Conference Held in Berlin from May 7th to May 9th, Uta Gärtner and Jens Lorenz (eds.), (Münster and Hamburg: LIT Verlag, 1994), 1:197-203. 9 The German Democratic Republic (GDR) provided, among other assistance, aid in the field of medical service. In 1959, for example, Thakin Kodaw Hmaing underwent eye surgery in Berlin, the capital of the GDR (see Richard Kirsch, “Meine Erlebnisse in Birma” [My experiences in Burma]. In: Günter Albrecht, Wolfgang Hartwig (editors), Ärzte. Erinnerungen, Erlebnisse, Bekenntnisse [Physicians. Recollections, Encounters, Confessions] (Berlin: Buchverlag Der Morgen, 1988), 338-342).

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different perceptions of world history which are linked with these experiences.

Germans in Burma, 1837-1914 The pioneers Parts of Burma were annexed by an agency of the British Empire in 1826 and incorporated into British-India. Commissioners supervised by the Calcutta-based administration of British India governed the new provinces of Arakan and Tenasserim. According to Langhans-Carter’s book on Old Moulmein, the first German in Burma was sent to Tenasserim in 1827 to assist the first commissioner, Maingy, in his duties of supervising the exploitation of forests in the newly acquired territory. Langhans-Carter was misled, however, perhaps by the fame of the great German forestry expert Dietrich Brandis (see below) who made German knowledge and practise in this field legendary. Nathaniel Wallich (1786-1854) was not a German, but a Dane. From 1817 he was superintendent of the Botanical Gardens in Calcutta.10

Ten years after Wallich, on February 8, 1837, and carrying the symbolic name of “helper”, Johann Wilhelm Helfer disembarked at Moulmein.11 Born 1810 in Prague, he was a physician by profession and an ardent natural scientist who from his early youth wanted to see India. He began his journey in 1835 in the company of his wife, a Prussian noblewoman. The couple traveled to Syria, joined a British Euphrates expedition and reached Calcutta in August, 1836.

10 R. R. Langhans-Carter, Old Moulmein (875-1880) (Moulmein: The Moulmein Sun Press, 1947), 90-91. Before assisting Maingy in Tenasserim, Nathaniel Wallich accompanied Crawfurd on his mission to Ava. See John Crawfurd, Journal of an Embassy from the Governor General of India to the Court of Ava. (2nd edition in two volumes, London: Henry Colburn, 1834), 2 and passim. 11 On the following see Gräfin Pauline Nostitz, Johann Wilhelm Helfer‘s Reisen in Vorderasien und Indien Zweiter Theil [Johann Wilhelm Helfer’s Travels in the Near East and India. Second Volume] (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1873). For an English translation see: Pauline Nostitz Travels of Doctor and Madame Helfer in Syria, Mesopotamia, Burmah and other lands, narrated by Pauline, Countess Nostitz (formerly Madame Helfer), and rendered into English by Mrs. George Sturge (London: R. Bentley & son, 1878).

Germans in Burma


On New Year’s Eve of that year, after a long time searching for a post, Helfer was handed documents of appointment as Superintendent of Forests and Provincial Naturalist of Tenasserim. He now belonged to the staff of the East India Company and was expected to look after the forests of the province and explore its natural resources.

Helfer traveled a lot and discovered some coal deposits on the banks of the Tenasserim River. This observation and an accompanying analysis he reported to Calcutta.12 Both he and his wife liked the country and intended to settle down there. They built a house at Mergui, furnishing it with items including a piano brought over from Calcutta. They started building up a large plantation on a plot of land they took possession of without asking anybody, and planted some 9,000 palm trees (6,000 coco and 3,000 areca) and 4,000 coffee bushes. Countess Nostitz wrote in retrospect:

Great stretches of land, hundredfold profitable, to be used for any cultivation and industry, lay here unused. Add to that a mild and healthy climate, ways of communication easily to be established through natural

12 For Helfer’s reports see: J. W. Helfer, Amherst Town, in the Tenasserim Provinces; The provinces of Ye, Tavoy and Mergui on the Tenasserim coast Visited and examined by order of government, with the view to develop their natural resources. Second report; Third report on Tenasserim and the surrounding nations. Inhabitants, natives and Foreigners, Characters, Morals, Religion. Fourth Report on the Tenasserim Provinces, considered as a resort for Europeans. (G. H. Huttman: Calcutta, 1839). The third and fourth reports were also published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society, Volumes 8 and 9. Two other reports on “Report of the Coal discovered in the Tenasserim Provinces,” “Papers relative to the New Coal Field of Tenasserim” and “Note on the Animal Productions of the Tenasserim Provinces,” written for the East India Company, were published in the same journal, Volumes 7 and 8 respectively. The four reports together with two of Helfer’s diaries were published in German. See “Johann Wilhelm Helfer’s gedruckte und ungedruckte Schriften über die Tenasserim Provinzen, den Mergui Archipel und die Andamanen-Inseln” [Johann Wilhelm Helfer’s printed and unprinted writings on the Tenasserim Provinces, the Mergui Archipelago and the Andaman Islands], Mittheilungen der Kaiserlich-Königlichen Geographischen Anstalt [Bulletin of the Imperial-Royal Geographic Institute], 3 (1858): 167-390.

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waterways, security under the protection of the British laws and no danger from the peaceful and sparse population of the natives. What a country for colonisation! Here we resolved to begin such an undertaking and, God providing, to carry it out in all ardour.13

For this German couple, Tenasserim was located close to paradise, but hell was not far away. In January 1840, on a journey to the Andaman Islands, Helfer was killed by the local people. His wife did not give up their dream of establishing a plantation but asked the government for a grant of 4,000 acres. She also proposed to settle German colonists here under the management of her brother, Otto de Granges, who had come to Burma for this very purpose. The countess received the grant but due to financial problems the plan did not materialize.14 Only one memorial to commemorate the life of her husband could be realized, a two-volume book describing Helfer’s travels. The book was published in 1873.

Merchants In Arakan, the other part of the Burmese kingdom ceded to Britain in the treaty of Yandabo, things were different. There was cheap food, cheap labor and rice that could be exported. This attracted German merchants from the port-cities of Hamburg and Bremen, both city-states acting as independent political entities before the establishment of the German Empire in 1871. During the 1840s the first German rice merchants must have already settled at Akyab. In 1852, it was the foremost rice-exporting city of the world.15 Some fifteen ships from Hamburg and Bremen loaded rice there that year and in the following year after the consent of the British queen had been given, a merchant from Hamburg named A. W. Roghé, was installed there as the first German Consul in Burma.16

13 Nostitz, Reisen, 175. 14 Helfer, “Schriften,” 173. 15 John F. Cady, A History of Modern Burma (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1965), 86. 16 Ernst Baasch, Die Anfänge des modernen Verkehrs Hamburgs mit Vorderindien und Ostasien [The beginnings of Hamburg’s modern trade

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The second Anglo-Burmese war of 1852 provided British and German merchants with more British-Burmese ports. German traders settled in Bassein and Rangoon. Bremen established a consulate in Bassein in 1859, Bremen and Hamburg in Rangoon in 1860.17 Consulates were also established by both city-states in Moulmein.18 Merchants acted as honorary consuls and their task was primarily to help develop German trade with Burma. They were quite successful and shortly before World War I, Germany took 13% of Burmese exports — mostly rice, some 400,000 tons in 1913 — and provided 7% of the goods imported by Burma. Cessation of the import of German salt after 1914 led to some problems with salt supply in Burma because German imports had superseded the Burmese salt industry.19

A visible symbol of the” successful German trade was the German Club. It opened in 1867 on Commissioner Street (today Bogyoke Aung San Street) opposite Rangoon General Hospital.20 In 1890 a new and impressive building in a half-Burmese, half-German style was erected. The basic structure of the building still exists and is used by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd as their living quarters, the convent having acquired the compound of 2,891 acres adjacent to

with the Near East and East Asia] (Separatdruck aus den Mittheilungen der Geographischen Gesellschaft in Hamburg, Bd. XIII, 1897), 15. 17 Staatsarchiv [Public Record Office] Bremen, file 2-C.4.b.6.c.8-9 The Consul’s name was Ernst Sandorf; he was employed by Mohr Brothers & Co, one of two large German rice exporting companies in Burma. The applicant, Johann Hinrich Niebuhr, lived already 5 years in Rangoon at the time of his application; for Hamburg see Baasch, Die Anfänge des modernen Verkehrs, 15. The consul’s name was J. F. Capelle. 18 Langhans-Carter, Old Moulmein, 54. 19Burma, Chief Collector of Customs, Report on the Maritime Trade and Customs Administration of Burma (Rangoon: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing) 1913/1914: 14; 1914/1915: 10. 20 According to a “Schedule of Title deeds” prepared by the Convent (in the possession of the author), the compound was conveyed on August 29, 1867, from “A. Gair and M. Ismael” to “H. Barckhausen and others”. H. Barckhausen was one of the leading German rice merchants at that time.

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theirs in June 1917.21 The club had some fifty members. When war broke out, 133 Germans living in the country were registered by the authorities, including 111 men and 22 women.22

It should be mentioned in this context that the first Burmese to come to Germany were brought there to promote the rice trade. In 1890, a large exhibition of colonial goods took place in the city of Bremen. Rice merchants not only wanted to exhibit plain rice but to inform the public about the environment in which rice was grown and most rice imports came from Burma. Exhibits from Burma were shown including a figure of a pongyi carrying a rice bowl, and in order to make the exhibition more colourful and authentic, four Burmese were taken to Bremen and lived with the exhibits in a hut similar to those in a Burmese rice field. Overnight, the four slept in a wooden Siamese house, another piece of the exhibition. The next recorded Burmese visit to Germany took place in a similar context. Some” fifty Burmans lived on the compound of Hagenbeck’s Zoo in Hamburg under a replica of the Kyaik Tiyo Pagoda in the summer of 1913. Their task was to demonstrate to the public, activities of Burmese daily life. This time there was a real pongyi among them to provide them with the spiritual care they needed in addition to the money and food they received.23

21 Noel F. Singer, Old Rangoon: City of Shwedagon (Gartmore: Kiscadale, 1995), 153; “Schedule of Title deeds.” The “Liquidator of Hostile Firms” sold the property to Sister Margaret May at the price of Rs. 13,200. 22 Bundesarchiv [Public Record Office of the Federal Republic of Germany] Koblenz, file R 67/822: “Bericht des amerikanischen Konsuls in Rangoon über Anzahl und Lage der deutschen sowie der österreichischen und ungarischen Staatsangehörigen in Burma (Hinterindien). (Auszug)” [Report of the American consul in Rangoon on the number and situation of the German, Austrian and Hungarian nationals in Burma (Farther India). (extract)], 6. 23 Andreas Lüderwaldt, “1890-1990. 100 Jahre ‘Handels- und Kolonialausstellung’ in Bremen” [1890-1990. 100 years ‘exhibition of trade and colonial goods’ in Bremen], Tendenzen. (Jahrbuch des Übersee-Museums Bremen I, 1992), 55-69; Johs. Flemming, Birma. Völkerschau 1913. Carl Hagenbecks Tierpark – Stellingen [Burma. Ethnic Show 1913. Zoo of Carl Hagenbeck] (Hamburg 1913).

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Brandis and Bastian — the Ecologist and the Ethnologist German merchants were well known for their diligence and their language skills, which made them different from most of their British competitors.24 While no British merchant became individually famous for his special achievements, this did happen with some Germans.

The most famous German living and working in Burma for some time was Dietrich Brandis, a biologist, who fulfilled some of the tasks that Helfer could not accomplish. Born in 1824 in Bonn, he studied biology, got his doctorate, and married an English lady, the sister-in-law of a British officer who was posted to India. This helped him in 1855, three years after the Second Anglo-Burmese War, to get an appointment as Superintendent of Forests of the newly acquired Province of Pegu25 His main assignment was to avoid what had happened in Tenasserim and Martaban and to ensure an economically efficient and ecologically responsible exploitation of Burmese teak forests. He worked in Burma from 1856 to 1862, during which time he invented a new procedure to inventory the number of teak trees, developed and implemented plans and rules for the effective production and sale of timber, and promoted the afforestation of Burmese teak forests. He proposed to train British personnel for the forest administration in Germany because in England at that time no such institutes existed.26 His successful work was rewarded by his promotion to General Inspector of Indian

24 Khin Maung Kyi, “Western Enterprise and Economic Development in Burma,” J BRS 53, no. 1 (1970): 25-51, 36. 25 In 1858, he extended his activities to Tenasserim and Martaban. 26 Herbert Hesmer, Leben und Werk von Dietrich Brandis 1824-1907: Begründer der tropischen Forstwirtschaft, Förderer der forstlichen Entwicklung in den USA, Botaniker und Ökologe [Life and work of Dietrich Brandis 1824-1907: Founder of tropical forestry, promoter of forest development in the USA, botanist and ecologist] (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1975), 19-55; Raymont L. Bryant, The Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, 1824-1994 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), 46-48. In 1865, he had moved to India and was allowed to recruit two German assistants, Wilhelm Schlich and Berthold Ribbentrop. For an account of Brandis’ work in Burma in English see Herbert Hesmer, “Dietrich Brandis and Forestry in Burma,” in Southeast Asia and the Germans (Tübingen, Basel: Horst Erdmann Verlag, 1977), 182-199.

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Forests with residence in Dehra Dun, North India, a position he held from 1863 to 1881. In 1887 he was knighted and subsequently dubbed the “Father of Indian Forestry.”27

We do not know much about Brandis’ private perceptions of Burma. Few of his letters from Burma and India to relatives and friends have been handed down to us. It seems that he saw the Indies primarily as a biologist who loved the subjects of his science. He praised the miracles of tropical vegetation and collected samples of it. He praised British rule over the people of India, too — this from a particular Christian perspective. In Germany, Brandis had been a follower of a conservative Christian social reformer, Johann Hinrich Wichern, who promoted education for the lower classes and engaged in deeds of charity to counter the influence of Socialism and Marxism. It was Brandis’ hope that educational endeavors would elevate the people to a higher level of humanity, and he called the missionaries the crown of the British inhabitants of India. He suggested Thayetmo as a suitable capital for Burma or a place where a Christian mission should be established, owing its comparatively low rainfall.28

Brandis’ name stands for all German experts before, beside, and after him, who made their scientific skills and their convictions about human progress available to the administrators and rulers of Burma. This service was not limited to the British rulers. King Mindon employed Ferdinand Marfels, a German medical doctor born in Koblenz, to oversee the forests of Upper Burma and at the same time to act as a diplomat in dealing with the representatives of foreign powers at the court of Mandalay. In contrast to Brandis and most other Germans, Marfels became naturalized in his host country

27 F. T. Morehead, The Forests of Burma, Burma Pamphlets No. 5 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1944), 22. 28 Dietrich Brandis, “Dietrich Brandis’ Reise nach Hinter-Indien, über Aden, Ceylon und Calcutta; Dezember 1855 bis Februar 1856.” [Dietrich Brandis’ travel to Farther India, via Aden, Ceylon and Calcutta; December 1855 to February 1856] in: A. Petermann, Mitteilungen aus Justus Perthes‘ geographischer Anstalt über wichtige neue Erforschungen auf dem gesamten Gebiete der Geographie [Communications from Justus Perthes’ geographic instititution on important new expeditions in the entire field of geography] (Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1857) 49:479-484.

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and adopted its customs. It is reported that he wore Burmese dress and embraced the Buddhist faith.29

In the same year Brandis left Burma, another German three years younger than the great biologist entered the country: Adolf Bastian. Like Helfer, he was a physician cum world traveler cum scientist, but representative of a different kind of expert who took an interest in Burma. Unlike Helfer and Brandis, it was not the dream of seeing and exploring India some day that brought him to Burma. His goal was to collect material for the establishment of an ethnological science that was to be founded on a general psychology of people.30 Burma was the second station of his second journey around the world — seven more such journeys were to follow. Bastian died on the last of them, in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 1905. His first journey of eight years had not brought him into contact with the Buddhist world. The second journey intended to make up for that, and after Burma, Bastian visited Siam, Cambodia, Vietnam, and the Indonesian archipelago before returning to Germany via Japan, China, and Russia.

Some years before Kipling, Bastian took the “Road to Mandalay.” He hired a boat and some personal staff and travelled up the Irrawaddy River towards King Mindon’s city. From there, he intended to go to China via Bhamo, something Marfels had wanted to do. Bastian knew that the king would not like this, so after reaching Upper Burma he tried to keep a low profile, hoping not to attract attention. But the plan failed. Bastian had not reckoned on the king’s custom of studying English newspapers from Rangoon, which had reported his traveling plans. The king invited him as his personal guest to study Buddhism, close to the center of all mundane and 29 Reminiscences of the Court of Mandalay: Extracts from the Diary of General Horace A. Browne, 1859-1879 (Woking: The Oriental Institute, 1907), 37, 41; Wilhelm Joest, Ein Besuch beim Könige von Birma [A visit to the King of Burma] (Köln: Verlag der M. DuMont-Schauberg’schen Buchhandlung, 1882), 18. Marfels died in December 1876 in Mandalay. 30 A “standard biography” on Bastian has not yet been written. For an introduction in English, see Klaus-Peter Koepping, Adolf Bastian and the Psychic Unity of Mankind. The Foundation of Anthropology in Nineteenth Century Germany (St. Lucia, New York: University of Queensland Press, 1982).

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supermundane wisdom. Bastian, who had a sense for the ironies of fate, took it as a blessing in disguise. He lived within the compound of Mandalay Palace for half a year as a guest-prisoner before being permitted to continue his journey on a route that pleased the king. He saw the Shan Mountains before returning to Lower Burma on the Sittang River.

Bastian published his travel notes immediately after his return to Germany in 1866, together with a “History of the Indo-Chinese.” This and the recollection of Helfer’s travels by his wife that were published six years later, together give us an interesting insight into the perceptions of early-colonial and late-royal Burma through German eyes. These perceptions have not yet been evaluated nor, with the exception of a short excerpt of Bastian’s book in English, made accessible to the non-German speaking public. 31

Adolf Bastian was the first of many German ethnologists who would later come to Burma. This did not result from any scientific tradition established by him. His impact on German ethnology lies mainly in that in 1886 he became the first director of the Berlin Museum of Ethnology. Despite his scientific reputation, he remained an outsider in the scientific world, trying to elaborate the science of ethnology he had in mind in a very eccentric style that was almost incomprehensible for most readers (this does not apply to his travel notes). Most German ethnologists who visited Burma after Bastian were not primarily interested in the study of Buddhism but in the variety of ethnic groups living in Burma that made the country a paradise for ethnologists. Consequently, they concentrated on travels in the border areas of Burma, not in the Burmese-Buddhist centre.

A Linguistic Genius and a Scoundrel at Pagan In 1881, another expert with a German background came to Burma, Em(m)anuel (Emil) Forchhammer. Born 1851, the son of a church 31 Adolf Bastian, Die Geschichte der Indochinesen. Aus einheimischen Quellen [The history of the Indo-Chinese, From indigenous sources] (Die Voelker des Östlichen Asien. Studien und Reisen.[The people of Eastern Asia. Studies and travels] First Volume. Leipzig: Verlag von Otto Wigand, 1866); Reisen in Birma in den Jahren 1861 – 1862 [Travels in Burma in the years 1861 – 1862] (Die Voelker des oestlichen Asien. Studien und Reisen. Second Volume. Leipzig: Verlag von Otto Wigand, 1866); Adolf Bastian, “The Court of Mandalay and I”, in: Southeast Asia and the Germans, 53-76.

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minister, he had moved from his hometown, Kiel, in northern Germany to the Canton of Graubünden, Switzerland, where he became a Swiss national.32 Because of his German descent and education, he was regarded as a German by the Burmese. Forchhammer had studied medicine in the United States, visited Indian tribes living in North and Central America, and learned their languages. After his return to Europe he received a formal education in the field of oriental languages at the University of Leipzig and learned Armenian at an Armenian monastery near Venice. His language skills and lectures soon made him famous and at the age of twenty-six he received both an offer from the Emperor of Brazil to investigate Indian languages in South America and an invitation by the British authorities to teach Pali at Rangoon College. He chose the latter and came to Burma in 1879. Besides teaching Pali and studying the languages of Burma, in 1882 Forchhammer was appointed the first Government Epigraphist and head of the Archaeological Department of the Province of Burma. Forchhammer lived and worked in Burma for eleven years, traveling extensively to Pagan — when it was still part of the Burmese kingdom — and other places, collecting inscriptions, examining ancient buildings and learning still more languages. He started to write a comparative dictionary of the languages of India. It is said that he employed up to forty writers to copy texts for him. In 1890, after a visit to Pagan, he fell seriously ill and died on his way back to Europe, leaving behind him much material, some of which was published after his death.33

32 Forchhammer’s biography and bibliography have not been written yet. For his curriculum vitae, see Historisch-Biographisches Lexikon der Schweiz [Historic-Biographic Dictionary of Switzerland] Vol. 3, (Neuenburg 1936), 196-7 and Der freie Rätier, a newspaper of the Canton Graubünden that printed an obituary (No. 169, July 20, 1890). We learn from it that Forchhammer was married to the daughter of a missionary in 1881 and had a daughter. 33 The British Library holds eleven works of Forchhammer published between 1880 and 1891. Among them: Notes on the Languages and Dialects Spoken in British Burma (Rangoon, 1884); The Jardine Prize. An Essay on the Sources and Development of Burmese Law from the Era of the First Introduction of the Indian Law to the Time of the British Occupation of Pegu. With text and translation of King Wagaru's Manu Dhammasattham (Govt. Press: Rangoon, 1885); Reports on Archaeological Work Done in

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Forchhammer’s fame in Burma was not so much due to his scientific achievements, which could be appreciated only by a handful of other experts. Rather, it was his “typically German” hard working habits, which may have contributed to his early death, and for his (alleged) appraisal that there might be some truth in the foundation legend of the Shwedagon Pagoda that traces its origins back to the Buddha’s lifetime on earth.34

One year after Forchhammer’s death, another German visited Pagan. He became infamous as one of two Germans who played a part in robbing Pagan of some of its treasures. The cases of Noetling, a German geologist employed by the British authorities in Calcutta as superintendent of the Geological Survey of India, who from 1881 onwards sent pieces from Pagan and other places to the Bastian’s Berlin Museum of Ethnology, and of Thomann, who visited Pagan in 1899 together with a party of archaeological treasure hunters, are both similar and different: they acted in the same context, but their personalities and motives were far apart.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, in Germany as in other western countries, ethnological museums were established to offer the public an insight into the lives of peoples in those parts of the world that were now open to trade and travel and to provide material for research into their cultures. Strong competition developed between newly established institutions that made it necessary for them to obtain attractive and scientifically relevant exhibits.35 Noetling and Thomann provided pieces for both

Burma by Emil Forchhammer (Rangoon, 1889-91); Pagan I. The Kyaukku Temple (Government Printing: Rangoon, 1891). 34 Information from Prof. Khin Maung Nyunt. One of his books published after his death dealt with the history of the Shwedagon Pagoda: (E. Forchhammer, Notes on the Early History and Geography of British Burma. The Shwe Dagon Pagoda (Rangoon, 1891). 35 In 1907, Prof Thilenius, director of the Hamburg Museum of Ethnology, defended the huge amount of money needed to buy the “Thomann-collection” thus: “50 years of existence, our museum has to face the competition of far younger but from the beginning very energetically working institutions [of the same kind]. Our museum has to acquire scientific relevant material besides exhibits suitable for public display.” (Hamburg Museum for Ethnology, file S.I.2 – vol. vb).

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purposes. The core of the Burma collections of the Berlin and Hamburg Museums of Ethnology originate from what these two men took from Burma and shipped to Germany. Noetling was persuaded to collect pieces from Pagan and other places in Burma by Fedor Jagor, a friend of the Berlin Museum whom he met in Calcutta.36 He expected as a reward for his services an Imperial decoration, and indeed received such on the intervention of Adolf Bastian. Noetling should otherwise be remembered as the first scientist who did research on the geology of Burma and as the author of a fine account of Burmese measures, including a fair translation of King Bodawpaya’s edict on the surveyor’s measure pay.37

In contrast to Noetling, Thomann was a professional treasure hunter, pretending as an archaeologist connected with Bastian’s Berlin Museum of Ethnology. He named himself “Thomann Gillis” and, accompanied by five German assistants, chiselled off paintings from the walls of the Weikyi-in Kubyauk-gyi Pagoda and packed them for transport.38 The activities of the party were reported to the British authorities and some items recovered and replaced. Bringing the case before court was considered, but finally, it was decided to expel Thomann from Burma.

After long negotiations, in 1906 Thomann sold what he had been able to ship to the Hamburg Museum of Ethnology for a large

36 Fedor Jagor traveled widely in Southeast Asia and published some books about the Malay world. In 1875, he visited Burma, but no record of his visit is handed down (see Südindiische Volksstämme. “Aus Fedor Jagors Nachlass. Mit Unterstützung der Jagor-Stiftung hrsg. von der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte unter. Leitung von Albert Grünwedel,” [From Fedor Jagor's post-humous works. With the support of the Jagor Grant from the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Pre-History. Under the Direction of Albert Grunwedel.] Part 1 (Berlin: D. Reimer, 1914), 5. 37 See Fritz Noetling, Notes on the Mineral Resources of Upper Burma. (Rangoon, 1893). The article on measures was published 1896 in the German Journal of Ethnology. 38 India Office Library Records No. 5948, 180-183. The five assistants left their signatures on the walls of a Pagan temple. See Gordon H. Luce, Old Burma — Early Pagan. Vol. 1 (Locus Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin, 1969), 230.

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amount of money provided by the government of that city.39 In 1923, he published a book about Pagan, which contains nice photographs but has little scientific value. He died one year later under somewhat tragic circumstances, consolation perhaps for some Buddhists as proof of khamma.40

Missionaries, Converts and Tourists One of the few places where you can still find visible traces of the German impact on Burma is the compound of the Lutheran Bethlehem Church on 181/183 Theinbyu Street near Karaweik Hall on the Royal Lake. One of the many inscriptions on the walls of the church building states that Rev. A. Mayr (pron. Myer) founded the congregation in 1878. Mayr — the name suggests Bavarian descent — was a missionary of the Leipzig Lutheran Mission, which started its work among the Tamils of India in 1840. Indian Christians in congregations founded and supervised by German missionaries were among those attracted by the chance to earn a living in the newly acquired British province of Lower Burma in 1852. In 1877, Mayr, as one of the shepherds, followed the flock. He found Tamil Christians in Rangoon sticking to their Lutheran faith and, therefore, worthy of support. 41 Consequently, the Lutheran Bethlehem Church

39 The “Thomann Affair” has been thoroughly investigated by K. J. Whitbread, “Mediaeval Burmese wall-paintings from a temple at Pagan now in the Hamburgisches Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg,” Oriens Extremus 18 (1971) 85-122. Another scientific evaluation of Thomann’s ‘collection’ was done by Karl Seidenstücker, Süd-buddhistische Studien. I. Die Buddha-Legende in den Skulpturen des Ananda-Tempels zu Pagan [Southern Buddhist Studies I. The Buddha-legend in the sculptures of the Ananda temple in Pagan] (Hamburg: Lütke & Wulff, 1916). 40 Th. H. Thomann, Pagan: Ein Jahrhundert buddhistischer Tempelkunst [Pagan: One century of Burmese temple’s art] (Stuttgart and Heilbronn: Verlag Walter Seifert, 1923); Whitbread, “Mediaeval Burmese wall-paintings, ” 120. 41 The Mission’s website provides some basic information about its history: http://www.lmw-mission.de/e/. The information on the Mission is given here is based on the evaluation of the mission society’s monthly newsletter, Evangelisch-Lutherisches Missionsblatt [Protestant-Lutheran Missionpaper] (Leipzig: Justus Naumann, 1878-1897; Verlag der Ev.-luth. Mission zu Leipzig, 1898-1936) and the annual reports of the society.

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was founded. The British administration donated a compound situated on grounds close to the old Mandalay, which was later extended into the central railway station of Rangoon. There was a wooden church, a school building, and later some apartments that were rented to keep costs of the station low and to make the Rangoon congregation financially independent. The compound had to be abandoned in 1910 when it was incorporated into the area of the railway station. Another plot of land on today’s Theinbyu Street, together with 40,000 rupees, was given in exchange.

Mayr and his family lived in Rangoon until 1882 when they took home leave for one and a half years. During this time Myer was relieved by another missionary, Gehring. Mayr returned in December 1883, living in Forchhammer’s house until he was able to set up a new home of his own. He left Burma for good in 1886. From that time on, Indian pastors took care of the congregation, occasionally supervised by German superintendents who sailed from Madras to Rangoon.

Foreign missionaries in Burma typically wrote first about the development of the congregation and, from time to time, provided information about the country and its people. Reports were partly reprinted in fortnightly mission newsletters informing sponsors about the progress of missionary work in East-Africa and India and giving entertaining first hand information about the far away worlds missionaries were exposed to.42 From these reports, we learn that Mayr and his colleagues were impressed — compared with experiences in India — by Burmese women, especially by their neatness in daily life and strong position in the economic sector. They did not appreciate “lazy” Burman men, the Buddhist religion, and high costs of living in Rangoon. Neither did they appreciate the lack of support of the German merchants, nor their lack of personal piety, nor, as they saw it, the proud, arrogant and despotic Burmese 42 Information about the Catholic mission in Burma was given by the Catholic monthly Die katholischen Missionen. The magazine reported about Burma from 1873 in German, mainly about the mission among the Karen. Apparently, there were no German Catholic missionaries working in Burma in the nineteenth-century although Bishop Bigandet mentions some brothers from the Mission des Etrangères bearing German names. A famous Austrian priest, Father Wehinger, founded a leper-home in Mandalay in 1892. He died in 1903, only thirty-nine years old.

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kings. While trying to avoid politics, they could not but praise British protection of law and order, with the exception of low British morale over alcohol abuse. Mayr took a special interest in the efforts of the American Baptist Mission among the Karen and was mildly reprimanded by his superiors for his praise of a non-Lutheran denomination.

Besides western missionaries who propagated the gospel of the Bible, there were others with different religious aspirations. They came to Burma to be instructed in Buddhist doctrine and to be ordained into the Buddhist orders. They were disappointed with the Christian way of life, and searched for salvation in the East.

The first and, until today, most influential German monk, who became ordained in the traditions of Theravada Buddhism, was a virtuoso on the violin. Anton Walter Flores Güth (1878-1957) became famous in the Buddhist world under his monk’s name Nyanatiloka.43 He was born in the year of the foundation of the Lutheran congregation in Rangoon, and twenty-five years later came to Rangoon to enter a monastery. He was baptised a Catholic and from early boyhood on showed himself eager to lead a religious life. The German philosopher Schopenhauer, who had popularized Buddhism in Germany, led him to travel east, earning his livelihood with his violin in Cairo, Port Said and Bombay. From there, he traveled to Ceylon, visited a Buddhist monastery, and proceeded to Burma in 1903 to meet Ananda Metteya, the second-ever English Buddhist monk.44 In Rangoon, Güth met his Burmese sponsor, Daw Hla Oung, a Burmese lady promoting education among Burmese girls. He read Fielding-Hall’s “The Soul of the People” and entered the monastery at Ngda Khi Pagoda, where U Abhathera ordained him as a novice in September 1903. Here, he lived together with 43 For a biography on Nyanatiloka, see Hellmuth Hecker (ed.), Der erste deutsche Bhikkhu: Das bewegte Leben des Ehrwürdigen Nyanatiloka (1878-1957) und seine Schüler. [The first German Bhikkhu: The eventful life of the Venerable Nyanatiloka (1878-1957) and his disciples] (Konstanz; Universität Konstanz 1995). The book contains Nyanatiloka’s autobiography. 44 In the year 1900, Gordon Douglas was ordained as Asoka in Akyab. He died the same year. In 1901, Charles A. Allen Bennatt alias McGregor was ordained in the same town.

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Ananda Metteya in one room, and then changed to Kyundaw monastery, where he was ordained by U Kumara Mahathera and received the name “Nyanatiloka,” — which means expert of the three worlds, the sensual, shaped, and shapeless. He did not concentrate on learning Burmese as Ananda Metteya had recommended. He learnt to speak colloquial Burmese instead, which he regarded as one of the easiest languages to learn, and insisted on learning Pali thoroughly. He traveled extensively in the following years — Singapore, Malaya, Upper Burma, Ceylon, Germany, Maymyo — and ordained other western disciples of the Buddha, among them in 1907, one more German in Burma. In July 1911, Nyanatiloka founded the Island Hermitage in Ceylon and this became the center of his future activities. Until recent times, no other German Buddhist has stayed in Burma for a long period of time.

Güth, transformed as Nyanatiloka, came to Burma as a pilgrim. He wanted inspiration and practical means to lead a meaningful life and Burma was one important station on his life’s pilgrimage. Other foreign visitors to Burma shared similar experiences. Climbing the stairs to Shwedagon Pagoda and walking around its golden spire, gave many a feeling of the essence of Buddhist religion. This experience, and other impressions, suggest that tourism — perhaps unknown to the tourist — has a religious component to it, in that travelers are searching for something that they do not have at home45.

The first tourists came to Burma in the last years of the nineteenth century. It is not known if many Germans were making use of Thomas Cook’s package tours. German visitors who wrote about their travels typically had personal contacts with Burma pioneers of the first generation, for example Brandis, Bastian, the acting German consul in Rangoon, or a merchant living in the city. For most of them Burma was one station on a tourist pilgrimage in Asia. Normally, they travelled from Rangoon to Mandalay, some to

45 Graf Hermann Keyserling, Reisetagebuch eines Philosophen [A philosopher’s travelogue] (Darmstadt: Otto Reichl Verlag, 1923). This writer, who visited Burma briefly in 1911, chose as his motto for his very successful book, in which he recorded his journey around the world: “The shortest way to one’s self leads around the world” (p. V).

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Pagan and further afield.46 They were, in general, fascinated by the Shwedagon Pagoda, the peacefulness of Buddhism, and the charm of the people, above all that of the Burmese ladies. With few exceptions, they approved of British rule in Burma as the missionaries did and followed in their footsteps by not taking off their shoes when they set foot on the first step of Shwedagon. Some saw the desired amalgamation of East and West in the offspring of European-Burmese couples combining the grace of the disciples of the Buddha and the intelligence of followers of the God of Progress.47

Summary and the Impact of World War I Up to World War I, Burma attracted the interest of Germans in many ways. Opportunities for trade were at the top of the list. Burma was perceived as one of a number of fascinating and exotic places in the East inhabited by enviable, good-natured people. The country could be turned into a paradise if the despotic nature of traditional rule was tamed by western enlightenment and a sense for economic progress.

Burma as a whole political entity did not, however, attract any specific interest. The official German attitude is summarized in the words of the German geographer Alfred Wegener, who visited India three times and in 1911 accompanied the German Crown Prince on his visit to India. After this journey, Wegener gave a lecture about

46 Among the well-known persons who visited Burma were the author Stefan Zweig (1909) and the painter Emil Nolde (1914). From 1897 on, the “Irrawaddy Flotilla” provided a journey from Rangoon to Mandalay twice a week. 47 “The children of such [European-Burmese] unions, although not excellent in beauty, were, however, intelligent: Even in their young age, one could notice the intellectual predisposition of the European father together with the happy character of the Burmese mother.” Friedrich von Hellwald, Hinterindische Länder und Völker: Reisen in den Flußgebieten des Irrawaddy und Mekong; in Birma, Annam, Kambodscha und Siam. Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der neuesten Zustände in Birma bearbeitet [Countries and peoples of Farther India: Travels in the river regions of Irrawaddy and Mekong; in Burma, Annam, Cambodia and Siam. Edited with special regards to the most recent developments in Burma] (Leipzig: Verlag von Otto Spamer, 1880), 104.

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the “India of Today”, and substantiated the fact that he omitted the Burmese part of British India from his talk.

...the Burmese are a good-natured people that have almost no disposition for political machinations, and their gentle religion, which is free from fanaticism, contributes to making them still more harmless.48

The beginning of World War I brought an end to the stay of most Germans living in Burma. The men, mainly merchants, were interned in Ahmednagar, 300 miles east of Bombay. Wives were allowed to stay if they wanted to do so; some did and visited their husbands from time to time.49 After the war, most Germans were expelled from India.50 Because German-Burmese relations had rested above all on the shoulders of individual Germans, the war marked what amounted to almost a severing of the relationship with Burma from the German point of view.

After the war, the British no longer employed German experts nor did any German Lutheran missionary return to supervise the Tamil Church.51 For some time, there were almost no German merchants in Rangoon. A new period of history had begun.

48 Georg Wegener, Das heutige Indien. Grundlagen und Probleme der britisch-indischen Herrschaft. Nach Studien und Beobachtungen während der Indien-Reise seiner kaiserlichen und königlichen Hoheit des Kronprinzen des Deutschen Reiches und von Preussen [India of today. Foundations and problems of British-Indian rule. According to studies and observations throughout the travels in India of his Imperial and Royal Highness, the Crown Prince of the German Empire and Prussia] (Berlin: Wilhelm Süsserott, 1912), 15. 49 Bundesarchiv [Public Record Office of the Federal Republic of Germany] Koblenz, file R 67/822. 50 Der Auslandsdeutsche [The abroad-living German ] 2, no. 15 (1919): 519. 51 On October 31, 1917, the 400th anniversary of Luther’s reformation, the foundation stone for a new church built of bricks was laid. The construction of the church and the life of the congregation were supervised by the Swedish Lutheran Mission.

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Germans in Burma 1920-1945 Trade and the Short-term Visitors There were only a few Germans were present in Burma during the 1920s and there was no increase by 1939.52 The travel restrictions into British India for war enemies were lifted on September 1, 1925, but this did not have a great impact on the return of Germans to Burma. In India it was different. From the few figures we have about the number of Germans in Burma, one can estimate that after 1925 only 10% of the pre-war number of German expatriates lived in Burma, that is, about 10 to 20 instead of 100 to 150 at a given time.

In contrast to these figures, the volume of German trade with Burma recovered quickly, reaching and even surpassing the pre-war figures by 1921. Trade was allowed by the administration and was carried out through middlemen; this was a trade without locally based traders. Germany continued to import Burmese rice while Burma continued to rely heavily on salt manufactured in Germany, but there were no new goods on the trading list between both countries. The crisis of the world economy in 1930, the Ottawa Agreement of 1932 benefiting British trade with Burma, and the changing climate of world politics contributed to a steady decline of German trade with Burma until it came once more to an end in September 1939 with the outbreak of World War II53.

What applies to trade — that there was continuity under changed conditions — applies to other segments of German interest in Burma. Researchers on various subjects came to Burma to do field research here for very limited periods of time. These include some ethnologists, one or two biologists, geographers, explorers of prehistory, archaeologists and geologists, the majority of who

52 A German merchant living in Siam, who visited Burma in 1929, reported that only 6 to 8 Germans were living in Rangoon at that time (Ostasiatische Rundschau [East-Asian Review] 13, no. 9 (1930): 334-5. At the outbreak of the war in 1939, the British authorities deported eight adult men to Calcutta (British Library – Oriental and Indian Office Collection, M/3/761, Confidental Report dated September 28, 1939). 53 See John S. Furnivall, Colonial Police and Practice. A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India (New York: New York University Press, 1948), 213-214.

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traveled in the border areas of Burma with a concentration on the Burmese-Chinese border area. 54

Nyanatiloka visited Burma twice between the wars. In 1929 he came to attend the funeral rites for the monk who had ordained him. Together with another German Buddhist, Ananda, he traveled to Upper Burma, giving lectures and propagating the newly founded International Buddhist Association. In late 1934, Nyanatiloka came to attend to his ailing favorite disciple Nyanadhara, who he had sent from Ceylon to Mogok, Upper Burma in the hope that the climate there would help his recovery. But neither the change of climate nor the personal care helped and Nyanadhara died on May 17, 1935.55 In the 1930s a new means of communication between Europe and Burma was introduced in addition to the regular ship service between Hamburg, Bremen, and Rangoon (on average seventeen passages a year provided by the Hansa Line from Bremen).56 Regular flights once a week were introduced by various airlines. A stopover for one night at Rangoon’s Strand Hotel was included in the fare of a flight from Amsterdam to Batavia. Some German pilots on individual flights around the world had to make forced landings in Rangoon and off the shore of Tavoy. The German airline Lufthansa introduced a regular service to Bangkok with a stop in at Rangoon in 1939. On August 3, 1939, the plane crashed at Mingaladon airport and caught fire. No-one was hurt, but the plane was destroyed.57

54 In late 1937 and early 1938, a German-American scholar, Helmut de Terra, led an geological-palaeontological expedition to Northern Burma (see Helmut de Terra, “The Pleistocene in Burma”, in: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 32, no. 3 (1943). De Terra was accompanied by a friend, who became famous later, the French priest, palaeontologist and philosopher Teilhard de Chardin (Helmut de Terra, Mein Weg mit Teilhard de Chardin [My way with Teilhard de Chardin] (München: C.H. Beck, 1962) 72-89). 55 Hecker, Bhikkhu, 159-162; 193-195. 56 The figures are taken from the records of the Handelsstatistisches Amt Hamburg [Office of trade related statistics Hamburg] (ed.), Handel und Schiffahrt des Hafens Hamburg in den Jahren, 1925-1938 [Trade and navigation of the port of Hamburg, 1825-1938]. 57 Erwin Berghaus, Propeller überm Paradies. Amsterdam-Batavia. Eine Luftreise über 17 Länder [Propeller over paradise. Amsterdam-Batavia. An

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The only German who landed in Rangoon twice as a solo flyer was Elly Beinhorn, a German celebrity of the 1930’s known for her flying adventures and her marriage to a famous German race-driver. Beinhorn, a professional flyer, published the story of her life, including her visits to Burma, after the war.58 Other German women who visited Burma were travel writers by profession. They published their experiences and impressions shortly after their return to Germany, engraving on the minds of their mostly female readership a very private conception of what Burma was like.59 What Burma was like depended heavily on the personality of the writer. One of the leading themes was how to cope with the experience of loneliness as a stranger. All visitors were touched by the special charm of Burma, its Buddhism and its people, but there always remained a distance. This feeling was most clearly expressed by Hannah Asch, the only one of these women to write a book recording, exclusively, her travels in Burma. The final sentences of her book state:

Rich and strange and fantastic like its golden Pagodas, like its pondering Buddhas is the country of Burma. But never will it be the living place of the White Man.60

air travel over 17 countries] (Dresden: Karl Reissner Verlag, 1934), 72-74; Rangoon Gazette Weekly Budget, January 25, 1932 and October 17, 1932; British Library – Oriental and Indian Office Collection, M/6/20. 58 Elly Beinhorn, Alleinflug: Mein Leben [Solo flight: My life] (Frankfurt/M.: Ullstein, 1981). 59 Alice Schalek, In Buddhas Land. Ein Bummel durch Hinterindien [In Buddha’s land. A stroll through Farther India] (Wien, München, Leipzig: Rikola Verlag, 1922); Hannah Asch, Birmanische Tage und Nächte: Reiseerlebnisse [Burmese days and nights: Travel experiences] (Berlin: August Scherl GmbH, 1932); Alma M. Karlin, Erlebte Welt — das Schicksal einer Frau. Durch Insulinde und das Reich des weissen Elefanten, durch Indiens Wunderwelt und das Tal der Tränen [Experienced world — the destiny of a woman. Through Indonesia and the empire of the white elephant, through India and the valley of tears] (Minden i.W., Berlin, Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Köhler, n.d. [about 1930]). 60 Asch, Birmanische Tage und Nächte, 205.

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Three Consuls and an Animal Lover Not much is known about Germans living in Burma between the two great wars apart from those on an up to six week stopover on a touristic, scientific or journalistic trip. However, from various sources, a little is known about four Germans who lived in Burma during this period. None of them became famous, but each had a special and interesting personal history with Burma. The life of at least one of them deserves more investigation.

Heinrich A.W. Huchting.61 Huchting was born in 1877 near Oldenburg, a north German town close to Bremen. He came to Burma in 1899 as an employee of an import-export company based in Bremen, which traded mainly in rice. Later, he became co-owner of the company. He acted as deputy consul before the war. He spoke Burmese and Hindustani fluently, a little French, and of course, English. Huchting was married and had five children. He lived partly in Burma and partly in Bremen, where he and his family were living at the outbreak of the war in 1914. After the war, he applied for Bremen citizenship, returned to Burma in 1925, and was appointed as German honorary consul in 1926 on the suggestion of the Bremen Chamber of Commerce. The political body in Hamburg, which had been asked for a comment on Huchting’s appointment, appreciated his person but raised doubts about suitability on the grounds of reports that Huchting did not stay in Rangoon continuously. The doubts were justified. Huchting left Rangoon for good in 1928.

Edwin O. Bloech.62 After the departure of Huchting from Burma, Bloech administered the German consulate, which from 1927 onwards had the right to issue passports for travel to Germany. At the end of 1930, the German Foreign Office proposed his official appointment, which he received in 1932. This delay was due to the fact that Bloech was not longer a German citizen. Naturally, this raised opposition to his appointment, but no other suitable candidate was found.

61 The information on Huchting is obtained from the Staatsarchiv [Public Records Office] Hamburg, file IA2a297. 62 Staatsarchiv [Public Records Office] Hamburg, file IA2a297; Staatsarchiv [Public Records Office] Bremen, file 4.49 – 121/31.

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Bloech was born in Hamburg in 1886 and grew up in London where his father founded a company that traded in skins. Bloech returned to Hamburg for his secondary education. He did not finish but came to Burma in 1903 with his father (nothing is known about his mother). The father died in 1906, and at the age of twenty, Bloech took over as head of the company. During World War I, he was interned at Ahmednagar for five years. Like Huchting, he was of the Lutheran faith. His marital status is not known. He spoke even more languages than his predecessors did: French fluently and some Dutch, Italian, Fukhien, and Nepalese, in addition to English, Burmese, and Hindustani.

The new war made it impossible for a German national to return to Burma immediately. Bloech returned his German passport and from then on lived as a stateless person in Burma hoping to earn his living there. That was not easy, because the skin trade ran into difficulties. Lack of money compelled Bloech to move his residence to the outskirts of Rangoon. He had to rent an office in the center in order to comply with his duties as a German consul. Bloech’s financial difficulties worsened with the economic crisis after 1929, and in 1935 he applied for a monthly grant of 200 Rupees from the German Foreign Office. Huchting strongly supported the application, the General Consulate in Calcutta did the same, and finally Bloech received a grant of 350 Rupees in 1936. The grant was more than he had asked for, because the government in the meantime had reduced the fees for consular services and thus the consul’s income.

Bloech was not able to enjoy his improvement in financial conditions because only one year after he began receiving the grant, he was replaced. What happened to him after 1937 is, as yet, not known.

Erwin Iven. Compared with his predecessors, even less is known about the life of this last German consul in Burma before the war, Erwin Iven However, the text of a speech given by him in October 1938 in the Muslim Students’ Club has been handed down. The speech was on “Education in Nazi Germany” and “The Ideologies of National Socialism.” The text was reprinted in the leading nationalist newspaper in English that employed Aung San for some time.63 The 63 New Burma, October 5, 1938, 3-4; 17-18; October 7, 1938, 3-4; 17-18.

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speech is pure propagation of the gospel of National Socialism without any regard to Burma’s situation. Iven had no special connection to Burma; he was a merchant by profession and had joined the NSDAP, the Nazi party in 1934.64 He was appointed German consul in Rangoon because he was a convinced follower of Adolf Hitler and his ideology. The replacement of the stateless Edwin Bloech by Erwin Iven was the work of Horst Wilhelm Bohle, who had been appointed Secretary of State in the Foreign Office in early 1937. From 1933, he had been leader the (Foreign) Organization of the NSDAP, which promoted National Socialism among German seamen and Germans living abroad, and supervised expatriate party members. Bohle was eager to bring party members into the German diplomatic service.

As consul, Iven was among the few Germans living in Rangoon at the outbreak of the war. He and his family (wife, child and nurse) sailed back to Germany in October, 1939.

Herr Patzert. The information about the three consuls is recorded in various archives in Germany and London. Mr. Patzert's name was mentioned from time to time in Burmese newspapers, which did not reveal his first name. But as “Herr Patzert”, he must have been a well known man in Rangoon society.

Patzert came to Rangoon in 1907 as an agent for Carl Hagenbeck’s Zoo in Hamburg. He bought animals in Burma and shipped them to Germany. In 1932, it was reported that he had first lived in Insein, then moved to Fytche Street, and in 1920 to Short Street.65 In his compound Patzert had established a private zoo. It was used to house animals after their capture somewhere in Burma — Patzert knew a lot of people who worked in the forests — and as a permanent private zoo as well. Up to 1932, Patzert had sold about forty elephants, some tigers and other animals. His zoo contained some European animals as well. The Rangoon Gazette shows pictures of some deer from Germany and Patzert’s fair-haired daughter, together with a baby elephant.

64 Iven’s party membership card is kept in the Bundesarchiv [Public Record Office of the Federal Republic of Germany] Berlin. 65 Rangoon Gazette Weekly Budget, March 21, 1932 and April 18, 1932.

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After the outbreak of the war, Patzert did not leave the country. We learn from The Guardian Monthly that he was even employed by the Burmese authorities during the war66. After the British left Rangoon, the zoo had to be evacuated. Some twenty-three animals were taken into custody by U Ba Thein, another animal lover, who like Patzert maintained a private zoo. He could not, however, care properly for the animals of the zoo. Some of them died. U Ba Thein contacted Patzert, who at that time lived in Insein again. Patzert contacted Dr. Ba Maw and in September 1942 was appointed Superintendent of Rangoon Zoo by Thakin Tun Ok, forest minister in Ba Maw’s New Era Burma Government of August 1942. He received a salary of 250 Rupees a month. U Ba Thein was appointed his deputy with a salary of 150 Rupees. The animals that had survived were brought back, and the zoo was later reopened.67

Patzert suffered a tragic death. According to a special supplement of the Working People’s Daily of February 1, 1970, commemorating the 64th anniversary of the zoo, it happened like this:

In December 1944, Patzert was asked by the Japanese to evacuate his house in Insein. He knew he had become a suspect, and rather than [be] arrest[ed] by the Japanese, he shot his three children and then shot himself with a revolver during the night. On his non-arrival at the Zoo at the usual hour, U Ba Thin went to enquire at his house, and it was to his horror that he found him dead with his 3 children. U Ba Thin’s mind was so affected by the incident that he left the service and returned to Henzada.

Patzert’s death is a sadly fitting end to the list of stories of the Germans living in Burma up to 1945.

66 The Guardian Monthly Magazine, February 1962, 19-20. 67 The Intelligence Bureau of the Burmese exile government in Simla reported that there was much radio talk in Rangoon about the reconstruction of the zoo in 1943 and that the zoo reopened in January 1944 (Government of Burma, Intelligence Bureau, Burma during the Japanese Occupation. Vol. I (Simla, 1943), 64; Vol. II, (Simla 1944), 153).

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Epilogue: A Military Attaché and two POWs It is not known yet if there were any other Germans like Patzert, who cut or had to cut their ties with Germany and stayed in Burma during the war. But we do know that at least three Germans visited Rangoon during that time.

Around Christmas 1942, the Military Attaché posted to Bangkok visited the city. Rangoon was the last station of a tour through some Southeast Asian countries that had been occupied by the Japanese army. He reported that the docks had been destroyed but were still usable for military purposes and that the city was evacuated to a large extent.68

One and a half years later, in May 1944, at the time of the decisive battle at Imphal in Eastern India, two Germans came from India to Burma. They had escaped from the camp of Dehra Dun, where the German prisoners of war, including Nyanatiloka and other German monks, were interned.69 At that time Burma was occupied by the German ally, Japan, and ruled by a Burmese government under Ba Maw that had declared war on the allies on August 1, 1943 and was recognised by Germany four days later. It took thirty-four days for the escapees to reach Burmese territory. They were not received in a friendly manner by the first Japanese soldiers they met, who suspected them of being British spies. They were escorted to Rangoon, but were disappointed to find no German consul to certify their German identity. The two were kept at the prison of the Kempetai in Rangoon and finally released. Instead of a German official, they eventually dined with Subhas Chandra Bose, who after his journey from Germany to Asia in two submarines had moved the headquarters of his Indian National Army and his provisional Government of Free India to Rangoon. But that is another story.

68 Bundesarchiv [Public Record Office of the Federal Republic of Germany] Freiburg, file RH 2/1249. 69 The story of the escape is told in the book by Rolf Magener, Prisoner’s Bluff (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954).

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Summary The journey of the two German POWs through Burma in 1944 is instructive and significant in a two-fold way. The war extinguished the relationship between Germany and Burma. No German in Rangoon met and identified the two escapees as Germans. There must have been some of them living in Rangoon at that time, such as Patzert, but they had good reasons not to get involved in the big issues of those times. In 1944, the Japanese did not trust the Germans, just as the Germans did not trust their Asian ally. The Japanese did not trust the Burmese and vice versa, and it was the same again with the Indians, the Burmese, and the Japanese.

The two German refugees had an interest in their own survival, but not in Burma. The same applies to the German Military Attaché, who cared for the survival of Nazi Germany when he inspected the Rangoon docks and Iven, the last German consul, who was sent to Burma to represent the “real” Germany in place of a German who had betrayed his fatherland. Patzert, to whom the war presented a chance to use his long-standing contacts with the Burmese for his own personal sake and that of the animals he loved, cared for Burma, but not for Germany anymore. He was seen in a Nazi uniform in Rangoon, but this could just as much have been an attempt at camouflage rather than an expression of his own convictions. But that did not help him. He and his children became victims of the kind of mistrust that so quickly and dangerously grows in times of war. No wonder that almost no living memory of German-Burmese relations survived the war.

Any war tells you that you have to make a decision. This necessity to take sides overshadowed German contacts from World War I to World War II — and maybe persists today. It has been said that the outbreak of World War II commenced with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles — and most Burmese nationalists seemed to have shared this opinion.70 The war enforced polarization. The possibility to take an independent stance between the competing camps of ideologies was reduced, and this significantly affected the German individuals who had no special political interest. Huchting’s decision to stay in Germany with his family, Bloech’s and Patzert’s

70 C. A. Soorma, Some Recent Trends in World Affairs. (Rangoon: Rasika Ranjani, 1954) 20.

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decisions to stay in Burma, and Iven’s resolution to come to Burma as the representative of Nazi Germany’s ideology were decisions brought on by developments in world politics. The pressure to take sides prevented the development of any German interest in Burma as an entire political and cultural unit. There are indications that this trend continued in the post-war era until recent times.

Rolf Magener, one of the two German escapees of 1944, wrote a book about his and his friend’s adventures in 1944. Patzert could not, and the three German consuls did not, write about their experiences in Burma. They followed a traditional pattern. The Germans who worked and lived in Burma for years wrote some reports about their special subjects. The reports about the whole of Burma were written by people who had traveled the country only briefly. This pattern is in line with the modern trend of the development of virtual realities.

The German escapees from the British POW-camp were convinced that they would meet some friends in Burma. They were corrected by the “real” reality. In other cases this kind of test did not happen. Readers of literature about Burma could not verify what they read because they had never visited Burma themselves. And if they had, their perception may, perhaps, have been guided by what they wanted to see: the Golden land, the beautiful and free women, the charm of Buddhism, and the Road to Mandalay, a wonderland of legends that represented only part of the reality. That leads to the question of how real the German perception of Burma was and still is.

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Germans in Burma, 1827-1945

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