Auguste Hertzer

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Auguste Hertzer (born July 26, 1855 in Graudenz , West Prussia Province , today Poland; † May 16, 1934 in Rabaul , Territory of New Guinea , today Papua New Guinea) was a Red Cross nurse who was instrumental in building up the health system in the German colonies in East Africa and New Guinea contributed.

Life path

Auguste Hertzer was sent to German East Africa in 1887 as the sister of the Women's Association of the Red Cross, where she learned Swahili . There she experienced the uprising of the East African coastal population in 1888 . She also accompanied Robert Koch to the western Usambara Mountains and to the Kwai agricultural experimental station when he was in East Africa. In 1890 she returned to Germany.

Hertzer and Hedwig Saul were sent to New Guinea in 1891 by the German Women's Association for Nursing in the Colonies, which was founded in 1888, where, after arriving in Stephansort on June 23, she initially worked at the hospital under the doctor Reinhard Hagge, who was also employed in 1891. Together with this she was transferred in 1892 to Friedrich-Wilhelms-Hafen to the not yet completed hospital on the offshore Beliao Island. When she became seriously ill on November 18, she became the first patient at this hospital. Then she devoted herself to building this house.

After a five-month home leave in 1896, she returned to Stephansort, where the headquarters of the German administration was now again. At first she lived in the house of Governor Curt von Hagen , then she worked on the offshore island of Siar with Otto Dempwolff in the government hospital.

After Hertzer gave up her position with the Red Cross on 15 March 1899 it acquired through the mediation of Albert Hahl , with whom she was intimate friends, a piece of land at Palaupei , where they lived until at least the 1924th In 1902 she accompanied Hahl to Sydney . She took part in Dempwolff's expedition to research malaria, which he carried out on behalf of Koch in 1904.

Over the next few years she acquired three plantations on the Gazelle Peninsula . She sold one of them before the outbreak of war. She escaped expropriation by the Australian mandate authorities from 1921 onwards because her place of birth came under the provisions of the Versailles Treaty and was therefore no longer considered an enemy foreigner. During the war she had temporarily resumed her work as a nurse, now for the Australian military administration.

literature

  • Karl Baumann: Biographical Handbook German New Guinea . 3. Edition. Fassberg 2009, pp. 217-219 [with photo].
  • Livia Loosen: German women in the South Pacific colonies of the German Empire . transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2014, ISBN 978-3-8376-2836-4

Individual evidence

  1. Sewa Hadji
  2. cf. Oscar Baumann: In German East Africa during the uprising: Reise d. Dr. Hans Meyer's expedition in Usambara . Vienna u. Ölmütz 1890
  3. Hermann Joseph Hiery : The German South Seas 1884-1914. A manual. Schöningh Paderborn 2001, ISBN 3-506-73912-3 , p. 437.
  4. ^ Report on a malaria expedition to German New Guinea . Journal of Hygiene, 1904, p. 82