100 Kiwis Stories from WWI: 'Hun' heritage didn't stop act of bravery

Karl Strack was declared a potential enemy by the New Zealand military.

German-named brothers targets of xenophobia despite risking their lives for New Zealand in war.

17 Discrimination back home
Karl Strack risked his life to advance New Zealand over the Germans again and again; we repaid his bravery by blacklisting him.

The Evening Post of December 4, 1917 reports that 23-year-old Strack "did a daring thing the other day. He swam the river between the Germans and us five times in broad daylight ... spent six hours in Fritz's trenches ... Then in the evening, he returned with two other men and surprised a Hun post of five, killing three and chasing the others off."

The same article describes the 700 Wellingtonians forced to register as aliens.

The year before, Karl and George Strack had been hauled into New Zealand Base Depot at 2.30am and declared potential enemies. The charge? German ancestry.

The problem was Karl and George were Kiwis, too. New Zealand Division had drawn up a September 1916 list of "Men of Enemy Extraction".

The Hawera brothers soon encountered hate mail addressed to the "Hun Mob". George wrote to New Zealand's High Commissioner that his ancestry was two generations removed from Germany - "Thus you see, to classify us as alien parentage is rather ridiculous."

An New Zealand Expeditionary Force investigation eventually concluded people like the Stracks were typically British or Dalmatians, and all were New Zealand-born. Still, War Office policy insisted men with Teutonic traits were not to be put in the firing line. Nine soldiers with German parents were segregated in Britain while New Zealand police investigated their families.

Historian Christopher Pugsley's On the fringe of Hell says the June 1916 desertion of Private W P Nimot - or Nimodt, or Nimott, depending on how much consideration writers had for enemy surnames - piqued New Zealand scorn for the Germans. Frederick Wohnsiedler's Gisborne butcher shop had been ransacked on December 31, 1914; Wanganui and New Plymouth saw further attacks in 1915, and our Women's Anti-German League, formed at the start of 1916, vowed to "root out the Hun hog". The Truth quoted a Wairarapa local promising Nimot would be "cut to pieces" when he got home.

Xenophobia, too, over Godzone. German consul employee A H Grierson was accused of being a German; the Hallenstein family changed their name to Halstead; the Kuhtzes became Coutts; and Auckland's Coburg St became Kitchener St. The German-founded town of Sarau changed its name to Upper Moutere in 1917. George and Herman Bollinger, both veterans of Gallipoli, were the target of investigations too. They had eight cousins who died on the Western Front - fighting for Germany.

A July 19, 1916 conference resolved to remove 96 men of "enemy extraction" from New Zealand trenches.

While most were confined to labour camps from 1916 on, the Strack brothers fought the discrimination against them. Karl, a Second Lieutenant, was killed at Ypres on October 4, 1917. His bravery was reported two months later. George returned home a captain and an invalid.

To read earlier stories in this series click here.