Letters bring colonial times to life
An Indescribable Beauty by Friedrich August Krull (Awa Press $38) Reviewed by John Gardner PERHAPS IT is because we now live in such rapidly changing times that the past has become so popular. The library shelves groan with historical novels and period pieces loom large in the television listings. But pursuing the past, whether fictional or legitimate history, is a contradictory business. A leap in imagination can conjure up a world which you feel you could inhabit yet the past is, in reality, a world impossible to recapture.
Even if the past is, in historical terms, as recent as New Zealand’s European settlement, it is practically inconceivable to place ourselves in the minds of the pioneers who blithely set off for a world practically as remote as Mars. But this collection of letters sent from Wellington to Germany by Friedrich August Krull in 1859 and 1862 goes a long way to recapturing the wonder of those first encounters with a new life.
Krull was 22 when he arrived in Wellington and almost immediately took the opportunity to travel around the lower North Island, being particularly keen to visit Maori settlements. His accounts of what he saw were sent home in vivid, lively letters, here published in fresh translations. Like many of the letters sent back to British homes at the same time, his correspondence was upbeat, looking on the bright side.
But he was not blinkered. This frugal German was shocked by the high cost of living in colonial Wellington and his attitude to Maori, while much more sympathetic than most of his British BRAIN TRAINER ANSWERS: 1. By crash-landing his gyrocopter in Tauranga Harbour 2. Errol Flynn 3. Marise Chamberlain 4. Four related dramatic works 5. Samoa 6. Bonnie’s 7. Dannevirke 8. Alaska 9. Dunedin 10. Rupert Murdoch. contemporaries, did not fall for the romantic “noble savage” stereotype.
He made a point of visiting eminent Maori and his descriptions of his encounters have a freshness that turns what, in other hands, might have been routine letters into literature. There is a poignancy about all this. As publisher Mary Varnham points out in her note, the way of life of the Maori portrayed here and their villages have disappeared into the realms of archaeology.
Equally vanished is the natural world described by Krull. The birdlife was so rich that the noise was deafening and vast tracts of unspoiled forest remained. The transformation of the country was, however, underway. As he arrived Krull noted, “Everywhere we saw huge smoke clouds rising; to be able to cultivate the land the farmers were burning down the bush.”
The German influence on that transformation was considerable. Krull’s fellow countrymen were industrious and skilled and German settlements were widespread and successful. In the last letter Krull describes a visit to Waimea where he found, “the meadows, the corn fields and the village ... has a thoroughly Mecklenburg stamp about it.” They all remembered their homeland with affection “but nobody would like to go back there”.
Krull in his turn stayed in New Zealand for the rest of his life, becoming a Wellington city councillor and a pillar of the community. He had eight children, six of whom survived, and many of his descendants still live in New Zealand, a country now largely unrecognisable from that portrayed by the young German.
Awa have performed a real service in bringing these letters back to life and there is an excellent introduction by the historian Oliver Harrison, placing the correspondence in the context of the emerging tensions between Maori and the settlers. The text is enriched by well-chosen illustrations and the whole is faultlessly produced, which is more than can be said for the output of too many major publishers.