Long Life Of F. T. Goedicke
pp. 47-51 · Read in the full issue
The Little Count" [?]es in Auckland
Colour And Romance In The
By R. W. Robson
HIS death notice appeared in the New Zealand Herald last month: GOEDICKE, Frederick Theodor. -On July 13, 1956, at a private cspital, Auckland, dearly beloved .usband of the late Ana (Tonga), nd loving father of Alexander Devonport); in his 96th year. ome day, perhaps, I shall learn ) F. T. Goedicke really was. know, for a fact, that he was hereditary Count van Asten, Asten, North Brabant, Holland; t some of the bluest blood of thwest Europe was in his veins; , I strongly suspect that he was natural son of one of the Ger i minor kings. know that he was a contem iry of Wilhelm 11, Emperor of many (they were almost the .e age) and that he was reared
and educated in close association with the Hohenzollern family, it was through him that I had an in teresting correspondence with former Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany, the ex-Kaiser’s son—once the execrated “Little Willie” of the World War I period. Goedicke had sent him a copy of the PIM; and the Prince was graciously pleased to show a lively interest in the South Pacific.
Goedicke, for long a resident of Tonga, became a pen-friend of mine over 20 years ago; and when he moved to Auckland, after World War 11, I used to go and see him— a lovable little bearded man, with a perfect head and perfect manners —a real aristocrat of the old school.
He then was gravely afflicted—by the time he died he was totally blind and deaf —but he nonetheless was a remarkable man to converse
with —alerl;, eager, interested in everything, and with an extra ordinary store of memories.
But, lead him as cunningly as I might, I never could find out who he was. He would talk about man / people he had known, all
the world over; but of his own youth I could glean nothing, except that he had been very well educated, and that royal princes were among his playfellows He told me, at various times, that he had left to me, in his will, all the diaries he had kept meticulously for over 70 years Maybe, there, my improper curiosity will be satisfied.
HE was born in Germany in 1860.
His great-grandfather was a General in the Army of The Netherlands; and when France and The Netherlands invaded Spain in 1798, General Goedicke so dis tinguished himself at the Battle of Orcana that he was knighted. But his son (our subject’s grandfather) became a churchman, and did not carry on the title. Somehow —I do not know how —the family then appears to have become German.
Goedicfce’s great-grandfather on his mother’s side was Count van Asten, of Holland, and his daughter, Caroline van Asten, was our sub ject’s grandmother.
The van Asten family seems to have dwindled; and a search for an heir began just before World War 11, when Count Hendrick van Asten died—leaving property worth about £20,000, the records covering •which were deposited in a bank in Asten. The war came, Holland was overrun by Nazis, the bank in Asten was bombed and blown to pieces, and it was 1947 before Goedicke
(now 87 years old) was located and designated Count van Asten. An attempt was made to get possession of the property—but it had been mostly destroyed by the Nazis, and all records were lost.
“I am a Count of no account,” said Goedicke, with a wry smile. He never whimpered; but by then he
was desperately poor, and those vs Asten guilders, if they have be« recoverable, would have been tru a godsend.
BY the time Goedicke was 21, t: young German Empire’s shi were appearing in every sea, a* the lad was given some sort of se
lining. I do not know how he , there; but I know he was a ident of Adelaide in 1883; that escaped drowning by a lucky mce when the Changchow was t with all hands near Darwin on y 18, 1883; and that he spent le time in Northern Territory.
Tie Germans were displaying a ily interest in New Guinea and Bismarck Archipelago in 1884, I Goedicke appears to have been the Duke of York Islands area 1884. He records that on October 884, he was in Port Moresby (no el, miserable village) when he r Commodore Erskine’s squadron i lson, Srinagar, Dart, Raven, and iegel ) arrive, to formally declare t part of New Guinea a British tectorate.
'.e seems then to have gone on the Tongan Islands, and made first acquaintance with Haapai, ch was to be his future home. ; may have been after that that proceeded to Sydney. In Sydney, .885, he was engaged by the Ger i Consul to go for three years New Guinea, to be assistant to i Oertzen, Imperial German imissioner for the Bismarck hipelago. Oertzen’s mission was select a suitable site for the ;ure capital of Neu Pommem w Britain)”. hey cruised around that area in German warship Albatross for months in 1885. Goedicke met e notable people of that time missionary Brown, “Queen na” Forsayth and her Samoan tions, some of the survivors of ill-fated Count de la Rays ex ition. he natives then were persistent nibals, and treacherous. Goedicke the German service, and went ling for the DH and PG firm. was raw and primitive. Two man traders stole native women broke tribal tabus. The natives id them. The German warship itross came back and “punished” n with great severity. was during this period that Joedicke had an experience that, ver afterwards, he spoke of with *or. He was induced to spend souple of nights in a house baran with some 30 young men Sabaira village, where he was a ler. The first night they all lay it together, talking and smok ext night, part of the gang was sing. About midnight, they ied up, dragging with them two len, whom they had captured i a jungle village. Grotesque les occurred, while the women J made use of by the assembly young men and while the ified young German cowered in corner. When that part of the 'was finished, the women were bed to death, dismembered and meat” divided up. Some was i and there broiled on the se tambaran fires, and eaten;
some taken away by the men, when the party broke up at dawn.
The wretched Goedicke sneaked away, also, at dawn; and when the warship Albatross came along later that day, he gratefully went aboard and abandoned his trading station.
It was two years after he first referred to his “most terrible ex perience” before the little man finally could bring himself to give me the details; and even then,
nearly 70 years after the event, h* got sick at the memory of it.
FROM there, Goedicke went to Western Samoa, and then on t< .
Berlin. There he met the might'/ Bismarck, then Chancellor of G-r -many, head of the New Guinea Company and a large shareholder in DH & PG. Bismarck was in tensely interested in Goedicke’s account of New Guinea. On his
parture, Bismarck gave Goedicke silver medal and, 67 years after rds, Goedicke gave the medal to ;—a heavy silver thing, like a ■ piece. \t the end of 1885, Goedicke was ing in Haapai—he seemed to feel increasing affection for Tonga. ,ere, in Lifuka, he met the famous ngan King George I, who was :n in 1795 and died ihr 1893, aged Goedicke left Haapai in 1888, d returned in 1893, in time to see • installation of George Tubou 11, the death of his great-grand her.
Jetween 1885 and 1905, Goedicke Dears to have travelled widely: became a naturalised Britisher; ;, gradually, he settled down as ; of the best known citizens of nga—Haapai trader and planter, i Nukualofa business-man. Some le in his earlier residence in apai he married Ana, an attrac j Tonga woman, of Haapai. She i-deceased him by many years, always spoke of her with affec i and esteem. They had one , Alexander, now a resident of jkland.
Writing to me in 1947, when he i me about that ancient Dutch e, Mr. Goedicke said: “I have 1 my son—who has worked in a ;1 construction establishment in ukland since 1913 —that if he hes, after my death, he may lime the title of Count, which is right by heredity.”
Owing to his background, “the Little Count” —as he was known in recent years by the many who esteemed him—held the title in reverence. Probably, it will not be so tenderly regarded by the new Count, the citizen of New Zealand.
With F. T. Goedicke there dis appears our last remaining link with that picturesque, exciting and romantic period, between 1884 and 1918, when Imperial Germany came full-panoplied into the Pacific, set up an impressive Empire in Micro nesia, New Guinea and Samoa, and then lost it all when the greedy, sabre-rattling Kaiser decided to challenge the British for domina tion of the world.
Mr. and Mrs. Alan Lambourne have left Lautoka, Fiji, after 17 years residence and have gone to Apia, Western Samoa, where Mr.
Lambourne has become manager of the local branch of Morris Hedstrom Ltd. Mr, Lambourne has been manager of Millers Ltd., in Lautoka, and has,* as well, taken a keen in terest in local affairs, notably the Northern Club, the Town Board, Chamber of Commerce and Arts Club. t The motor-vessel Suva was de layed in Rabaul in July. Heavy machinery that was being unloaded at Coconut Products wharf caused the mainmast to bend forward.