When British composer Leslie Stuart re-scored his song ‘The Soldiers of the Queen’ for performance by bands taking part in the massive procession marking Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in London in 1897, little could he have foreseen that the tune was soon to become ‘the most popular – and potentially the most profitable – song in Britain’.Footnote 1 Similarly unpredictable was the dramatic effect of this same music on one young ‘lady cyclist’ who braved a narrow, bustling street in Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand, two years later, in November 1899. Indeed so striking was the result that the Christchurch newspaper the Press reported the incident, under the heading ‘The Lady Cyclist and the German Band’:
A young lady whose weight, judging from appearance, was somewhat above the average, and evidently a beginner, braved the busy place on a bicycle. She was getting along splendidly when the air of ‘Soldiers of the Queen’ was commenced. This tune seemed to have a peculiar attraction for her, for, getting up a good speed with the aid of the incline, she charged wildly into the midst of the innocent musicians. The sudden cessation of the music, a fluttering mass on the ground, and roars of derision from the spectators produced a scene of absurd confusion. The music stands were scattered, and two bandsmen, finding themselves so suddenly seated on the ground, flared wildly at the strange intruder. The young lady, however, nothing daunted, proceeded on her journey in a series of graceful curves, without, it is hoped, further molestation. After the lapse of about five minutes the band pulled itself together again, and finished the popular selection.Footnote 2
While clearly light-hearted in tone, this item is of some significance in that it provides evidence regarding the wider musical soundscape of late nineteenth-century New Zealand, beyond the more customary church choirs and organists, civic-minded harmonic societies and struggling amateur orchestras. In addition, the account offers specific information concerning the performance practices of a particular type of musical ensemble commonly heard in New Zealand during the second half of the nineteenth century and well into first two decades of the twentieth century: the German band.
Beyond newspaper reports, very little evidence survives to document the activities of German bands in New Zealand. There are, for example, no recordings or sheet music, virtually no detailed descriptions of their performances and surprisingly little information regarding their size, instruments or repertoire. This makes the Press item all the more valuable, for not only do we learn of the specific tune the band was playing (an English march, Soldiers of the Queen, composed only four years earlier) and where they were playing (literally on or very close to the street), but also the fact that they were playing with music (on music stands) rather than from memory, which suggests a wide and varied repertoire that had at least the potential for reasonably sophisticated music (the crowd-pleasing Soldiers of the Queen aside).
But the very presence of German bands in late nineteenth-century New Zealand also raises a number of broader questions concerning their contribution to the country’s nascent classical music scene. To what extent did German bands influence local musicians through their performances, and what role (if any) did they play in other types of music-making while in New Zealand? While for the most part answers to these questions are simply not possible, due to the paucity of surviving evidence, one aspect that is rather more tangible can be uncovered through the commentary printed in contemporary newspapers that sheds some light on the New Zealand public’s perceptions of German bands. As these sources demonstrate, New Zealanders often drew upon their previous experiences of such ensembles back in Britain (the ‘Old Country’) – both positive and negative – while another common theme touched upon notions of ‘otherness’ allied to a popular rhetoric that painted German bands as musical ‘invaders’. The latter discourse was particularly potent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a time in which ‘Germany had emerged as a powerful industrial economy with imperial ambitions’, whose colonies in Africa and the Pacific ‘brought prestige and standing as a “player” on the world stage’.Footnote 3 As extant newspapers also reveal, the presence of German bands in a number of New Zealand cities was ultimately among the factors that precipitated calls for the unionization of the country’s professional musicians in the early decades of the twentieth century. Finally, the professional and personal fate of one particular German band that happened to be in Auckland at the outbreak of World War I, in July 1914, is a tellingly representative example of the experiences of many German bands around the world at the time.
The ‘German Band’
The German bands that appeared in New Zealand were small instrumental ensembles made up primarily of male German musicians, who made their living by undertaking tours, to Britain, North and South America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.Footnote 4 They generally played an assortment of string, brass and reed instruments, and performed popular tunes of the day, arrangements of operatic excerpts, overtures, dance music, marches and much more besides.Footnote 5 Such itinerant bands had been regular visitors to England since at least the early decades of the nineteenth century, performing at seaside resorts, for fairs and dances or busking on the streets.Footnote 6 German military bands and bandsmen were also highly sought after in Britain at the time, not least due to the lasting popularity of the bands attached to the King’s German Legion, the Hanoverian Army in exile in England during the Napoleonic Wars.Footnote 7 It seems likely that the high reputation of Hanoverian military musicians was partly responsible for the adoption of the title ‘the Hanoverian Band’ by at least some German bands in later decades, both in Britain and further afield.Footnote 8
But besides Hanover, one area in Germany was particularly renowned for its itinerant musicians: the Palatinate – known in German as die Pfalz – a region in southwestern Germany that was at the time part of Bavaria. After French occupation of the region ended in 1814, the area suffered badly from overpopulation and famine caused in part by failed harvests. The phenomenon of the travelling musician (or Wandermusikant) was just one example of how the local populace responded to this unfortunate set of circumstances.Footnote 9 Recent research has shown that during the second half of the nineteenth century more than 8,500 people from the western region of the Palatinate (the Westpfalz) described themselves as musicians on official documents, including more than 600 and 550 individuals from the towns of Jettenbach and Mackenbach, respectively.Footnote 10
Among the most detailed contemporary descriptions of the professional modus operandi of these musicians is provided in an article by the important collector of English folk songs George Barnet Gardiner (1853–1910). Published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in 1902, Gardiner’s ‘The Home of the German Band’ recounts his pilgrimage to Eßweiler ‘in Rhenish Bavaria’ (that is, in the Westpfalz) to visit Michael Gilcher (1822–99), the leader of ‘a German band of quite exceptional merit … which played in the streets of Edinburgh from 1867 to 1872’.Footnote 11 As Gardiner explained:
The inhabitants of the north-west Palatinate generally are of a roving disposition … they go to England, the Cape, Australia, the States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, and one band has ventured as far as Chili [sic]. If anyone every reaches the North Pole and finds the inevitable Scotchman smoking his pipe on the top, he is sure to be tossing coppers to a German band from the Pfalz … It is computed that there were at one time over 6,000 Musikanten in valleys of the Lauter and the Oden, and in the valley of the Glan … In these three valleys a pedestrian might safely ask his way in English; and in winter, when many of the Musikanten are at home, if you meet a promiscuous company of ten in an inn, seven or eight are sure to know at least one foreign language. There are single villages which could muster as many as two hundred players.Footnote 12
A further item on German bands, printed a little over a decade later in the Timaru Herald (but presumably sourced from elsewhere), likewise pointed firmly to the Pfalz region, based this time on evidence from ‘an official document recently published in Berlin’.Footnote 13
The earliest German band to visit New Zealand appears to have arrived in Nelson from Melbourne in March 1855.Footnote 14 Within a week of their arrival they had given two concerts in the Nelson School Room as well as performing a number of times in Trafalgar Square. As a notice in the Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle reported, for some Nelson residents their playing brought back memories of ‘home’ (that is, Britain): ‘a real treat … to those to whom such sounds were long ago familiar’. It was also noted that for the children in the audience these performances may well have been ‘the first time in their lives’ that they had ‘listened to such a body of Musicians’.Footnote 15 Indeed, it is quite likely that this German band was among the earliest professional European musical ensembles to be heard in New Zealand.
German Bands in Wellington
Some examples of the wide-ranging activities that German bands undertook while visiting New Zealand in the nineteenth century can be provided through a case study (albeit in miniature) of the nation’s capital, Wellington. In mid-September 1858, the six-member ‘Hanoverian Band’ arrived at the city’s port on the White Swan.Footnote 16 They had come to New Zealand from Melbourne eight months earlier and proceeded to spend four months in Nelson, followed by a similar length of time in Lyttelton. Within a fortnight of their arrival in Wellington the band’s leader, August Kasten, had announced a series of promenade concerts ‘a la [Louis-Antoine] Julien’ at the Criterion Hall. Kasten also offered the band’s services to the public ‘for Balls, Dinners, or other occasions’.Footnote 17 In November, band members took part in a special performance given at Wellington’s Royal Lyceum Theatre by the Officers of the local Garrison. As was reported in the Wellington Independent, ‘The German Band played in the Orchestra, and added greatly to the pleasures of the entertainment’.Footnote 18 This is one rare instance for which the performance of German band members directly alongside local musicians can be confirmed.
Two months later, on 1 January 1859, as part of the celebrations marking the inauguration of the Pencarrow Lighthouse – the first permanent lighthouse in New Zealand – Kasten’s band provided ‘excellent’ dance music on the boat ferrying passengers to Pencarrow Head. They also provided ‘the glorious strains of the national anthem’ (God Save the Queen) at the crucial moment that saw the lighthouse lit for the first time.Footnote 19 Dance music supplied by the band was also on the programme when the ‘Officers and Brethren of the Loyal Rose of Shaaron [sic] Lodge’ celebrated their second anniversary at the ‘Highland Home’ hotel in nearby Upper Hutt. On this occasion they provided background music during dinner and, when the dancing commenced at 9 p.m., played ‘Polkas, Quadrilles, and Country Dances … in quick succession, until bright Phoebus awaked the morn’.Footnote 20 Quite a different audience was catered for ten days later, when around 100 children and 50 teachers, friends and family connected with the Free Church Sunday School ‘marched off’ to Wilkinson’s Tea Gardens to the strains of the German band. The musicians continued their performance during the afternoon’s proceedings and upon the company’s return to the city played the national anthem. The children then reportedly raised three cheers for their teachers, followed by three cheers for the musicians.Footnote 21
German bands continued to visit Wellington (at least sporadically) over the course of the next four decades. One particularly successful ensemble was the so-called ‘Bavarian Band’ that was resident in Wellington from August to December 1903. Their director was British-born Rudolf Mersy (1867–1949), the son of a Wandermusikant from Aschbach (Palatinate), Philipp Mersy.Footnote 22 The band began their stay in the city with an open-air concert opposite the Government Buildings, in which, with the exception of the highly popular overture from Boieldieu’s opéra comique, The Caliph of Baghdad (1800), the majority of the repertoire was comparatively recent, with a mixture of German, British and American composers represented.Footnote 23 As was no doubt Mersy’s intention, this performance appears to have led to a host of engagements, including employment by the local Steam Ferry Company, the District Hospital (for a fund-raising event), the St Paul’s Ladies’ Guild, the sports days of both St Patrick’s College and Girls’ High School and for a Trades and Industrial Exhibition, as well as for numerous private individuals. In fact, as was reported in the Free Lance newspaper,
music made in Germany is in great local request. The Bavarian Band was to have been engaged for afternoon tea for Miss Crossley [the celebrated Australian soprano Ada Crossley (1874–1929)] but when they went in search of it, they found it engaged for another local function.Footnote 24
Local Perceptions of German Bands
Initially at least, descriptions of festive performances by German bands in the New Zealand media were overwhelmingly positive. Over the course of several decades, German bands ‘added greatly to the pleasures of the entertainment’, ‘provided splendid music’, ‘contributed a capital musical programme’, ‘rendered a first-class programme in good style’, ‘played excellent music for nearly two hours’, and ‘played a bright and enlivening programme’ – to give just a small selection of some of the highly complimentary remarks concerning German bands to be found in New Zealand newspapers.Footnote 25 But while German bands certainly made a major contribution to producing a celebratory atmosphere on such occasions, it is also clear that in the minds of some New Zealanders these special engagements stood quite apart from their more habitual activity of busking on the streets.
For despite their apparent popularity, contemporary commentary reveals that from the latter decades of the nineteenth century New Zealanders’ reactions to German bands were decidedly mixed. While some members of the public clearly enjoyed their performances, others were less than delighted by their (often noisy) presence and expressed their opinions freely (and at times vociferously) in local media. In 1893, for example, it was reported, on the one hand, in the Marlborough Express:
For the last day or so a band of German musicians, neatly uniformed in blue cloth and gold-laced hats, have been perambulating the Wellington streets, discoursing selections of dance and operatic music in a style that attracts crowds of listeners. They appear to be one of a couple of German bands which arrived recently in Auckland from Sydney … The majority of their instruments are stringed, and they play with good effect.Footnote 26
While, on the other hand, that very same day the New Zealand Herald printed a letter to the editor that likened the ‘influx of German musicians’ to the sizeable numbers of Dalmatians who had come to work in the country’s kauri gum industry.Footnote 27 The letter was signed ‘Udolpho Wolfe, First Trombone, of the Kikowhakarere National Brass Band’ – clearly a pseudonym since Udolpho Wolfe was the name of a Dutch brand of medicinal schnapps widely available in New Zealand at the time.Footnote 28 Since a parliamentary Committee of Inquiry had been set up to investigate the ‘interests of the gumdiggers’. ‘Udolpho Wolfe’ suggested:
it is only fair that the body of toilers to which I belong [that is, musicians] should likewise have their grievance looked into by a special commission. During the past week an enormous army of Germans has arrived here in the shape of two bands from Sydney. There are at least 12 all told, and if they arrive at this rate, we shall have 600 of them in the next twelve months, or in ten years 6,000 German band performers, eating up the substance of the real genuine New Zealand article. Having arrived here six months ago, and having a vote under the absurdly liberal laws of this country, I claim my right as a New Zealand patriot, and ask the Hon. [Premier] Mr. Seddon to hurl these aliens back to their own country, where no doubt their beloved Emperor will receive them with tears of joy.Footnote 29
The arrival of this particular German band in 1893 also sparked sardonic criticism from one Wellington resident, whose ‘Jottings from Wellington’ were published in the Wairarapa Daily Times:
I mentioned some time ago that the only thing required to make the sum of civilisation complete in Wellington would be the presence of a German Band in our streets. I must have been prophetic in my utterance for the said band has now arrived, and may be heard braying at every street corner at all hours of the day and night. It is the real genuine article, all the performers being wanderers from the ‘Vaterland’, unmistakeable ‘sauer krauts’.Footnote 30
This type of commentary had clear parallels with sentiments articulated in Britain (particularly in London) during the 1850s and 1860s by the anti-street music movement, whose supporters frequently characterized foreign street musicians as bestial.Footnote 31 In such circles German musicians were likened to ‘herds of German swine’: ‘a dozen German vagabonds may form a group, set up their music-stands, and torment a neighbourhood with sounds like those of a pig, to which they are so near akin’.Footnote 32 As John M. Picker has pointed out, within Victorian middle-class society this reflected, at least in part, ‘a nationalist longing to defend English culture from the taint of foreign infiltration’.Footnote 33 Similarly, Germany’s emergence in the late nineteenth century as a strong (and ambitious) industrial economy was undoubtedly seen as a threat by some of the British settlers engaged in building a developing New Zealand society. Germans formed the second largest immigrant group after the British in colonial New Zealand, with approximately 10,000 Germans settling in the country between 1843 and 1914.Footnote 34 One clear instance in which such misgivings can be observed occurred in 1896, when Premier Richard Seddon (1845–1906) joined the board of an Anglo-German Mining Syndicate, leading some in the media to claim his move was ‘the first tap on the wedge … towards making New Zealand a German colony’.Footnote 35 In the public debate that swirled around this and subsequent events, the notion of the German band made frequent appearances. Seddon was, for example, accused of having ‘joined the “little German band”’, while tongue-in-cheek, the North Otago Times reported a reception given for the Premier in Invercargill, at which a German band apparently played Die Wacht am Rhein ‘and other appropriate airs in honor of the Premier’s German Syndicate’.Footnote 36
In the minds of many New Zealanders, however, German bands also had strong associations with the ‘Old Country’, bringing
back with a rush to one’s memory, recollections of London suburbs, crowded English seaside resorts and bank holiday jaunts … when the eternal German Band was to be met at every turn, braying out melancholy waltzes and keeping a wary eye on stray sixpences’.Footnote 37
Tellingly, such memories often seemed to be linked with poor performances: in 1882, for example, the performance of a local string band at the Thames Congregational Church Bazaar was judged ‘almost excruciating’ and ‘likened to the German bands which are so well known to persons who have been in the old country’.Footnote 38 The low musical standards of some German bands was also a common conceit captured in one of the ‘Definitions (Suitable for Christmas Crackers)’ printed in the Auckland Observer in 1890, where the phrase ‘German Bands’ was defined as ‘Music that never was in training’.Footnote 39
German bands were frequently portrayed as musical invaders. In 1889, the Otago Witness praised Germany for being ‘the home of the Christmas tree’, a fact that offered some compensation ‘for the invasions from which we suffer from that same quarter of German clerks, German bands, and other importations indigenous to the soil of the Fatherland’.Footnote 40 An item discussing effective methods of rodent eradication in the Christchurch Star in 1902 raised the spectre of the Pied Piper of Hamlin, but also noted that:
The German Band, which has been making day and night hideous for the past week, might be employed by the Mayor and Corporation to frighten the rodents to death in default of charming them, but probably the Norwegian rat is hereditarily impervious to the wickedness of German bands …Footnote 41
Likewise, a published review of the activities of the Victoria University College Men’s Hockey Club for 1906 described one player’s headgear as ‘vaguely reminiscent of those roving German bands that periodically invade this peaceful land to harass and disturb’.Footnote 42 While in Auckland, a commentator writing ‘on the subject of noises and nuisances’ asked ‘would it not be competent for a magistrate to suppress German “bands” and Italian loafers with alleged organs and other horrors?’Footnote 43 That same year, though, one cartoonist could think of a worse musical threat: ‘just suppose they turned the bagpipes upon us?’Footnote 44
But noise pollution was not the only issue. A note in the Grey River Argus three years earlier had referred scathingly to ‘those itinerant masses of diseased protoplasm known throughout the length and breadth of the Old Country as “German Bands”. They travel in batches of about six or eight, two to play and four to collect’.Footnote 45 Indeed, many critics lambasted German bands for their annoying persistence in trying to collect money from the public. In the Manawatu Standard in 1906, for example, they were lumped together with ‘canvassers, circus companies … and all other “Ready-money skinners”’.Footnote 46
By the early 1900s in growing cities such as Wellington that had ever-increasing volumes of traffic, the physical presence of musicians playing literally on the street also had the potential to cause serious accidents.Footnote 47 It seems that German bands were considered to be the worst offenders, as an item in the New Zealand Herald made clear in April 1904:
In view of the installation of the electric tramway in Wellington, Inspector Ellison is endeavouring to bring about a better management of the street traffic. Against the coming of the electric system he has banished street musicians from the main thoroughfares, especially the German bands. All street, and particularly the German bands, were, he said to a Post representative, an annoyance and a nuisance in a city like Wellington, and they should be by-lawed out of the tramway thoroughfares.Footnote 48
But this was not the only problem faced by German band members in the early 1900s. Letters to the editor, particularly in Auckland newspapers, increasingly questioned whether German bands should be allowed to perform on public streets at all and claimed that their activities were stripping local musicians of opportunities for employment. In 1900, accusations that one German band had been preferred to local bands and was ‘employed simply because they played for less money’ were strongly countered by one correspondent to the Auckland Star, who pointed out that:
everyone who has heard this band cannot but admit that their playing is infinitely superior to any music discoursed by a local band; and, moreover, has not anyone in engaging a band a perfect right to get the best he can for his money? … For indoor music a German band, such as is now playing in our city, is far more suitable than the ordinary harsh brass band. Did ‘Bandsman’ ever hear a local band play ‘God Save the Queen’ with the same gusto as a German?Footnote 49
By 1905, another German band in Auckland was causing ripples in the musical community after the Auckland Star’s columnist ‘Presto’ declared:
they should not be allowed to play about the street as they do. In the first place, they enter into unfair competition with our local bands and musicians … I say it is unfair to our fellow bandsmen and musicians, men who live amongst us, whose wives and families are members of our community, and who spend their money in our city, to allow these men to deprive them of that which is justly theirs. They spend very little, in fact, live together as cheaply as possible, so that the more money can be taken out of the colony, while we sit still and allow them to do it. I may be uncharitable, but I do not think an English band in Germany would have a very enjoyable stay.Footnote 50
Several weeks later ‘Presto’ was able to report that the Trades and Labour Council had adopted three related resolutions at their most recent meeting. First, that a ‘vote of sympathy [be offered to] the local musicians’; second, that ‘all unions affiliated to the Trades and Labour Council be requested never to engage foreign bands to provide music at any function held under the auspices of their unions, and that all members of the different unions be requested for the future not to support the German Band in any form whatever’; and, third, ‘That the professional musicians of Auckland be advised to form a union’.Footnote 51
The German Band in Wartime New Zealand
In the event, it was not until May 1912 that the Auckland Musicians’ Union was formally registered under the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act (1894); this was two years after Wellington had established its own Musicians’ Union.Footnote 52 Such moves did not, of course, stop German bands from continuing to visit New Zealand. One such band arrived from Sydney in March 1913. Its leader was Rudolf Mersy, who, since directing the ‘Bavarian Band’ in Wellington some ten years earlier, had made a number of return visits to Australasia, each time with a German band.Footnote 53 Nine band members travelled with Mersy from Sydney in 1913: Ludwig Christmann (1857–1937), Ludwig, August and Rudolf Oemcke (three brothers), Rudolf Bollenbacher, Julius Heintz, Jakob Schwartz, Karl Fritz and Willi Hinkelmann.Footnote 54 Yet when compared to earlier decades when German bands were in frequent demand, there are a relatively small number of references to this German band in Auckland newspapers. This appears to indicate that their professional competition in the city had increased considerably. Indeed, as reported in the ‘Latest Auckland News’ column of the Wanganui Chronicle in the month following their arrival:
Auckland appears to be something of a mecca for street musicians at present, and various sounds more or less musical fall on the ears of pedestrians in various parts of the city. A German band is among the recent arrivals in this particular branch of the art of music, and dispenses harmony at different points of vantage where it is likely to attract coin of the realm.Footnote 55
Yet despite this abundant competition, Auckland does appear to have been lucrative enough for the band to remain there for well over a year – and it is possible that they might have stayed for longer had circumstances allowed.
For over the weekend of 8–9 August 1914, within weeks of the outbreak of World War I, 12 German band members were among 24 Germans arrested in Auckland.Footnote 56 They were then transported south and taken to Somes Island in the middle of Wellington Harbour, where they were interned as prisoners of war for the duration of the conflict. As reported in the Evening Post, those arrested had not been given the opportunity to collect any personal effects and on arriving in Wellington could ‘only boast those clothes … they are now wearing [and] have no money to buy more’.Footnote 57 Some commentators questioned the need for such severe action, including a writer in the NZ Truth newspaper who pronounced the following month that the public had ‘yet to learn that any useful purpose has been served by the arrest and incarceration of Germans, who, prior and up to the declaration of war against Germany by Great Britain, were peacefully following their lawful vocations in the Dominion’.Footnote 58 Interestingly, New Zealand authorities were much swifter to act than their counterparts in Australia, where it was not until the early months of 1915 that members of German bands began to be arrested and interned.Footnote 59
Notwithstanding the difficulties of life as internees alongside more than 250 other ‘enemy aliens’ in cramped conditions on a 25-hectare island, Mersy and his fellow bandsmen continued to be active as musicians.Footnote 60 They obtained musical instruments and a surviving photograph of one of their concert programmes lists five marches composed by Mersy – named after German military commanders (Hindenburg, Mackensen and the Bavarian crown prince, Rupert) and battleships (Tirpitz and Seeadler) – together with excerpts from Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Verdi’s Il Trovatore, popular waltzes and other pieces, including a version of the popular Spanish song La Paloma.Footnote 61 Their performances continued in the immediate aftermath of the war, when the prisoners of war were repatriated, sailing under guard from Wellington on the Willochra in May 1919. According to a report in the New Zealand Herald:
The monotony of the long voyage ‘home’ was broken principally by very frequent concerts by the members of the string band, well known in Auckland streets in pre-war days. The greater portion of the music at these concerts was composed by the conductor himself, a German named Mersy.Footnote 62
While a further report of the voyage, published in the Ashburton Guardian in June the following year, noted that the band:
often entertained their fellow-prisoners, and every night they played for the officers’ mess. The repertoire of the band included numerous classical items, as well as several marches and other airs composed by the bandmaster, Mersy, himself. Before leaving the ship at Rotterdam, Mersy made Major Blackett [a New Zealander in charge of the prisoners on the ship] a present of the manuscript of the ‘Willochra Waltz’, a piece which he wrote on the voyage.Footnote 63
Unfortunately, the waltz no longer survives.
The Demise of the German Band
After the conclusion of the War, German bands gradually disappeared from the global musical scene. The advent of recorded sound and radio, and the onset of the Great Depression, meant that huge numbers of professional musicians lost their jobs in the late 1920s and 1930s, including in movie orchestras, which were no longer required in the age of the talkies.Footnote 64 For the German bands in particular, of course, lingering anti-German sentiment also played its part. Indeed, in some quarters there continued to be ongoing suspicion of German bands long after the war. In 1923, for example, a letter to the editor of the Hawera & Normanby Star, claimed
that it was a well-known fact that these [German band] players were held to be military spies … [and that] these same visitors to this Dominion in years gone by had most of the strategical positions in New Zealand mapped out and safely stored away in their possession.Footnote 65
Such tales aside, from their overwhelmingly welcome reception in New Zealand in the 1850s until their more mixed treatment in the decades immediately prior to World War I, German bands undoubtedly played an important role in the country’s developing musical culture. Indeed, as one writer pointed out in the pages of the Auckland Star in 1905 when defending German bands against claims that they were undercutting local musicians, elsewhere in Australasia German bands ‘are welcomed and supported wherever they go as being the means of conveying gems of classical music to ears that otherwise may never have heard them’.Footnote 66 For that reason alone, surely the German band is worthy of further study.
