‘The Paradise of the Southern Hemisphere’: The Perception of New Zealand and the Maori in Written Accounts of German-speaking Explorers and Travellers 1839-1889

Abstract

The aim of this research is to examine the much neglected body of writings on New Zealand and the Maori by German-speaking explorers and travellers during the colonising period of the 1840s to 1880s. To the nineteenth-century breed of visitor from Germany and Austria, 'Old' New Zealand often presented itself as an unexplored field of scientific curiosities, from botany and geology to ornithology and ethnology, at the same time as a paradise for immigrant workers. The investigation begins with an evaluation of the eighteenth-century account of Georg Forster, who accompanied Captain Cook on his second voyage to the South Pacific. Forster's account is entrenched in the early racial stereotypes and theories of the 'savage', and provides the first major primary source for all of German-speaking Europe up to the period under investigation. The second main source to be considered is the dominant 'paradise' image which evolved out of the propaganda of the New Zealand Company and continued right through the colonising era.

The principal figures to be examined include Ernst Dieffenbach, the official Company naturalist, Friedrich August Krull, the first German Consul in New Zealand, Ferdinand von Hochstetter, the resident geologist on the Novara expedition, Julius von Haast, the founder and director of the Canterbury Museum, Andreas Reischek, the taxidermist and collector, as well as other notable visitors including Max Buchner, Franz Reuleaux, Otto Finsch, Alexander von Hübner and Robert von Lendenfeld. Thus, it is the goal of this investigation to analyse the perception of New Zealand and the Maori in selected works by German-speaking explorers and travellers who arrived in the colony between 1839 and 1889 through, first of all, confronting the prevailing stereotypes and images inherent in the philosophical attitudes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries towards the 'savage' and those present in the 'paradise' rhetoric of the British campaigners of colonisation, and secondly, examining the origins, patterns and evolution of their respective perceptions, impressions and opinions in order to reveal the true extent of their non-British 'Germanic' viewpoint.