A BOOK FROM A LIBRARY IN SOUTH AFRICA AND AN ANCESTOR
IN AUGUST 2003, we spent a day in Aliwal North (now called ‘Maletswai’). This small town on the northern border of South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province is not on many tourists’ itineraries. We went there for a special reason. It was originally named after the Battle of Aliwal (1846), a British victory during the First Anglo-Sikh War.
The town was laid out in 1849. When this happened, the Jewish mercantile firm, Mosenthals, opened a branch in the newly established town. After a few months, they sent a young man, Heinrich (later ‘Henry’) Bergmann (1831-1866), to manage the new store and to help sell land in the embryonic township. Very rapidly, Bergmann became one of the most prosperous people in Aliwal North. He owned much land and managed a bank in the town. Soon, he was so successful that he took over the town’s other two banks. For reasons that are not altogether clear, but they might have had something to do with a financial problem, Bergmann shot himself. Having committed suicide, neither the small Jewish cemetery nor the Christian one was prepared to bury him. In the end, his friends the De Wet family, who farmed in the district, buried him in their private family cemetery, and that is where we saw his gravestone when we visited Aliwal North in 2003.
Henry Bergmann was my mother’s grand uncle.
Arriving in what was then the Cape Colony in 1849, he was the first member of my family to migrate from Germany to southern Africa. He was also amongst the small number of Jewish people who came to that part of the world in the first half of the nineteenth century. The majority of Jewish migrants to what is now South Africa began arriving after the late 1860s, as I have described in my book “Exodus to Africa”.
We visited Aliwal North in 2003 as part of my research into the life of Henry Bergmann. Apart from meeting members of the De Wet family, descendants of those who buried Bergmann, who showed me family histories containing details of my ancestor’s life and fields that were once owned by him, we spent some time with Mrs Joubert, the librarian of Aliwal North’s public library. She was extremely helpful and took a great interest in my research.
Aliwal’s library was selling a few books that were no longer needed. My wife bought a few novels, one of which was “Mr Mirakel” by E Phillips Oppenheim (1866-1946). The book we bought contains the words: “First printed … 1943”. It is a first edition. Inside the book, there are labels inserted by the library. They are printed both in English and Afrikaans. There are also four imprints of an inked rubber stamp. Each one reads: “Aliwal North. Public Library. Cape of Good Hope.”
Just before 1910, when the Unification of South Africa occurred, what had been known as the Cape Colony became known as ‘The Cape of Good Hope Province; (‘often shortened to ‘the Cape Province’). In 1994, this vast territory was divided into the Northern Cape, Western Cape, and Eastern Cape provinces. Given that the book can only have been acquired in or after 1943, the words ‘Cape of Good Hope’ on the stamp intrigued me. Although they do refer to a geographic entity, they have never, as far as I can see, referred to an administrative area, and did not do so on or after 1943 when the book was published.
Had we not been sorting out our books recently, we would not have come across the book from Aliwal North. Seeing it and its library labels and stamps brought back memories of our visit to Aliwal North 22 years ago.
