Hermann Gustav Thiel already showed his sympathy with the cause of the Transvaal Republic during the Jameson Raid in December 1895 and was involved as a technician in the building of Fort Klapperkop for the defence of Pretoria. For these actions the young German was granted citizenship with full voting rights of the Transvaal Republic on 21 January 1898.
Memorabilia preserved by Hermann Gustav Thiel from his participation in the Anglo Boer War and his incarceration as a POW on Bermuda.
In the diaries Hermann Thiel kept in Bermuda, he mentions how important letters from home were to all the prisoners. Delivery of mail was infrequent and often carried sad news about relatives who lost their lives in the war. Hermann wrote regularly in Dutch to his...
An example of the meticulous records Hermann Gustav Thiel (1878 – 1948) kept in his diaries of his experiences during the Anglo-Boer War (1899 – 1902) is the information he recorded on the voyage of the SS Montrose from Durban to Bermuda during August and September 1901. Not only did he describe the conditions under which the prisoners had to survive but he managed to record the exact daily position of the ship as well as the positions where 23 prisoners died and were buried at sea.