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.
Hermann Gustav Thiel (1878 – 1948) was the only member of the Thiel family to take an active part in the Anglo-Boer War (1899 – 1902). He kept diaries of his experiences and observations during the war in the Transvaal, the voyage to Bermuda and his stay on several of the islands in the Bermuda archipelago.
The credit for finding the grave of Hermann Gustav Thiel, the youngest of Gustav Thiel’s 19 children, must go to Eva-Maria Müller, a granddaughter of Peter Johannes Thiel. We owe so much to this remarkable woman for all the information she made available to us. Most of the information about the Thiel family in Germany we acquired through her generous support and her meticulous keeping of records.
In February 1905 two photos were taken at a family gathering of mostly the same people as depicted in the 1896 photo, which forms the signature image of this website. The 1905 photo included spouses and children who were added to the Thiel clan during the intervening years.
The highlight of Gustav Thiel’s 20 years in Palestine came at the end of their stay. The Prussian consul, Baron von Alten, asked Gustav to make all the arrangements for the visit of Crown Prince Friedrich of Prussia to Palestine in November 1869. The Crown Prince was on his way to the reopening of the Suez Canal.
My visit during 1990 to Namibia was a very rewarding experience. I met several members of the Thiel family and gathered a wealth of information. The two visits to 94-year old Maria Philomine Pauline Schimming (Thiel) in the Susanna Grau Heim for the Elderly, I will treasure for as long as I live.
What a surprise to discover that the Thiel family in South Africa share part of their history with the ancestors of the well-known American author John Ernst Steinbeck.
Family graves in Pretoria
The family homestead at Höltgestal During one of our visits to Germany in 1990 I had the privilege to visit Höltgestal, the piece of land from where my great-grandfather, Gustav Thiel, first departed in 1849 with his first wife to spend 20 years in Palestine....
This website is a work in progress. At present, it consists of an introduction of our interest in the Thiel family in South Africa and a summary of the identities and lives of the first three generations.