Karl Johannes Otto Thiel

1891 – 1974

The eldest child, Karl Johannes Otto Thiel first attended school in Nylstroom and was already 11 years old when the family returned to Pretoria, directly after the Anglo Boer War. Here he attended the Pretoria Boys High School until the family left Pretoria for South West Africa in1907. From Windhoek Karl went to Cape Town where he trained as Fitter and Turner with the firm E.W. Hearn. He was injured and returned home on sick leave. He later returned to Cape Town and was trained as a Salesman. He lived in Claremont and met Elizabeth Mathilda Beugger (Tillie) in church during the First World War. Karl returned to Windhoek in 1915 and was soon joined by his future wife. They were married in 1916 but her family could not attend the wedding.

Karl worked as a salesman, first for the General Dealer, Wecke and Voigts and then for the Wholesaler, Rudolph Schuster. During this period his two children Mathilda and Karl Hermann Emil were born. His wife died eight days after the birth of their son.

From 1922 until 1925 Karl and his son stayed at the farm Arcadia with his parents while his daughter, Tillie, stayed in Windhoek with the Riedel family. He returned to Windhoek in 1925 and stayed with the Geiger family until his marriage in 1927 to Bertha Anna Schroeder from Germany. In 1928 Karl and Sam Silber opened a General Dealer’s in Gobabis, supplying building materials to farmers returning from Angola. There were no roads and he had to travel on ox wagon trails over great distances. Because of the Depression the business was dissolved and until 1931 he was involved in informal trading from Gobabis. He then moved to the farm Arcadia (Kuppen) where he transported cream for his sister, Maria Schimming.  He then moved back to Windhoek where he made a living by selling firewood. From 1933 he worked for the firm Slith Davis and then again for Rudolph Schuster. During the Second World War he joined the wholesaler Metje and Ziegler where he remained until shortly before he passed away in 1974. He built a house in the suburb Kleinwindhoek where he lived from 1937 until his death in 1974.