Background

Our interest in
The Thiel family in
South Africa

Great Grandfather

Gustav Thiel
1825 – 1907

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Grandfather

Hermann Gustav Thiel
1878-1948

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Father

Hermann Paul Emil Thiel
1905 – 1992

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Yours Truly

Pieter Gustav Thiel
born 1935

Erinnerung ist das einzige Paradies aus dem wir nicht vertrieben werden können.

Herinnering is die enigste paradys waaruit ons nie verdryf kan word nie.

Memory is the only paradise from which we cannot be banished.

Since we were young, my sister, Leonora Steyn and I heard how our great-grandfather, Gustav Thiel, moved from Germany to Palestine with his first wife in 1848 where the family stayed for 20 years. He had 8 children with his first wife. She passed away and our great-grandmother from Boppard am Rhein joined him in Jerusalem where they got married in 1863. Their first 5 children were born in Jerusalem and 6 in Germany after their return of which our grandfather, Hermann Gustav, was the youngest. Gustav Thiel emigrated to Kimberley in South Africa in 1878 with 2 of the older children and was joined in 1882 by his wife and the other children except for her eldest son, Peter Johannes Thiel, who stayed in Germany.

Only 10 of Gustav Thiel’s children survived into adulthood. Our grandfather, Hermann Gustav Thiel, was the youngest of the 19 children. He also had an adventurous life. He was the only member of the family who took an active part in the Anglo Boer War, spent time as a Prisoner of War in Bermuda and eventually moved to Tanganyika where he passed away in 1947.

Both my great-grandfather and his youngest son kept diaries and preserved documents from their interesting lives and motivated me to look into our family history. Normally genealogists have to rely on archives and nowadays on the Internet to collect information. It was for me completely different and much more interesting. Apart from what I received from my grandfather and great-grandfather I was extremely fortunate to be able to collect most information directly from living descendants from the different branches of the Thiel family.

I want to attempt to share some of my wonderful experiences in meeting numerous family members and the material they generously put at my disposal. Most of the material was collected more than 20 years ago. Because of personal circumstances I never prepared the material with suitable recognition to the people who supported me . With the encouragement of my son, Hermann Thiel, my sister, Leonora Steyn, and the help of generous friends we hope to rectify this. We will focus on information about the descendants of Gustav Thiel but also give attention to diaries kept by Gustav Thiel and his youngest child, Hermann Gustav Thiel.

My grandfather, Hermann Gustav Thiel (1878-1948), the youngest of Gustav Thiel’s children, moved to Tanganyika in 1923 and visited us on only two occasions. The first time when I was only 2 years old in 1937 to Wolmaransstad in the Western Transvaal where my father practised as a lawyer. Ten years later, when we lived in Potchefstroom, I had the privilege to see him again but only for a few days.

1937

1947

We never had the opportunity to spend quality time with my exceptional grandfather. It was only much later before we realized that both our grandfather and his father not only had adventurous lives but also kept records of their experiences. Their unusual lives are exemplified in the epitaph on our grandfather’s grave in Lushoto, Tanzania where he was buried in 1948:

Hermann Gustav Thiel
Born 1878
Died 1948
His was a full life

These two photographs were taken a few years apart in the overgrown cemetery of Lushoto in Tanzania. On both occasions the dense bush had to be chopped down with pangas by Ingo Müller a great-grandson of Peter Johannes Thiel, the son of Gustav Thiel who stayed in Germany. Ingo now spends part of his life in Tanzania and appears in the photo with his daughter Halina and his wife Margrit.

My interest in the family history was stimulated by my father’s two siblings who emigrated with their parents to Tanganyika while my father and his two other sisters stayed in South Africa. Their brother, Peter, visited us on several occasions over the years first from Uganda and later from Perth in Western Australia. He had an excellent memory and on two occasions in 1985 and 1989 I recorded his answers to my questions about his own life and the life of his parents in Tanganyika. In 1961 their eldest sister, Corrie, moved back to Pretoria from Tanga in Tanzania. I often spent time with her to assist her as she suffered from the effects of polio contracted during childhood. She also shared information with me about my grandparents life in South Africa and Tanganyika as well as my great-grandparent’s time in Palestine. She always maintained that her grandfather, Gustav Thiel, had 21 children and that a “diary” of Gustav Thiel existed and that somebody promised her a copy which she never received. These claims were confirmed when I was presented on the occasion of my 30th Matric reunion by one of my fellow pupils, Leonie van Coller, with an excellent Afrikaans translation of Gustav Thiel’s “diary” on his 20 years in Palestine. Leonie married Ewald Walter Thiel and made the translation from a copy of the German version given to her by her father in law, William Gerard Thiel, a grandson of Samuel Gustav Thiel, the third child from Gustav Thiel’s first marriage. Details of 19 children were given. Julia, born on 17 November 1855 had a stillborn sister (not included in my records) while Julia survived only 11 days.
Through my contacts with several family members I could gather information about the 19 children as well as the 54 grandchildren of Gustav Thiel from both his marriages as well as details of descendants in the 4th, 5th and further generations.
Details on the lives and offspring of the 19 children and 54 grandchildren of Gustav Thiel will be presented in the section The Descendants of Gustav Thiel.

The 1896 Thiel family photo

The circumstances leading me to this photograph and the information about it were traumatic for me, my wife, and our children. In August 1989 our fourth and youngest son, Rudolph Ernst Thiel, was killed in an accident during compulsory military training in the Dukuduku forest in Natal. His obituary was read by Karl Hermann Emil Thiel in “Die Burger” an Afrikaans newspaper. He realized immediately that we must be related. The obituary mentioned the names of our other three sons Hermann Paul Emil, Gustav Rudolph and Nico Erhardt. Karl Thiel immediately realized that we shared a great-grandfather, Gustav Thiel. He promptly contacted me which led to a long association from which I gained tremendously. He was an exceptionally humble, honest and generous man and I will refer to him and his contributions again in my further postings.

One of the first results from my contact with Karl Thiel was that I visited Namibia in 1990 where I not only obtained another copy of the 1896 photo of the Thiel family but Karl Thiel advised me to visit Maria Philomine Pauline Schimming (Thiel) in the Susanna Grau Heim for the elderly in Windhoek. On my first visit to her she informed me that the photo was taken on the occasion of her christening in Pretoria after she was born on 22 June 1896 in Nylstroom. I made a voice recording of some of our discussions. She was remarkable as she could identify all the individuals on the photo without even looking at it and I could from the voice record produce the details on the photo as listed separately.

Just before I flew back from Windhoek to Cape Town I was told that Tante Maria wanted to see me again. I hurried there and was humbled when she presented me with a gold watch she inherited from her Grandmother who possibly took the watch from Germany to Jerusalem when she went there to marry our Great Grandfather, Gustav Thiel. She said she wanted me to have it because I would take good care of it. More information about this gift will follow.