Home and Foreign Parts
Fanny writes home

Home and Foreign Parts.

(By Mrs. Fanny E. Rieck).

The earlier readers of the “Examiner” will remember this heading, in which we described our journeys on cycles through England, France, Switzerland, over the Simplon Pass to Italy, through Austria and Germany, and from Bingen down the river Rhine to Amsterdam, in Holland. Later from Munich to Genoa and along the Riviera to Mentone and Monte Carlo, and back to Genoa, and then we returned home to New South Wales in 1905.

In 1913 my late husband, Mr. Herman Rieck, formerly of Coff’s Harbor banana plantation, made another visit to England and the Continent, and was overtaken by the war in Bavaria in 1914.

It had been our ambition to possess a cottage near the Artists’ City, the University of Munich, in Bavaria, where the lager beer is so good, the scenery and climate delightful, and the people so jolly, and from where we could run down to Italy and live for the coldest months of the year. Our ambition was realised. We found a pretty little house and two acres of land in a suburb near Munich, from where we could enjoy the advantages of that fine city, and the healthy, fresh high mountain air of the country. We liked it. Our old friends welcomed us, but commiserated us. Things were so changed during the last few years, and life so dear, etc., etc. Did we not anticipate trouble in Europe? We didn’t. The trouble came fast enough however. We set up a house in Deisenhofen in the beginning of 1914. The war broke out in August, a few months later, and as British subjects, we were detained as prisoners of war, and had great difficulty to evade being placed behind barbed wire in Ruhleeben by Berlin, but fortune favored us. We were only detained within boundaries, allowed to live at home, but ordered to appear before the local Mayor and sign our names twice daily for some time.

Our neighbors looked askance at us, and talked about spies. Illiterate people gave us the cold shoulder (if later it had been the cold shoulder of mutton we should have been very thankful) and we were subject to many petty annoyances. Intelligent, educated friends stood firmly by us through all these years of trouble, trials, sorrow and starvation, which soon followed the blockade. The Mayor and officials were always fair and considerate to us. We were rationed, and got just as much food, and just as little as our neighbors.

Have we really suffered hunger and starvation? We certainly did. Frogs, snails, a cat, a dog, a snake or a paddymelon would have been a great delicacy sometimes. Fancy Australians, from that land of plenty, suffering for the want of bread and meat and tea, and to hear the bitter cry of children, “Mammy, I am so hungry, I want bread,” without being able to help one another.

One “caterer for the King” in a poultry, fish and game shop was summoned for openly selling dogs and cats as “game,” indicating them as hares and rabbits. His excuse was that the purchasers knew what they were buying to eat.

We began to look like skeletons when we had to live on 2ozs. meat, six loaves of black bread and a little coarse barley meal per week for two people. In Spring, before any vegetables were to be had and potatoes were old and bad, we all felt it hard. We really suffered great privations during the blockade, and worse off since the armistice, and had severe losses. Our good Australian money, previously worth 20 marks for 20 shillings, was changed into valueless paper money, and things were awfully dear.

We could not leave Munich for Australia, England, America or Switzerland, as we wished to do after the armistice, as our money was always more valueless, and also we were not allowed to take it out of the country if we went. When Major Dr. Douglas, of the English Red Cross, came to Bavaria to collect the English prisoners of war soldiers, he visited us, and gave us a food parcel of biscuits, tea, sugar, flour and rice, quite a Godsend. He offered to take us back to England with him, but it was midwinter; we could not sell our cottage and travel without sufficient means to live there.

Then came the great revolution which raged in Munich and suburbs. The atrocities in Munich will be remembered by some readers. Ten of our best citizens of the village, amongst them the doctor, the Mayor, and two clergymen were on the very eve of being taken as hostages, and, perhaps, so ill-treated by the Red Guards, but the White Guards saved them, and the revolution was quelled. The village was beset by soldiers of the White Guard, and ten men were placed against a wall and shot without mercy or time for prayer. It was a horrible time, and caused us many sleepless nights.

Since the treaty of peace the country has been going from bad to worse. Profiteering is the rage, and causes the high price of food and clothing. There is no gold in the country. The mark fell to 2000 marks for £1. During the war all food was portioned out to rich and poor alike by a regular system. After the armistice this system stopped, and now the Government has no control over prices of food and raiment, which are most exorbitant. The workless poor, the retired and small pensioned old people, and the good middle class must “go to the wall.” There are too few soldiers or military to keep peace and security in the land.

Prices range for 1lb. beef, 100 marks (pre-war value £5); 1lb. ham, 150 marks; 1lb. tea or coffee, 150 marks; 1lb. white bread, 10 marks; 1lb. flour, 15 marks; 1lb. sugar, 15 marks; 1 quart milk, 10 marks; 1 egg, 5 to 6 marks; 1cwt. coal, 100 marks; 1cwt. wheat, over 1000 marks, etc. etc.

Last winter, March 3, 1921, at 4 a.m., my husband and I were awakened by the cry of “fire.” Our house formerly a farm homestead, with many stables and outhouses, was all ablaze. The tiles were already falling down, and the poultry, geese, goats already roasted to death. A young man, with wife and baby living there, were cut off from the stairs, and had to jump into the garden from the upper window. We rushed outside half-dressed, but rescued our clothes and papers. The fire brigade saved the furniture and it was placed in a house opposite, while we went to live in an attic room till our cottage could be rebuilt and put in order. In less than two months time the house opposite was burnt down, and all our furniture, clothes, trunks, books and my husband’s manuscript and stories (a collection of a lifetime) were eaten up by flames. My husband had borne our many privations bravely, and his courage and humor never deserted him, but the loss of all his favorite things proved such a shock to him that he could not regain his usual vigor. In July, the same year, he suffered a stroke and lingered till August, when he died, highly respected and deeply regretted by all, in his 85th year, and was buried in the little cemetery of Deisenhofen, at the foot of the great Alps mountains.

Mrs. H. Rieck arrived via London, in Sydney by the s.s. Sophocles, Aberdeen Line, on September 1, 1922, and has something to tell about the voyage and the many emigrants on board who disembarked in Australia.