August Boerter¶
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Buinessman in Tsingtao, China¶
August was born on the family property Dielbachmeuhle near Langenberg am Rhein, which is now a “Pension” and a restaurant. In 1904 at a relatively young age he went to China as a “one year volunteer” with the German Army, to serve in the Tsingtao Garrison.
On completing his military service he took up a position as a junior clerk with the German Post Office in Tsingtao (which was also a German Naval Base). After five years August was allowed home leave, and he returned to China with his bride, my Great Grandmother. However under the rules governing his employment as a junior clerk at the post office he was not permitted to marry, and as a disciplinary measure he was transferred to Tsinan (aka Tsinanfu) in the interior, where they were the only foreigners apart from a Japanese Doctor.
(August was very tall for his time – 6’3” and was bald for as long as my father remembered.)
He decided during his sojourn in Tsinan that there was a fortune to be made in China, but not as a clerk in the Post Office. He therefore decided to go into business for himself with a partner, initially exporting pig bristles and hairnets (at one time he was known as the “hairnetking”). At that time hairnets were much desired items of commerce as long hair for women was the fashion, and they were useful for factory workers.
Later he branched out into other fields including making brandy, and at one time his enterprises employed some 2500 people.
When World War 1 broke out he was in the USA on business. Later he split with his business partner and decided to start making carpets, i.e., Persian carpets, but using Chinese wool and Chinese labour. By the time my father was born in 1937, “Firma Boerter” was well known in China, exporting carpets all over the world, especially the USA.
August Boerter was arrested apparently on charges of being a spy; such arrests were common in China at the time. He was imprisoned for a total of 26 months; during which time he was beaten, tortured, starved and deprived of sleep. He would have been well into his 60’s at the time. The purpose of all this was to get him to confess, but he refused to confess to crimes he had not committed. In essence he was accused of being the leader of a circle of 12 “spies” of whom he knew only one, and then only slightly. Eventually one Autumn he was dragged before an interrogation commitee one more time, who as always were trying to get him to “confess”.
It so happened that the court stenographer on that occasion was a Chinese woman who had attended the same convent school as Augusts daughter Ingeborg (my Grandmother). She saw August, was shocked at his condition and asked him in German (which his captors could not understand) why he was there. He told her, and she advised him: “Mr Boerter, you will not survive another Winter here. Confess anything, sign anything, it is the only chance you have”. He decided to accept her advice and “confess”. He was sentenced to immediate expulsion from China and confiscation of all his property, and shipped to Hong Kong (by this time his wife had already returned to Germany) where he spent three months in a British hospital before he was fit enough to undertake the onward voyage to Germany. He eventually arrived in Germany, and resolved to start again (at 70 plus) selling life insurance door to door on foot. Eventually he was awarded a pension for persons displaced by the war and he and his wife lived out their last years in a small flat in Langenberg.
August Boerter lived into his 80’s, his wife lived to 94 years of age. My father was very fond of his Grandfather and visited them in 1966; I was a baby at the time. I will attach one photo of him holding me during this visit, his wife Helene is next to him in the photo (my mother and her mother also in the picture). My father has quite a good photographic record of his childhood in China and his parents and grandparents. He also has many mementos they brought to Australia, including some of the rugs made in Augusts factory and some carpet designs with his hand written notes on them.
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web page updated: 08-Sep-2013
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