ARTICLES
THE GERMAN SPEAKING COMMUNITY IN HONG KONG 1846-1918
CARL T. SMITH
Introduction - Some Problems
The documents used for this study seldom indicate the language spoken by the person named in the document. The researcher must depend upon the spelling of the name as an indication of national origin. Such a method is fraught with difficulties and pitfalls.
A document may identify a person as being from Switzerland, but were they German speaking? The family language of a Swiss may be German, French, Italian or Romanish. Someone in Hong Kong with a German sounding name may have come here from England, America or another country where his ancestor had settled. The person may no longer be German speaking, his family having adopted the language of their new community. One prominent Hong Kong family has a distinct German name. They are Eurasian and the family tradition is that their Caucasian progenitor in Hong Kong left Germany at the time of the 1848 Revolution in Germany and settled in England. He subsequently came to Hong Kong as a businessman and later returned to England but without his Eurasian family.
As the borders of the German states and subsequent nation changed through the years so did the nationality of the residents of these areas. The Chinese Repository published in the 1830s and 1840s lists foreign residents on the China coast. A few of these lists give the nationality of the persons listed. In 1845 the Hong Kong shopkeeper Frederick Funk is listed as French. The name sounds German. He may have been from Alsace or Lorraine where, according to political changes, the inhabitants would have been French or German nationals. The eastern border of Germany also fluctuated. In the 1850s and 1860s there was in Hong Kong a tavern keeper and auctioneer named Henry Winniberg - German sounding, but one record identified him as Polish. A number of Jews with German sounding names settled in Hong Kong, principally after the 1880s. The well-known restaurant family of London apparently came some years later.