PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
885
4PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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No. 3.
EXTRACT of a MEMORIAL sent to the CoLONIAL OFFICE.
17th December 1846.
We further beg leave to remark, if the election and situation of our Landes-Aeltesten were to be altered, if the election were to take place by the bürger and not by the rathmanner, if that office were to be only an office of honour, without any income, if no expenses for the island could be made without the consent of those men, nor new regulation could neither be made nor abolished if the island account were to be regulated under the inspection of these men, and if the bürger could address themselves to them as fathers of the island. This we believe would be already of great advantage for the island.
We have been obliged to live years already under such administration, and threatening like the present complaints were sent in already in former times to the Colonial Office, but it remained as it was, and really it has not become better with our circumstances, but our Vorsteherschaft takes it already as a rule, that they in England don't listen to it, and, therefore, may do as they please; though it is become a general believing here, that in London there is no notice taken of Heligoland'respecting its littleness, yet we have the confidence to your lordship, you will look upon us, that regularity will be restored here and esteem for law.
In this confidence we sign as
SIR,
Her Royal Majesty's faithful obedient subjects and Bürger of Heligoland
L F. LASSEN.
C. DREYER.
P. C. FRANZ
H. C. DENKER.
C. RICKMERS.
PAZ RICKMERS.
H. C. RALFS.
J. SIEMANS.
J. H. PAZENS.
J. J. KRÜSS.
P. VOLKERS.
P. HINRICHS.
No. 4.
HÄNS DAHN.
H. R. OHLSEN.
S. CL. SIEMENS.
P. H. MOHR.
P. B. LASSEN.
J. P. FRANZ.
J. R. STOLDT.
P. H. THATEN.
J. B. CLAASSEN.
CHR. LOHRENZ. CL. P. RICKMERS. DAN FRANZ.
Heligoland, 9th July 1866. Ir is currently reported in the island that a memorial containing the most insulting statements against the local authorities has been forwarded to Her Majesty's Government by a so-called Bürger Committee.
On that part of the Legislative Council I beg, therefore, respectfully to request that your Excellency will permit the Legislative Council to make themselves acquainted with the contents of the memorial in question, in order that such steps may be taken as counsel thali deem fit on the matter.
His Excellency the Governor.
SIR,
I have, &c. (Signed)
K. N. MICHELS,
Town Clerk and President of the Legislative Council
No. 5.
Heligoland, July 11th, 1866.
WE, the undersigned committee appointed by your Excellency to inquire as to the bona fide nature of a number of signatures by a so-called "Bürger Committee," stated to have been affixed to a document transmitted to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, have had during two consecutive days summoned before us 65 of the alleged subscribers, have read to them some of the most prominent complaints and accusations against the governor and public officers of this colony, as contained in a voluminous "Pro Memoria" by the so-called Bürger Committee, stated to have been addressed to the Secretary of State for the Colonies under a written authority of 350 inhabitants of this island.
This authority, a so-called "Vollmacht "-power of attorney-in which the alleged 350 subscribers bind themselves to be answerable with their persons and personal property for all acts and deeds of this Bürger Committee, we also read to about 60 of the alleged subscribers.
The result was, as your Excellency will see from the inclosed minutes of our sittings of the 6th and 7th instant, that all and every one of these alleged subscribers whom we had summoned before us, declared unhesitatingly that they were perfectly unacquainted with the contents of the "Pro Memoria;" that they had authorised nobody to make accusations of so grave a nature against the Governor or against any of the island authorities; and that as to having signed a "Vollmacht," or power of attorney, to the effect of being answerable for the acts and deeds of the Bürger Committee, they must deny all knowledge of the existence of such a document. They had been asked whether they should wish to have back their old constitution-in some instances with the spoken out object of having the payment of taxes abolished, in other instances with a more or less hidden hint as to this effect-and for this purpose only they had either signed their name, or permitted it to be signed. A still graver instance is that of Hilmin Lühes, whose name also stands signed to the above power of attorney, he never baving been to the meeting place of the Bürger Committee, never having seen their paper, nor signed himself, nor authorized another person to sign for him.
• Representatives.
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The question resolves itself, therefore, into this:- Firstly, the "Pro Memoria" or petition can be looked upon only as the individual expression of the twenty persons who signed the same; and
Secondly, th Vollmacht" or power of attorney can but be pronounced a piece of swindling of the moet aggravated nature, because not only did declare all those who were summoned that they were unacquainted with such a heading of the document as they now found it had, and not only were some, as C. Meyer for instance, left in the belief that they merely put their names to a piece of blank paper as a mere list of names for a petition to be drawn up, but names of persons who never saw the paper were without the knowledge of such persons attached to it, as the instance of Hilmor Lührs will prove. Further, we beg to remark on this head that the names of 65 widows and other old women, many of them quite imbecile with age, are attached to this power of attorney all in one and the same hand- writing; that it contains at least one fictitious name, viz., Stoffer Casen; the name of a deaf and dumb person, viz., Paul Michels, together with the name of a person Beaseler, imbecile in consequence of a paralytic stroke. That at least one of the subscribers affixed his scarcely legible signature when so drunk that he did not know what he did has been proved by the statement of B. Grobeaker protocolled in the enclosed minutes; and that all kinds of intimidation was made use of for the purpose of obtaining signatures proves the evidence of the same Grobesker and that of Mr. P. Volkers.
We now most respectfully beg your Excellency to be permitted a few remarks as to the deleterious effect on the prosperity of this island of proceedings of the above nature; of the absolute necessity of putting a decisive stop to all such proceedings; and of the further necessity that in the present instance all those persons culpable of transmitting to the Secretary of State for the Colonies a voluminous document full of slanderous accusations against your Excellency as well as against the public officers serving under you, be prosecuted and held answerable for such slanderous accusations; and that further the same persons, for transmitting, in support of the above slanderous accusations, to the Secretary of State for the colonies a forged document, be visited, if not with the severest punishment the law awards for such crime, at least with punishment severe enough effectually to warn against proceedings of a similar nature.
In pointing out this as an absolute necessity we are by no means actuated by any feelings, vindictive or revengeful, but purely by the conviction that as long as agitations of the above nature are met by punishments of a lenient and mere nominal nature the island never will arrive at that settled state of political existence which is so essentially necessary to carry through the plans of the authorities for improving the financial state of the island, release it of the prosent crushing debt, and thereby ensuring future prosperity and well-being of the inhabitants.
As long as a small number of discontented and drunken men, with a few grains more knowledge of the world than their simple minded compatriots, know that unscathed they may induce a score of the latter to put their names to a document of sixty pages foolscap without the remotest conception of what the contents may be, by representing to them that thereby they will "get back their ancient rights, laws, "and privileges granted by Great Britain at the capitulation of the island," and that they will" free "themselves of the payment of taxes arbitrarily and illegally imposed by avaricious authorities who "cheat the island treasury by making up incorrect and fraudulent accounts" as long as reams of such slander can with impunity be sent to the Colonial Office, and almost the entire time of You- Excellency and the officers serving under you be taken up in refutation of such documents; as long as a handful of unprincipled men can swagger about the island boasting of their being in constant comr munication, telegraphic and otherwise, with the Secretary of State for the purpose of restoring the "old "happy times when no taxes were called for," for the purpose of getting recalled a Governor “bare of "all sacred veneration for law, right, and justice," who does not shun the dirtiest means for obtaining "his ends," who "imposed upon Her Majesty the Queen the new Constitution for Heligoland"-as long as to such proceedings cannot be put the most complete stop, it will be an absolute impossibility to con- duct the affairs of this small colony with the remotest hope of any success, and we therefore most earnestly entreat your Excellency's advice and support towards effecting this.
In the above memorial, as well as in former applications of a similar nature, the menorialists almost invariably begged for a "Commission from England" to examine into the state of affairs of this island; although we should never have advanced such a proposition, still if your Excellency should consider the recommendation of such a proceeding advisable, we beg to express our readiness to accept this or any other means whatever to bring the guilty, whoever they may be, to final justice.
We have, &c.,
(Signed)
No. 6.
II. GÄTKE.
K. N. MICHELS. P. S. BOTTER.
MINUTES of the PROCEEDINGS of a COMMITTEE consisting of Mr. Gätke, Mr. K. Michels, and Mr. P. S. Botter, members of Executive Council, assembled for the purpose of inquiring into the validity of certain signatures attached to a memorial forwarded to the Secretary of State, and returned to Government Office for transmission through the Governor.
It having been roported verbally and in writing to the Governor that the very large majority of those persons who signed the memorial and other documents accompanying the same had been induced to do so through false pretences, and in utter ignorance of the true contents of the same, the following persons were summoned before the Committee, and they having been informed that they were perfectly at liberty to sign any amount of petitions to the Secretary of State, and that as they all must know the Governor would forward such immediately, even if only signed in a bona fide manner by one single Heligolander. As, however, a large proportion of the signatures in question were evidently in one handwriting, and as information had been received that underhand means had been used to obtain signatures, they, the Committee, were desired by the Governor to inquire whether their signatures were C
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