[
    {
        "id": 213215,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1994",
        "page_number": 37,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "16\n\nKirchmann transferred his tavern to Silbermann. The Land We Live In passed through a succession of proprietors with German, Jewish or Polish sounding names, Gustav Neubrunn, Moritz and Adolph Freimann, Bernat Cohen, Moses Tchetchilnızkı and lastly David Freeman. The Tavern was closed in 1912. The licensees of two other establishments suggest Jewish proprietorship: The Central Hotel, 1890 to 1906, Isaac Samuel Greenstein, 1907 to 1912, Ichel Gruman; and the Globe Hotel, 1894 to 1909, Isydor Silbermann, the nephew of Tevil, Ephraim Fischel Zellermayer 1910, and Adolph Weingarten 1911 and 1912. Both the Central and the Globe were closed in 1913.\n\nMrs. Petersen and the German Hotel Trade\n\nIn 1911 Frederich Reichmann, a German national, sought an interim injunction from the court to restrain Mrs. Uschmann and her husband from operating the Station Hotel in Kowloon. Mr. Reichmann charged that Mrs. Uschmann had broken a contract they had signed in November 1909, when he purchased from her for $30,000 her interest and good will in the Oriental Hotel on Queen's Road Central. The contract contained a clause preventing her from conducting in Hong Kong the business of innkeeping, publican or restaurant. The purpose of the clause was to prevent her from attracting to a new establishment the German trade. A summary of evidence presented in court provides information on the background of both the parties in the case. Mrs Uschmann claimed in her defence that the good will of the Station Hotel was the property of her husband, Robert Albrecht Uschmann, and that she was only his assistant. She had been connected with establishments licensed to sell spirits for some twenty or twenty-five years. She became the proprietress of the Thomas' Hotel on the south side of Queen's Road between Ice House and Duddell Streets. The hotel when she took it over had become bankrupt and was closed. No good will went with the transaction. Mr. O E. Owen, then proprietor of the Grand Carlton Hotel, but a former employee of Mrs. Uschmann in 1904 when she and her former husband, Mr. R.A. Matthaey, were operating the Occidental Hotel in Kowloon, stated to the court that it was his opinion \"that the Station Hotel would compete with the Grand\" (Mrs. Uschmann had changed the name of the Thomas' Hotel to the Oriental Hotel and Mr. Reichmann, in turn, had changed it to the Grand Hotel) because of her \"long association with the hotel business and her intimate knowledge of the German community.\" In fact, \"The German customers used to call her 'Mother' as a pet name\" (HKT 6 June 1911).",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213216,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1994",
        "page_number": 38,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "17\n\nFrederik Reichmann had left Germany in 1897 at the age of sixteen. For some time he was in London where he rose to the position of chief inspector of the popular restaurants of Lyons and Co. He then spent a short time in Australia where he married the daughter of Mr. A.B. Crew, a former head of the Land Record Office in Sydney. Mr. Crew wished to set up his new son-in-law in business in Hong Kong. As a German, Mr. Reichmann was eager to take over an establishment that had most of the German trade.\n\nThere are a number of difficulties presented in the material available on the background and identity of Mrs. Uschmann. In the correspondence concerning German women and children interned in 1914 it was stated that Miss Petersen is the daughter of Mrs. Uschmann and that she had a sister in the Colony that might be willing to support her. The sister was probably Mrs Arthur G. Seidel. On a list of the internees the names of Mrs. Uschmann, Mrs Seidel and Miss Petersen follow each other. The next clue for establishing relationships is the obituary of Mrs. John Sanderson Smith, who died on 9 March 1936, aged forty-one. She was born in Hong Kong and had been the proprietress of the Station Hotel which had been closed in March 1930. She was survived by her husband, J.S. Smith of the firm of Lubing and Smith, two sisters in Shanghai, a brother in London and a brother-in-law A.C Seidel. Wreaths were sent by \"Sister Maggie, Harry and family, Sister Martha, Arthur and family, Sister Lizzie, Franz and family\" (CM 9 May 1936, emphasis supplied). This information can be related to the children of Christian Friedrich William Petersen and his wife Mary recorded in the baptismal register of the London Missionary Society's Chinese congregation. Maggie Mary born on 15 October 1887, Martha Louise born on 5 January 1889 and Henry William born on 4 January 1892. These were presumably the brother and sisters of Mrs. Sanderson Smith who was born in 1895 but not recorded as baptised in the church records. If these conclusions are correct it would identify her mother, Mrs. Uschmann, as the wife of Mr. Petersen, the long-time proprietor of the German Tavern. Mary was his second wife. He died in 1896 aged sixty-four leaving his wife to administer his estate which was valued at $16,000. Was Mary Petersen a Chinese? Children of Caucasian parents were not baptised in Chinese congregations, except under the most unusual circumstances. On the other hand, if she were Chinese, why would she have been interned as a German alien in 1914? The statement in 1911 that Mrs. Uschmann had been connected with the German trade some twenty or twenty-five years suggests that she...",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213217,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1994",
        "page_number": 39,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "18\n\nbegan her long association as the wife of Mr. Petersen, the proprietor of the German Tavern.\n\nAfter his death she was left with several small children and by the year 1904 was married to R.A. Matthaey. He became bankrupt in February 1907, having operated the Occidental Hotel in Kowloon since 1904. His wife in October 1907 opened the Oriental Hotel on Queen's Road in the building formerly occupied by Thomas' Hotel. By November 1909 she had become Mrs. Uschmann.\n\nMr. Reichmann must have lost his case against Mrs. Uschmann as from 1911 to 1914 R.A. Uschmann was the licensee of the Station Hotel at Nos. 11 and 13 Nathan Road. The hotel was closed during the war but in November 1919 Mrs. Louisa Jane Stewart Brown applied for a spirit licence. In 1921 her name is replaced by Mrs. A.B. Sanderson Smith. A summary of the history of the Station Hotel was published in the South China Morning Post at the time of its closure in 1931. The proprietors Mr. and Mrs. Sanderson Smith closed it at the end of March after it had been in existence some twenty years.\n\nTwo houses on Nathan Road were occupied as residences when purchased by the Procurator of the Dominican Mission in 1908. In the following year Mrs. Uschmann established a boarding house. Then an annex in the rear facing Hankow Road was purchased by the Dominicans. Mr. J. Sanderson Smith arrived in Hong Kong in 1921 and married Mrs. Uschmann. In my opinion, the account is incorrect in stating he married Mrs. Uschmann. I conclude from the evidence presented above that he married Miss Petersen, the daughter of Mrs. Uschmann.\n\nMr. Reichmann, though he lost in his attempt to stop competition in the German hotel trade, continued offering hospitality to them until the outbreak of the First World War. Before that, he had applied for British nationality but he had not yet received it. In considering the treatment to be given to enemy aliens, the Provost Marshall recommended that special consideration be given to Mr. Reichmann. He had been a valuable source of information to the British military authorities and was considered to be of value in keeping tabs on what was happening in the German community. However, events overtook the recommendation as soon after, almost all the Germans in the colony were either interned or deported. (CO129/413 - information from Provost Marshall regarding Germans on List, 8 Oct. 1914) The list of spirit licensees for November 1914 states that Mr.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213218,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1994",
        "page_number": 40,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "19\n\nReichmann's application for the Grand Hotel was not granted as he was a German national. He applied again in 1915 but to no avail. Though he was unsuccessful, the application suggests he was not interned with his fellow countrymen. After peace returned, he again sought a decision on his application for naturalisation (CO129/455, p37, 11 July 1919).\n\nI have presented this material in what some might consider excessive detail because it relates a connected history of accommodation for travelling and resident Germans from 1859, when Petersen's German Tavern was opened, to 1931, when his daughter retired from the management of the Station Hotel in Kowloon and closed its doors.\n\nCafe Weissmann\n\nThe Cafe Weissmann opened in 1904. In 1914/15 the name was changed to Wiseman, a less Germanic spelling. Lane, Crawford and Co. had acquired a controlling interest in Weissmann Ltd, so its Cafe was not considered to be alien enemy property. The licence for spirits was transferred from Rembold Ekhardt, who had held it from 1909, to Ellen H.K. King,\n\nAccording to Jarrett, the author of the column \"Old Hong Kong\" in the South China Morning Post (23 Sept. 1933), Hans Weissmann was a ship's baker who began business near the Bowrington Canal. If this is accurate, he must have begun his Hong Kong career at the Hong Kong and China Bakery Co. It was a limited company with the controlling interest being held by Lane, Crawford and Co. Mr. Weissmann opened a restaurant in a small room in the Beaconsfield Arcade in 1904, but he soon moved to the south-east corner of Queen's Road and Wyndham Street. Here, in addition to his \"Refreshment Room\", he had a \"Tiffin Room\" at No. 1 Wyndham Street. At the same time, the business became a limited company (DP20, 27 Apr 1905). The management of the restaurant was taken over by Carl Fiedler in 1908. A year later, the business was moved to No. 14 Des Voeux Road Central. Mr. Fiedler was not long after replaced by Rembold Ekhardt, who conducted the business under various names until 1914.\n\nCafe Weissman became Cafe Wiseman in 1914. No. 14 Queen's Road was redeveloped in 1926 as the Exchange Building. Lane, Crawford and Co. had its store there and for several years Cafe Wiseman became the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]