Norfolk Island’s Auxiliary Settlement: Penal Origins and Pitcairn Continuities

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Local history, Regional History

Just five weeks after the First Fleet led by Captain Arthur Phillip arrived in Port Jackson in 1788, Lieutenant Philip Gidley King was despatched to Norfolk Island 1,673 km north-east of Sydney to establish an ancillary settlement of convicts and free settlers※. The British, recognising the island’s strategic importance in the western Pacific and the need to keep it out of French hands, had a further, practical motive for colonising Norfolk Island. Captain James Cook on his 1774 Pacific voyage identified the island’s (Norfolk Island) pines and (New Zealand) flax plant as invaluable materials for the construction of masts and sails. As it turned out they weren’t, being too brittle for this purpose, although the island’s soil proved good for agriculture and farming (in the early settlement days Norfolk served as Sydney’s ”food bowl”) [Robert Macklin, Hamilton Hume, Our Greatest Explorer, (2019); ‘History’, (Norfolk Island National Park), www.parksaustralia.gov.au].

≜ Norfolk Is penal settlement, ca.1790 (Geo. Raper) (State Lib. of NSW)

From the early days of settlement the convicts made an unsuccessful attempt to depose King. In 1800 Rum Corps officer Joseph Foveaux was made commandant of Norfolk Island, and he successfully but ruthlessly suppressed a new insurrection in 1801 by United Irish prisoners. Foveaux summarily executed some of the convicts without due legal process and courted controversy for his practice of selling female prisoners to settlers. However overall he was commended by the authorities for the advancement of public works on the island under his administration [B. H. Fletcher, ‘Foveaux, Joseph (1767–1846)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/foveaux-joseph-2062/text2567, published first in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 30 December 2020].

(Image: www.lonelyplanet.com)

Abandonment and penal rebirth
Settlement on Norfolk Island went in fits and starts. In 1814 it was abandoned altogether◕ due to a combination of factors – a poor harbour made for perilous landing sites; isolation and remoteness; too costly to maintain; diminished necessity (Sydney had achieved self-sufficiency in food) [‘Looking at History’, 14-Aug-2015, wwwrichardjohnbrblogspotcom]. In 1825 the island was resettled again as a penal colony. This was the beginning of Norfolk’s darkest chapter of its history. The British determined that the reestablished penal colony would be home to the worst case prisoners. Norfolk Island’s second penitentiary has been described as a “planned hell”, with a series of convict uprisings and escape attempts a recurring feature (eg, the 1846 “Cooking Pot” rebellion resulted in its 12 leaders being executed for the murder of four minor officials [Burridge, K. (2013). Review of Mühlhäusler, Peter, and Joshua Nash, Norfolk Island: History, people, environment, language. Oceanic Linguistics, 52(2).] (see Postscript for a different perspective on the question of the penitentiary’s severity).

In the wake of the Bounty
By 1855, with transportation to New South Wales ended, there was only eleven residents left on Norfolk Island (the colony’s remaining 119 convicts had already been relocated to the draconian Van Diemen’s Land prison system). The following year the island was turned over to (194) descendants of the Pitcairn Island mutineers and their Tahitian families. Each was entitled to 50-acre grant of land on Norfolk. Some of the new settlers returned to Pitcairn within ten years but many who stayed pursued their traditional vocations of farming and whaling❂.

(Photo: Getty Images/Lonely Planet)

By the late 19th century the settlers on NI were engaged in a range of industries – forestry, cattle and the growth of export crops (lemon, passionfruit, banana). Changes in land use altered the ecosystem of Norfolk Island. The intensive agricultural use, the clearing of native land, saw the original subtropical rainforest give way to a pastoral landscape of rolling green hills encircled by rocky outcrops (‘Norfolk Island NP’).

Norfolk Island, inching towards autonomy and self-rule
After Australia achieved federation Norfolk Island was administered as an external territory, control alternating between the Australian Commonwealth and NSW. During WWII an Allied airfield was constructed on the island, testimony to its strategic importance in the Pacific theatre of the war. In 1979 Norfolk Island was granted limited self-government by Australia. A constant theme for Norfolk Island throughout its post-war history—perhaps even existing from the initial Australian takeover before WWI—has been the tensions and ambiguities resulting from a search for identity…the NI community is aware of the constant shadow of Australian governance over it and yet it also sensing in its distinctive Pacific Island nature a yearning for self-rule and independence (Burridge). In 2015 Canberra delivered a body blow to the autonomous aspirations of locals when, on the back of an NI economic decline due to the GFC and diminished tourism, it rescinded the Island’s self-government [‘Norfolk Island broke, set to be stripped of self rule’, (Nine News), 19-Mar-2015, www.9news.com.au].

(Image: www.mapsland.com)

Endnote: The period since the transportation of convicts to NI ended has been marked by an absence of violent crime. However early in the 21st century the tranquility was punctured by not one but two murders in the peaceful island community. In 2002 a young woman (an Australian mainlander working in NI) was murdered in mysterious circumstances. Two year after this, the NI government’s deputy chief minister was fatally shot in Kingston the NI capital…the murder had a family rather than a political motive and was not connected to the earlier homicide [New Zealand Herald, 20-Jul-2004].

≜ NI’s old and newer prisons with the iconic Norfolk Is Pines in the background (Source: www.aucklandmuseum.com)

Postscript: Norfolk Island, a “punitive hell” for incorrigibles or an overstated case?  
The conventional view of Norfolk Island as a penitentiary by the mid-19th century is that it “was the most notorious penal station in the English-speaking world and represented all that was bad about the convict system”⚃ (eg, convicts universally brutalised by sadistic gaolers). The colonial secretary in London directed Governor Brisbane in NSW in 1825 to send “the worst description of convicts” to Norfolk, (those) “excluded from all hope of return”. The characterisation of the NI penal colony as “hell-on-earth” is myth not fact according to historian Tim Causer who demurs from the consensus opinion. He argues that the NI inmates were not predominantly of the worst kind, not recidivists, not “doubly-convicted capital respites”, as widely stated. Using the available data Causer shows a contrary picture: over 2,400 of the convicts were first offenders who came directly from Britain and Ireland; nearly 70% sent to NI were sentenced for non-violent crimes (against property) (“‘The worst types of sub-human beings’? The myth and reality of the convicts of the Norfolk Island penal settlement, 1825-1855”, (Tim Causer), March 2011, www.researchgate.net].

__________________________________________
※ the original inhabitants of Norfolk Island were Polynesian seafarers (14th-15th century) who journeyed there from the Kermadec Islands or the North Island of New Zealand

◕ and replaced as a penal destination by Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania)

❂ roughly half of the present NI population of 1,800 are descended from Pitcairners

⚃ at the time NI penitentiary was universally synonymous with criminality and perversion, even alluded to by Charles Dickens in Hard Times. NI was widely considered equal to or worst than the barbaric penal colony at Macquarie Harbour (Tasmania)

Suburban Sydenham: A Mixed and Changing Landscape of Grand Estates, Workers’ Cottages, Industrial Concentration and Airport Encroachment

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Aviation history, Built Environment, Heritage & Conservation, Leisure activities, Local history, Politics

Sydenham is a tiny inner suburb of Sydney which sits on traditional Cadigal land, part of the Eora nation, some eight kilometres south-west of the CBD. In the formative colonial period Sydenham was subsumed under a wider area known as Bulanaming which stretched from Petersham to Cook’s River  and included  a chunk of undesirable swampy land  (Gumbramorra Swamp).

(Map: www.dictionaryofsydney.org/)

Grand designs Sydenham
From the 1850s on, the better land on the eastern part of the suburb was turned into grand estates for well-to-do colonial businessmen. These large villa estates occupied an area from Unwins Bridge Road back to Cooks River Road (later renamed Princes Highway). Perhaps the pick of these “large country retreats” in Sydenham, located between Reilly and Grove Streets, was the Grove Estate, with its two-storey Georgian villa, owned by John George Church. Adjoining the Grove Estate was ironmonger Richard Reilly’s Tivoli Estate with a similarly impressive Georgian villa➀ [Meader, Chrys, Sydenham, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/sydenham, viewed 25 Dec 2020].

The working class swamped
Commencing in the 1880s, the grand estates started to be broken up by subdivision and the suburb’s complexion took on a recognisable working class character. Rows of Victorian cottages sprang up, many occupied by workers at the nearby Albion and other brickworks in nearby St Peters. At the same time developers sold cheap, unviable land in the swamp area to the working class. This was the notorious Tramvale Estate—badly designed, lacking in basic sewerage facilities, low-lying, prone to flooding and poor drainage—resulting in the spread of disease, plagues of mosquitos in summer and an all-pervasive, persistent stench, leaving the owners holding what amounted to a “white elephant” they couldn’t re-sell (Meader).

Adjoining suburb: Cooks River Road, St Peters (1935) 🔻

(Photo: State Library of NSW)

Industrial landscape and dichotomy
The swamp was finally drained in the 1890s and the land on it repurposed for heavy industry and engineering works. Factories took root, such as Australian Woollen Mills and the Sydney Steel Company (supplier of steel for the Sydney Harbour Bridge construction)➁. By the early 20th century Sydenham had taken on a twofold complexion: an industrial western part and a primarily residential eastern part (Meader)

The post-WWII period brought an influx of migrants to the inner west suburb, mostly Greeks, Macedonians, Croatians, Serbs and Slovenes from the former Yugoslavia, Turks and later Vietnamese. In the 1950s and 60s Sydenham proved a good recruiting ground for young athletic Aboriginal men who would go on to play rugby league for the Newtown club (Meader).

🔺 Sydenham farms

Sydenham cultural and entertainment ‘hub’  
Sydenham has at best been only modestly endowed with shopping options  (a handful of shops trailing off from the railway station➂) in comparison with  surrounding urban hubs like Marrickville, the local Sydenham community could boast a pub (the General Gordon) and a cinema, the Sydenham Picture Palace, later superseded by the art deco Rex Theatre (47 Unwins Bridge Rd) closed in 1959 and converted into a roller-drome in 1960. Sydenham at one point also had its own live theatre venue, Norman McVicker’s Pocket Playhouse (94 Terry Street), which operated from 1957 to 1973 [‘Pocket Playhouse’, www.budgeebudgee.wordpress.com].

🔻 Vivien Leigh attending the Pocket Playhouse with proprietor Norman McVicker, 1961

From under the radar to under the runway  
In the early 1990s the Federal government spearheaded a plan to add a third runway to Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport  which presaged irreparable change to Sydenham’s (eastern) residential zone. The scheme was vigorously opposed at a grass-roots level and supported by a Coalition of (thirteen) Sydney Councils including Marrickville Council (although it later did a volte-face and sided with the government). Although supposed to be ‘voluntary’, some Sydenham residents who were reluctant to sell and move were ‘persuaded’ to comply by intolerable noise levels for residents from the airport just 2km away and from adjacent demolition work in progress [‘The fight to save Sydenham’, (Tom Wilson), Green Left Review, 24-Oct-1995, Issue 208, www.greenleftreview.org.au].  When the dust had settled, in excess of over 120 Sydenham houses had been acquired and demolished for the runway go-ahead…this clean-out were described by the Sydney Morning Herald as the airport “gobbling up a whole suburb”. Only a solitary cottage of the row of historic dwellings in the frontline Railway Road survived the decimation, No 19, “Stone Villa” (now an artists’ studio)➃.

PostScript: Sydenham Green  
By way of compensation for the demolished houses in Railway Rd, Marrickville Council was handed back the land in 1994…after deliberation the Council turned it into Sydenham Green, a  public park with ‘funky’ community sculptures and a skate park—and being directly under the flight path of the third runway—a quirky arch monument of sorts recounting the local community’s valiant efforts to stop its realisation. By its very presence, Sydenham Green stands as an “everyday reminder of how aircraft noise tore the heart out of a suburb” (Meader).

_______________________________________________
➀ both the Grove and the Tivoli villas were demolished during WWI

➁ largest employer in the Marrickville Municipality, >7,500 staff

➂ known as Marrickville Station until 1895 when the Bankstown line opened and Marrickville got its own railway station

➃ a belated casualty was Australia’s first Coptic Church (24A Railway Road), which had dodged the authorities’ demolition plans for two decades only to see a fire reduce its survival efforts to ashes in 2017

Liverpool’s Most (In)famous Phantom Resident

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Regional History

There’s nothing like unearthing a hitherto unsuspected and improbable sounding historical connexion to give a boost to a city’s tourist industry. In the case of Liverpool, UK—the city that the Beatles, the Mop-Top “Fab Four”, launched onto centre-stage on the world’s pop culture map—that nexus may not be an altogether welcome one if it connects it to the most reviled political figure of the 20th century.

(Image: www.lonelyplanet.com)

One story that has been quietly doing the rounds of England since the early 1970s is that Adolf Hitler—long before his elevation to German führer and his failed shot at world domination in the 1930s and 40s—visited Liverpool and spent several months in the city during his formative years. The myth of Hitler’s visit has sustained itself over the years and even found favour with some Liverpudlians despite the complete paucity of proof to support any such claim.

Alois Hitler ⇧

What we do know with some certainty
Adolf’s elder half-brother Alois Hitler visits Dublin in the early 1900s where he meets a young Irish woman, Bridget Dowling. They elope to London, marry and move to the Merseyside city in search of work. Alois lives in Liverpool between 1911 and 1914. A son is born in Liverpool (William Patrick Hitler, 1911). The evidence for this primarily comes from the city census of 2011, Alois Hitler is listed on the residential register – although the register records his first name as ‘Anton’. The Hitlers live at 102 Upper Stanhope Street, Toxteth, L8 1UN (a suburb of Liverpool). One degree of separation to AH, definitely, but so far nothing that places the Nazi mass-murderer in person in the city of Liverpool.

(Source: www.dailymail.co.uk)

Adolf gets Merseyside?
It is Hitler’s sister-in-law that draws the dots between Adolf in Upper Austria and the family in Liverpool. In the late Thirties, Bridget Hitler, long-parted from Alois and no longer domiciled in Liverpool, writes her (unpublished) memoirs which recounts a stay by young Aldolf with her family in the Upper Stanhope Street home⌖ (supposedly between November 1912 and April 1913). Bridget’s revelation was the first time anyone had an inkling that Hitler had ever been to Liverpool or England. There was nothing on the public record and no one else has ever corroborated Bridget’s claim [‘Adolf Hitler Liverpool links discussed again in new TV documentary’, Liverpool Echo, 08-May-2003. www.liverpoolecho.co.uk].

Hitler’s alleged Liverpool holiday only comes to light and reaches a wider audience after historian Robert Payne discovers Bridget’s unfinished manuscript in the New York Public Library while researching his own book on Hitler in the early 1970s. The claim gets taken up by Liverpool’s daily papers…in particular editor Mike Unger runs the story hard, in 1979 he edits Bridget’s book and publishes it as The Memoirs of Bridget Hitler [‘Hitler, 23, fled to Liverpool to avoid service in Austrian army’, (JohnThomas Didymus), Digital Journal, 26-Nov-2011, www.digitaljournal.com]

Draft-dodger führer?
In her memoirs Bridget explains Adolf’s reason for coming to Liverpool as an attempt to avoid being conscripted into the Austrian army (unsurprisingly Bridget’s portrayal of her brother-in-law is not a flattering one)◘. Another theory for the unexpected visit is that Hitler, a “wanna-be” artist, is on the rebound—having been rejected from art schools in Austria—and travels to Liverpool as its a city known for its artists and art schools [‘Hitler Living in Liverpool’, The History of Liverpool, www.historyofliverpool.com].

Hitler, Liverpool man-about-town
Lots of wild and occasional wacky tales have been told about Hitler’s time in Liverpool. People come out of the woodwork with anecdotes about supposed Merseyside encounters their great-grandparents had with the future German reichkánzler. The myths abound, Hitler is ‘remembered’ drinking at Peter Kavanagh’s Egerton Street pub and barracking for “his team” Everton at Goodisall Park, or alternately some have depicted him as a ‘Kopite’ (a fan of rival Liverpool FC); he gets banned from the Walker Art Gallery; the Liverpool ice rink at Wavertree keeps a pair of his skating boots on display, etc [‘Did Hitler ever visit Liverpool, and if so, why?’ (Notes and Queries), The Guardian, www.theguardian.com]. As Prof Frank McDonough observes, for many Liverpudlians it seems “the fiction is much more interesting” (‘Hitler Liverpool links’).

(Source: www.irishcentral.com)

Fanciful rather than factual
Though the Liverpool Echo is sympathetic to Frau Hitler’s account, most serious scholars reject the claims about her brother-in-law’s Liverpool sojourn as pure fabrication, flimsily-written and without foundation. Others attribute Bridget’s motives to an opportunist scheme by her and her son to cash in on the Hitler phenomenon (see also Endnote) [‘Brigid and Willy Hitler: The Nazi dictator’s Irish family who tried to make money off his rise to power, (Rachael O’Connor), The Irish Post, 05-Sep-2019, www.irishpost.com]. Refuting Bridget’s tenuous claims that Adolf spend 1912-13 (Hitler’s so-called “lost year”) in Liverpool, Third Reich historian Ian Kershaw places Hitler instead in a Viennese men’s hostel during the same time period [‘Your Story: Adolf Hitler – did he visit Liverpool during 1912-13?’, Legacies – Liverpool, (M W Royden), www.bbc.com].

⇩ Bridget and William

Endnote: Hitler’s scouser nephew
Whether or not Hitler ever made it to Liverpool, we do know that he had significant interactions with his nephew (more precisely half-nephew) in Nazi Germany. William travelled there after Hitler’s acquisition of power hoping (as his mother did before him) to exploit the family name and his connexions to his advantage in the Third Reich. The relationship between führer and scouser nephew however is a tempestuous one. William is unhappy with the cushy job Hitler arranges for him and the latter in turn becomes disaffected with his “loathsome nephew”. In the late 1930s William returns to England where he does an about-face, denouncing uncle Adolf. Next William moves to the US where, accompanied by his mother, he tours the country giving ‘insider’ lectures about his “madman uncle”. When America enters the world war William enlists in the navy and serves in the fight against Nazism. After the war mother and son change tack once again… changing their name to “Stuart-Houston” they turn their back on a life of publicity-seeking and disappear without trace into Long Island (NY) suburbia [‘Hitler’s Irish Nephew’, Dublin City Council, 19-Jun-2020, www.dublincity.ie].⇧ Hitler and his ‘renegade’ enemy nephew

PostScript: The fake Hitler jottings
The “Hitler in Liverpool” saga is a little reminiscent of a later, much more famous deception also purporting to shed new light on Hitler, the Hitler Diaries controversy of the early 1980s. The ‘discovery’ of hitherto unknown diaries of the führer was ultimately exposed as a hoax (perpetrated by a small-time, recidivist “con man” from East Germany)⊠, but only after West Germany’s Stern magazine and Murdoch’s The Sunday Times both got badly burned in their avaricious haste to try to capitalise big-time on the story scoop. The diary forgeries claimed a further victim in Hitler expert Prof Hugh Trevor-Roper whose reputation gets irreparably impaired by him prematurely authenticating the diaries as being the genuine Hitler article before a proper analysis of the documents is carried out.

_____________________________________________
⌖ ironically the Hitler house gets flattened in a German bombing raid during WWII

◘  Bridget takes the credit in her memoirs for suggesting to Hitler that he trim his moustache to the iconic style he is famous for, and for fostering his interest in astrology

◍ the circulation of fake photos showing Adolf Hitler standing in front of well-known Liverpool landmarks are part of the myth-making

⊠ described by handwriting expert Kenneth W Rendell as “bad forgeries but a great hoax”

Thurn-und-Taxis Post, the Holy Roman Emperor’s Transnational Postmen

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
International Relations, Media & Communications, Regional History

The background story of Thomas Pychon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49 involves a centuries-old conflict between two mail distribution companies, Thurn and Taxis and Trystero. In the novel Thurn and Taxis triumphs over its rival in the 18th century, forcing Trystero to go underground and operate incognito as a waste disposal business. Trystero (sometimes in the book ‘Tristero’) does not exist, it is a fictional creation of Pynchon, and in true Pynchon style it may not even exist in the novel…Pynchon leaves the question floating, open to speculation and interpretation throughout the novel. Thurn and Taxis on the other hand is a very real historical entity.

⍋ Pynchon’s muted horn

The Thurn-und-Taxis story usually starts with one Franz (or Francesco) von Taxis—an Italian nobleman from Bergamo near Milan—who acquires the office of postmaster-general from the Habsburg Holy Roman emperor Frederick III in 1489 (in 1504 Philip I of Spain gives the Taxis family the same right to his territory). By these royal approvals Franz von Taxis is awarded the right (along with his brother Janetto) to carry both government and private mail from its base in the Austrian Tyrol the length and breadth of the Holy Roman Empire and Spain, in what was the world’s first public access mail service [‘Thurn and Taxis postal system’, Britannica, www.britannica.com/].

⍒ Franz von Taxis

Tassis antecedents
Franz von Taxis’ elevation to imperial postmaster in 1489 is not the family’s first foray into the mail distribution business, far from it in fact! Some of Franz’s Italian ancestors were in the game as far back as the late 13th century. The association appears to start with the Bergamascan Omedeo (or Amedeo) Tasso➀. This chapter of the story begins in the small city of Bergamo in the alpine region of Lombard (northern Italy). After Milan conquers Bergamo Omedeo Tasso organises his relatives into a company of couriers (Compagnia dei Corrieri) around the year 1290. His post riders (known as i Bergamaschi) operates routes to three Italian city-states, to Rome and Venice from the company’s Milan base [‘Omedeo Tasso’ Wikiwand, www.wikiwand.com]. In the mid-15th century another relative, Ruggiero de Tassis, extends the mail network north to Innsbruck, Styria and Vienna, and later to Brussels. Thus, by the time the Holy Roman emperor awards the mail distribution rights for the Kayserliche Reichspost (“Imperial Post”), to the Tassos’, the family has notched up an impressive CV of service to popes (Posta papale) and the ‘merchantocracy’ of Venice.

⍒ Thurn-und-Taxis crest

Tassos to Taxis
The change of the original Italian family name ‘Tasso’, sometimes rendered ‘Tassos’ or “de Tassis’, to “Thurn and Taxis”, comes about in 1650…one of the nobles in the German branch of the Tassis family, Lamoral II Claudius Franz, gets imperial permission to change the family name from the French, “de La Tour et Tassis” to the German, “Thurn und Taxis”. As the Thurn-und-Taxis business become more lucrative the family’s social standing follows a similar upward trajectory…in the 17th century they accumulate a sequence of hereditary titles  – from “imperial free baron” to grafen (“imperial count”) to a ‘princely’ status in the Fürstenhaus (“first house”) [‘Thurn und Taxis’, www.thurnundtaxis.de/].

(Image: www.labrujulaverde.com)

The Taxis’ Imperial Post thrives with improvements in service and greater efficiency. Emperor Maximilian I is able to despatch correspondence via the Post from Innsbruck to his son Philipp (Fillippo) in Brussels in five days (six in winter). The creation of a series of postal stations along the route—located 35 km apart➁—improves the speed of delivery [Schobesberger, Nikolaus, et al. “European Postal Networks”, News Networks in Early Modern Europe, edited by Noah Moxham and Joad Raymond, Brill, LEIDEN; BOSTON, 2016, pp.19-63, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctt1w8h1ng.9. Accessed 10 Dec. 2020]➂. The Tassis family postal fortunes continues with succeeding holy Roman emperors…Charles (Carlos) V appointed Janetto’s son, Giovanni Batista de Tassis (Signoria di Taxis) as master of posts in 1520, recognising the necessity of an efficient, reliable method in communication in the empire continually expanding to include new acquisitions (such as the Burgundian and Spanish territories).

⍒ Imperial Post, Quincentenary commemorative card (Image: Collection of Museum for Communication, Nuremberg)

Thurn-und-Taxis and Imperial Post, democratisating postal services
Before Taxis takes charge of the Imperial Post, the Habsburgs depend on courier services that are exclusive to the elites of society. Dedicated messengers service sovereigns, aristocrats, merchants and other corporate bodies like universities and monasteries, but are not available to the general public. Thurn-und-Taxis changes that pattern, being the first to carry both private and public items on its trans-empire routes (Schobesberger).

⍋ Thurn & Taxis post-roads, western Germany, 1786 (Image: www.euratlas.com)

Serving the emperor: Privilege, surveillance and censorship Generally, the Reichspost under the management of the Taxis neatly serves both it‘s own interests and that of the Habsburgs. The Taxis provide the efficient postal system required of the vast Habsburg empire. They keep the imperial confidential posts and security secrets safe and when the opportunity arise, they engage in espionage (including intercepting correspondence hostile to their masters)[Cole, Laurence. Central European History, vol.42, no.4, 2009,pp.763-766. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40600986. Accessed 10 Dec.2020]. In return, the emperor grants them various concessions in business building to a monopoly by Taxis/Imperial Post over the postal industry by forbidding competition from rival courier providers (the right of monopoly confirmed by Emperor Rudolph II in 1595)➃. Thurn-und-Taxis are also co-opted into a political role on behalf of the Habsburgs, appointed principal commissar (making them the emperor’s personal representative at Regensburg). At its peak (ca. 1700) the company employs a staff of around 20,000 (messengers, administrative workers and state representatives).

⍒ T & T postal timetable, Augsburg (Germ.) (Source: www.postalmuseum.si.edu)

Defection and reconciliation
In a rare miscalculation Thurn-und-Taxis in 1742 finds themselves briefly on the wrong side—backing the Wittelsbach successor (Charles VII) to the imperial crown against the Habsburgs’ candidate—although the Taxis’ manage to patch things up with the Habsburgs after Charles’ death. Reconciliation is facilitated by Empress Maria Theresia’s recognition of what the Taxis provide,  “organisational know-how and (a) communications network which left no effective competitors” (Cole).

⍒ Empress Maria Theresia

Vicissitudes of war
The outbreak of wars affecting the empire is a recurring threat to Thurn-und-Taxis’ prosperity (and even its survival). The Dutch War of Independence prompts a virtual collapse of the Taxis system (Schobesberger). The Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars  result in economic crises that Thurn-and-Taxis have to weather. Swift changes in the balance of power in Europe in the early 1800s means that the Taxis have to pull off some astute business manoeuvring between Napoleon and the Habsburgs. Thurn-und-Taxis’ Princess Therese is especially instrumental in negotiating vital port agreements with Napoleon which keeps the company business going during wartime (Cole).

End of the Keyserliche Reichspost but Thurn-and-Taxis survives sans royal imprimatur
The Napoleon-dictated Confederation of the Rhine (Rheinbund) dissolves the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and therefore the Imperial Post➄. Thurn-und-Taxis are still able to continue operating as a private postal concern in western-central Europe. In 1810 Thurn and Taxis relocates its capital from Regensburg to Frankfurt am Main➅.

Issue No 1
In 1852 Thurn-und-Taxis (borrowing the recent English invention) introduces its own adhesive postage stamps. A minor hitch arising from this is that the company has to issue two sets of stamps in Germany, owing to the different currencies in use – the Northern Germanic states deal in silbergroshens while the Southern Germanic states deal in kreuzers [‘German States Stamps Thurn and Taxis A Brief History’, Stamp-Collecting-World, www.stamp-collecting-world.com].

Endgame and after for Thurn-und-Taxis
The shadow of an expanding Prussian military state forebode ill for the company’s future. The Thurn und Taxis’ business is past its best days and its entry into the German-Austrian Postal Association in 1850 earns it the displeasure of future chancellor Bismarck. With Prussia’s triumph in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) it’s army occupies Thurn-und-Taxis’ Frankfurt headquarters and the company is wound up in 1867 after being forced to sell all its postal contracts to the Prussian government for three million thalers.

⍋ St Emmeram Palast, Regensburg (T& T) (Photo: Pinterest)

The House of Thurn-und-Taxis is something of an anomaly among European nobility, acquiring its aristocratic standing and wealth not from land as is customary, but from a monopoly over an imperial postal service (Cole). Since its postal connexion ended, Thurn-and-Taxis finds its future financial security in brewing➆, with sidelights in the accumulation of property and land and the construction of palaces. Today Thurn-und-Taxis—and its current family head Albert, 12th Prinz of Thurn-und-Taxis, Regensburg—with its diverse business interests➇ still has a place among the richest noble houses of Europe.

Endnote: Thurn-und-Taxis, transnational mail mover
Branches of the Taxis family operate both locally and transnationally across Europe – Austria, Spain, Luxembourg, Italy, Hungary, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. While Thurn-und-Taxis are funnelling the imperial mail through its distribution networks to all points of the empire, other countries in Europe launch their own nationwide postal systems. Nikolaus Schobesberger contends that Thurn-und-Taxis ultimately was out of kilter with the prevailing trend – early modern Europe was witnessing the ascent of nation-states with strong central governments, calling for efficient national systems of relaying mail (itself an ingredient of nation-building) that could be controlled by the state…so France (from 1477) and England (from 1516) both introduced royal post services which functioned as a state monopoly (Schobesberger).

 

⍋ ‘Thurn & Taxis’ game

___________________________________________
➀ ‘Tasso’ means ‘badger” in Italian (features on the family crest)

➁  by the first half of the 17th century these narrow to just 15 km

➂ the Taxis’ couriers carry a coiled horn to alert towns and change-stations of their approach, and they transport the mail which include newspapers in a felleisen, a satchel encased in iron [‘Franz von Taxis and the invention of the Post’, (Museum for Communication, Nuremberg), www.artsandculture.google.com].

➃ it never amounts to a watertight monopoly, two northern Protestant princes (Brandenburg and Prussia) are able to create their own state postal systems in the second half of the 17th century, independent of the Imperial Post (‘Taxis invention of the Post’)

➄ the last postmaster-general of the Imperial Post is Prinz Karl Alexander von Thurn-und-Taxis

➅ having originated in Italy

➆ Taxis is no longer in the brewing business having sold its interests to the Munich-based Paulaner Group, but the Thurn und Taxi brand of bier is still stocked on retail liquor shelves

➇ there’s even a “Thurn and Taxis board game” for which the House no doubt receives royalties