Before the discovery of diamonds and gold in South Africa, that is prior to about 1866, very few Jews settled there. Most of those who did were from Britain and the German lands.

Heinrich (later known as ‘Henry’) BERGMANN who was born in Dittenheim, Bavaria, a first cousin of my great-grandmother Peppi BLOCH (born SELIGMANN in Ichenhausen, Bavaria), was one of these intrepid early settlers. After a longer than usual sea voyage interrupted by bad weather and a mutiny, he arrived in Cape Town in 1849 just before the eruption of the Convict Agitation in that city. Soon after this, he joined the trading company founded by the MOSENTHAL brothers (from Kassel in Hesse), and worked with Phoebus CARO (from Posen in Prussia) in Graaff Reinet.

He must have been highly regarded by his employers because not much time elapsed before he was sent to the newly established frontier town of Aliwal North in the Eastern Cape to open a branch store there.

BERGMANN made a great success of this, and in 1860 returned to Europe to find a Jewish wife. He married Charlotte Jenny SCHUSTER, whose family was amongst the better-known in Frankfurt’s Judengasse. They returned to Aliwal North. Despite becoming increasingly wealthy and a pillar of society, BERGMANN took his own life. He was buried by his Dutch friends, the DE WET brothers, Koos and David.

All of the above is based on fact.

The circumstances leading to Bergmann’s suicide are obscure, and only hinted at in the records that I have seen.

I have recently published a novel, “Aliwal”, which weaves fact with fiction in order to reconstruct the life of my tragic relative, and to suggest a plausible reason for his untimely end. I feel that my book may be of interest to readers of these SIG postings because it explores many of the problems faced by European settlers to southern Africa in the decades before the discovery of diamonds and gold.

At present, the book is only available from an on-line print-to-order company, www.lulu.com. It may be bought as a paperback, or, at a lower cost, as a downloadable file from: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/aliwal/12558619

Adam Yamey, London, UK adamandlopa@yahoo.co.uk