Siegfried Hottelmann, An Opportunistic Migrant, Part 2

Siegfried Hottelmann deserted ship in Adelaide in 1938, came to Sydney and met Ellen Royall. They were married within six weeks. But he was German, and was sent into internment because of the war. Ellen joined him, and discovered that he was a Baron. After the war they found a life in Sydney. This is Part 2 of 2.

1. Siegfried Hottelmann
An Opportunistic Migrant (Part 2)
Research by Glenn Martin, 2024

2. Siegfried Hottelmann (born 1911 in Germany) and Ellen Royall
(born 1913 in Sydney) were married in Sydney on 1 July 1939 after a
brief romance. The Second World War broke out in September
1939. On 2 August 1940, Siegfried was arrested and taken to Tatura
internment camp in Victoria.

3. A daughter, Sieglinde, had been born on 20 July 1940.
Ellen was not arrested, but she was in Sydney living with the baby alone
now, and it was difficult, especially with finances.
Siegfried was in the Tatura camp for single men, mostly Germans who had
been living in Australia before the war. Some were Nazis, some were Jews.
And some of them knew that Siegfried was a Baron. He had been
recognised by a man who had worked for his grandfather.

4. There were around 1,000 men at Tatura Camp 1.
Life in the camp was based on routines and orders. Siegfried
avoided any positions of authority.
He used the name “Hottelmann”, not “von Einsiedel”.

5. Siegfried wrote letters to Ellen. He worried about her and the baby. Ellen was
now considered to be a German citizen. He suggested that she go to the Swiss
Consul and seek help from them.
Ellen requested that she be allowed to join Siegfried in internment. By now
there was a camp for families. In March 1942, Ellen and young Sieglinde joined
Siegfried, and they moved into Camp 3 at Tatura.

6. And so, Ellen learned that her husband was a Baron back in Germany.
Siegfried was involved in camp initiatives to be productive, which required
some ingenuity. He had many useful ideas. He started up an industry for
knitting belts and bags (macrame). He said he “worked that up efficiently”
and had a process ready to be patented. One suspects that Ellen’s
dressmaking skills were a contributing factor to this enterprise.

7. At the end of 1943, and into 1944,
Siegfried was unwell. He had chronic
dyspepsia. He was diagnosed with a
duodenal ulcer and put on a special
diet. He spent some time in the
camp’s Waranga Hospital.
Internees were starting to consider life
after the war. Some of them wanted
to go back to Germany. Siegfried’s
views oscillated. He may have been
thinking about the position and the
estate he had left behind.

8. Ellen was also thinking about life after
the war. Siegfried did not know what
work he could get in Australia. He had
been stopped from being a seaman
before the war because he was
German. He had no money from his
family in Germany.
Ellen wrote letters to her three sisters and
asked them for help in finding a place to
live in Sydney.
In February 1945, another baby was born
– Ellen Waltraud Hottelmann. And soon
after, a photographer came to the
camp to take photos of the internees.

9. The photographer, Ronald Stewart, took this photo of the Hottelmanns
with the Dannenberg family, on 10 March 1945. Heinrich Dannenberg
had been a wool buyer in Australia.
At the end of the war, the government held an inquiry to determine
which Germans should be deported back to Germany.

10. Justice William Simpson headed the
internment inquiry. He had previously
been the Director-General of Security.
The inquiry deported nearly 300
Germans.
Siegfried and Ellen were interviewed in
February 1946.
Simpson already knew about Siegfried
from his former role as head of security,
and he was sympathetic. He simply
didn’t understand why Siegfried did not
want be known by his title, Baron von
Einsiedel.
Siegfried and Ellen were released on 21
March 1946. But where would they go?

11. Housing in Australia was tight after the war, just as money was
tight. Siegfried and Ellen went to live with Ellen’s youngest
sister Rose, who had married in 1940. It was at Rockdale
(shown above), not far from the boarding house where Ellen
had lived.
There were three children now; a son had been born in 1946.
After a few years, they obtained a house at Revesby, and
that is where they lived for the rest of their lives.

12. What did Siegfried do? He went back to being a seaman, on board
the Canberra, a steam ship that carried passengers in Australian
waters. And although he was still Hottelmann, he began to accept
his identity as Baron von Einsiedel. When the ship was in port,
journalists pursued him for comments about it.
“But,” he told them, “it is a landless title now, because Saxony is part
of Eastern Germany, and the lands have been taken by the Soviets
to settle their peasantry.” (Cairns Post, 17 August 1946)

13. Following the internment inquiry, Ellen became known as “the
slim dressmaker who married a German Baron, against her
father’s wishes”. Newspapers around the country picked up the
story with relish.

14. Did Siegfried ever go back to Germany?
It would make sense if he didn’t, because the estate
had gone, and as a Baron, he may have been
regarded suspiciously by the Soviet authorities.
He became naturalised in 1966. Finally, he was an
Australian citizen.
But he may have paid a visit to (East) Germany. We
have one clue: in May 1972 there is a Passenger
Arrivals ticket for him, alone, coming back to
Australia after one month overseas (National
Archives of Australia). He was coming from
Singapore, but before that….?
As far as we know, he did not go overseas again.

15. Siegfried continued his life as a sailor. He lived to be 69, dying on
28 December 1980. He had been a resident of suburban
Revesby for nearly 30 years. He had rejected the world of the
German Baron, but that world was consumed twice over: by
Hitler’s Third Reich, and then by Soviet Russia.
Australia was his chosen sanctuary, and Ellen was his love.
Ellen died on 14 July 2006, aged 92, leaving three children
behind her. All three of her sisters had already died.
Plaque of Siegfried
Hottelmann made at Tatura
internment camp and held
in the Tatura museum’s
collection.

16. Ellen Royall is Glenn Martin’s father’s cousin.

17. This slide set is Part 2. See Part 1 for the
beginning of the story.
Much of the information for this story came
from materials in the National Archives of
Australia.
Glenn Martin’s books on family history can be
seen and purchased at:
www.glennmartin.com.au
© Glenn Martin, 2024