Germans in the East End of London
The East End has been home to many nationalities and ex-pat communities over the centuries. Much has been written about the Huguenots, who fled religious persecution in the Low Countries to settle to their silk-weaving business in Spitalfields. Until the 1920s, there was a Chinatown in Limehouse to rival that north of Leicester Square today. And, of course, Brick Lane is today renowned as Banglatown.
But one of those communities, today almost forgotten, probably dwarfed the rest in size. Its final death knell was only sounded with the closure of Alie Street’s St George’s Church in 1997. But who today remembers London’s 16,000-strong German community?
Luckily, though the church itself held its final service on November 24, 1996, a mere handful of worshippers attending, its legacy is a rich library compiled by the church’s pastors over its 250-year history. The books were acquired by the British Library and were the subject of an exhibition earlier this year. They tell a fascinating story of two-and-a-half centuries of Anglo-German life in east London.
The Lutheran Church opened its doors to the parishioners of Goodman’s Fields in 1762, the fifth in the capital to cater to a large
and growing German-speaking congregation.
The man behind the new place of worship was Dietrich Beckmann, the rich owner of an East End sugar bakery. Whitechapel had many of these refineries at the time – the smell and the smoke were said to be overpowering – and they were almost exclusively staffed by immigrant German labour.
Beckmann recruited his cousin Gustav Anton Wachsel as pastor, from the city of Halberstadt, and Wachsel quickly acted to set up an English-German school to satisfy parents who were worried their children were already losing touch with their heritage and language. And it was Wachsel’s own private library that formed the core of the
collection the British Library would acquire more than two centuries later.
Over the years, books from the school were added, along with those which had belonged to the children and other parishioners.
Germans, like other immigrants, had to contend with
discrimination and prejudice, much of it sanctioned by law. But in 1769, William III,
himself from Orange in the Low Countries, passed the Toleration Act. As a result, St George’s could set up its own parish legislation.
The document the church elders drew up is still in the collection. But the library was much more than a dry reference source. The church encouraged its use as a lending library, and the children and their parents were enthusiastic borrowers of German folk and fairy tales. Some books were repeatedly borrowed over decades, and then centuries.
Travel literature, guide books, colourful engravings and street plans were also hugely popular as the parishioners soaked up knowledge of a land they had, increasingly as the years drew on, never seen.
The second half of the 19th century saw major expansion, with infants and secondary schools being added.
The church had a new
influx of parishioners in the 1930s, as refugees fled Hitler’s Germany. For a few months, the congregation was led
by the legendary Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Bonhoeffer was a theology professor from Berlin. While many of the church tolerated and even lauded the Fuhrer, Bonhoeffer travelled at home and abroad decrying Hitler’s evil record. The safest place for Bonhoeffer was probably in Whitechapel, but he insisted on returning to preach his
message in Germany.
In 1943 he was imprisoned by the SS, and on April 9, 1945, the beleaguered Hitler had
him hanged.
After the war, German wives of British soldiers entered the congregation, and numbers boomed again. But, at the close of 1996, following the dispersal of the core community, St George’s was placed in the care of the Historic Chapel Association.
A Whitechapel church might have seemed an unlikely home for such an outstandingly important collection. And, indeed, the church elders thought better of using a small room above the vestry to house 750 volumes when burglars broke in in 1995.
Now, though, the tomes are safe forever in the British Library. And a viewing (by appointment only) secures a fascinating glimpse into a little piece of Germany in the heart of the East End.