Visitors from Germany pay their respects to Chinese city their forefathers occupied

A little more than 100 years after the outbreak of World War I, a group of German veterans' descendants visited Qingdao in Shandong province early this month, praying for world peace and saying sorry to the Chinese people for what German imperialism did in the city.

The group of 23 visited places where their ancestors served as soldiers before and during the war.

Qingdao was occupied by Germany from 1897 and the city was the only battleground in Asia during World War I. In the Qingdao conflict, Germany and Japan fought for control of Qingdao and surrounding areas. Germany was vanquished and most German soldiers were taken to Japan as captives.

Georg Mueller, whose grandfather was drafted into the German navy in 1912 and was in Qingdao for two years, organized the visit.

"We came here to seek peace and deepen the friendship between two countries," he says.

Mueller says that when he was a child, his grandfather told of his days in Qingdao. The grandfather described Qingdao as an unforgettable city on the coast whose residents were kind to Germans, Mueller says.

"As time passes, my grandfather's tale becomes an ever distant memory, but the city of Qingdao, like a beautiful Asian pearl within my heart, is always with me."

Mueller began to search books and newspapers about Qingdao's connections with Germany 30 years ago. It was not until 2012 that he traveled to the city with his wife and finally saw where his grandfather lived.

He was surprised by how much and how well German architectural heritage in the city had been preserved. A hotel and sandy beach that figured in his grandfather's tales are still there 100 years later.

"I could imagine my father walking out of the hotel, heading to the beach and going for a swim," Mueller says.

After Georg Mueller returned to Germany he wrote an article for a local newspaper calling on more German descendants to trace any ancestors who were in Qingdao, and he says that helped him with the recent visit.

Mueller, 63, a doctor who specializes in emergency treatment for victims of disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis, says his grandfather, who was a champion of human rights, had a great bearing on his career.

"My grandfather told me that human rights could not be guaranteed during Germany's colonial rule in Qingdao. He felt sad when he saw many innocent people were seized without reason."

What the German army did 100 years ago was bad for Sino-German relations, he says.

Another of the visitors, Petra Gabriel, a writer, say German soldiers had gone into Qingdao uninvited and brought violence with them.

Gabriel says her grandfather was a German soldier in the city from 1912 to 1914. She learned of his story through 10 letters and photo albums her two cousins had kept. The letters from her grandfather in Qingdao were sent to his hometown.

She says that she realized from the letters that Chinese women had found her grandfather very attractive, and he had become acquainted with a well-educated woman who was deeply steeped in Chinese culture.

My grandfather never forgot this beautiful Chinese woman, so I wrote a novel named Die Konkubine (The Concubine) in memory of him.

"My grandfather knew a watch repairer when he stayed in Qingdao, and later the watch repairer introduced my grandmother to my grandfather."

Dieter Schmidt, 77, was the only second-generation relative of a German soldier in Qingdao among the visiting group. His father was among the earliest batch of German army dispatched to Qingdao at the beginning of the 20th century. As an engineer and an architect his father worked on projects including setting up a naval base and building a house for the governor.

Many buildings still look the same as the original image in the photo album Schmidt's father left recording his time in Qingdao, Schmidt says.

"I am so excited to see Qingdao is making a big effort to protect these historical buildings well," he says, adding that in Germany a lot of money has been spent restoring old buildings damaged during World War II.

Another of the visitors to Qingdao was Hans-Joachim Emil Karl Schimidt, a historian who specializes in China, Germany and Japan history around World War I.

He says he began to research the period many years ago after coming across a box containing diaries written by German soldiers and other documents in a house he had just bought.

German military occupation of Qingdao from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20 century is one focus of his research. Since 2002 he has gone around Qingdao, Germany and Japan collecting records of more than 5,000 German soldiers and created a website for them.

A little more than 5,000 German soldiers and civilians were settled in Qingdao when the war between Germany and Japan broke out in 1914, Schimidt says.

About 200 people died in military conflict, 4,700 were shipped to Japan as prisoners, 75 managed to escape back to Germany, and another 250 civilians and 150 servicemen were put in prison in China. Chinese residents treated German prisoners well, Schimidt says.

A lot of documentary evidence of German occupation in Qingdao was destroyed in a fire, he says, and he hopes scholars in China and Germany can help him find reliable historical records of the period.

In addition to the group of German soldiers' descendants that visited Qingdao, 24 members of a German choir that has close ties to the city visited recently. Its logo resembles a Chinese copper coin inscribed with four Chinese characters meaning "Chinese Qingdao".

A group of German sailors who visited Qingdao at the beginning of the 20th century formed the choir in Esslingen, in what is now Baden-Wuertemberg, in 1911.

Dieter Benze, who headed the choir on the visit, says the sailors established the choir out of a sense of nostalgia for Qingdao. The choir has been active for a century, he says, and members gather every Tuesday to sing and occasionally give public performances. Membership of the choir has extended beyond descendants of the sailors to include other music lovers.

huqing@chinadaily.com.cn

The choir formed by descendants of German soldiers stationed in Qingdao during World War II perform in China. Provided to China Daily

(China Daily European Weekly 11/14/2014 page28)