Paul Krüger

Stephanus Johannes Paulus Krüger, the president of the 19th century Transvaal Republic in what is now South Africa, was born on October 10, 1825 into a family of Prussian descent at Bulhoek in the Steynsburg district of what is now South Africa, at his grandfather's farm. Krüger, who was affectionately called "Oom Paul" (Afrikaans for "Uncle Paul") by his people, was fated to become a prominent leader of the Boer resistance that eventually was defeated by the might of the British military during the second Boer War. As a symbol of resistance to the British Empire, he was the subject of an autobiographical film released by Nazi Germany in 1941. They young Paul Krüger grew up on the farm Vaalbank, where his formal education was extremely limited. His real education was had as a frontiersman on the veld, a lifestyle that seasoned him for the hard road of rebellion that lay in his future. What is now South Africa was founded as the Cape Colony by the Dutch East India Company in 1652, with the founding of Cape Town. The British occupied the Cape Colony in 1795 and assumed official control of it in 1806, when The Netherlands lost sovereignty during the Napoleonic Wars. Cape Colony became the Cape Province. In 1836, Paul Krüger's father, Casper,became part of the "Great Trek" of Boers that had began two years earlier as they sought to flee British laws. The Boers, who spoke a dialect of Dutch known as "Afrikaans", were resistant to the British Empire's Anglicisation policies, as well as its laws on slavery (the UK had abolished slavery in the early 19th century). They also were disgusted by what they saw as the indifference of British authorities to the border wars they waged with indigenous peoples on the eastern frontier of the Province. In the 1830s and 1840s, approximately 12,000 Boers moved eastward into the interior to settle in the future Natal, Orange Free State and Transvaal Provinces to escape British authority. Krüger's father Casper later decided to settle in the district now known as Rustenburg. A veteran of the Great Trek, Paul had fought in three battles by the time he was 13. When he was 16 years old, Krüger choose a farm for himself at the foot of the Magaliesberg, where he settled in 1841. The following year he married Maria du Plessis, and the young couple accompanied his father to live in the Eastern Transvaal for a while. After the family had returned to Rustenburg, Krüger's wife and infant son died, likely from malaria (some sources say she died in childbirth). Krüger then married his dead wife's niece, Gezina du Plessis, who was his constant and devoted companion until her death in 1901. Altogether, Gezina Krüger gave birth to nine sons and seven daughters, though some perished in infancy as was common before antiseptic midwifery in the 20th Century. In time, Paul Krüger emerged as a leader due to this prowess on the battlefield. Starting as a field cornet in the commandos, he eventually became Commandant-General of the South African Republic. He also distinguished himself as a diplomat and politician, being appointed member of a commission of the Volksraad, the republican parliament that drew up a constitution. In 1873, Krüger resigned as Commandant-General, retiring to his farm, Boekenhoutfontein. However, in 1874 he was elected to the Executive Council and shortly after that became Vice-President of the Transvaal. Following the annexation of the Transvaal by Britain in 1877, Krüger became the leader of the resistance movement. That same year, he visited the UK for the first time as leader of a deputation. In 1878, he was part of a second deputation. The First Boer War (the "War of Independence" to Afrikaaners) started in 1880. Paul Krüger was elected President of the Transvaal on December 30, 1880. After defeating the British forces at the decisive battle at Majuba in 1881, Krüger was instrumental in negotiating the restoration of Transvaal's independence under official British overlordship (meaning the UK would provide for the Republic's defense and foreign policy). However, at the London conference of 1884, Kruger succeeded in regaining the independence of the Republic. Unfortunately for the Afrikaaners in the Transvaal, gold was discovered in the Witwatersrand and a destabilizing Gold Rush was on, bringing in large numbers of foreigners (called "Uitlanders" or "Ourlanders" in Afrikaans. The Gold Rush eventually set in motion the dynamics that led to the fall of the Republic as the British Imperialists (whose subjects made up most of the Uitlanders) began to covet the Transvaal anew. Denial of rights to the Uitlanders by the Republic gave the British Empire an excuse to act. During the New Year's weekend of December 29, 1895 to January 2, 1896), Leander Starr Jameson, the British Administrator of Southern Rhodesia, launched a raid on the Republic of the Transvaal with his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen. The raid was launched with the authority of the premier of the Capetown Province, Cecil Rhodes, and with the covert approval of Her Majesty Queen Victoria's government. Jameson intended his raid to trigger an uprising by British expatriate workers in the Republic, but it failed. Relations between Britain and The Transvaal Republic deteriorated further. The United Kingdom became upset when rumors circulated after the failed raid that the German Kaiser had offered protection to the Boer republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State, something which would have upset the balance of power in Africa and in Europe. In 1898, Om Krüger -- who had met with the Kaiser and his Chancellor Otto von Bismark during a European trip -- was elected President for the fourth (and last) time. The British responded by gathering troops on the borders of the Boer republics. Fearing imminent annexation, the Boers launched a preemptive strike against the nearby British colonies on the day after Krüger's 74th birthday, a strike which ignited the second Boer War. The last session of the Transvaal legislature, the Volksraad, began on May 7, 1900, as a British Army commanded by Field Marshal Frederick Sleigh Roberts (Lord Roberts), bore down on Pretoria, the capital. President Krüger left Pretoria on the 29th of May and was able to remain in the country until October, when he left South Africa on the Dutch warship De Gelderland, which had been sent by Queen Wilhelmina of The Netherlands to evacuate him. As his wife Gezina was too ill to travel, she remained behind, dying in their homeland on July 20, 1901. In exile, Krüger first lived in Marseille, France, then in The Netherlands, and then finally in Clarens, Switzerland, where he died on 14 July 1904. His body was returned to South African and on December 16, 1904, he was buried in the Church Street cemetery in Pretoria. Krüger became the subject of one of 'Joseph Goebbels'' lavish propaganda films, 1941's "Ohm Kruger". The wily old rebel was played by Oscar winning German actor Emil Jannings, who as "Uncle Kruger", was looking back on his life and struggles against the British Empire, which Nazi Germany was then struggling against. (Ironically, Hitler himself was an admirer of the British Empire, in theory.) Jannings appearance in the film, which distorted many facts to make the British seem far more villainous than they had behaved during the real second Boer War, was used against him after the war, as proof of his pro-Nazi leanings. Jennigs had to undergo de-Nazification, and never made another feature film after 1945.