MyPE

Community Business Directory, Event Listings, News and Views from Gqeberha, Nelson Mandela Bay

1915: German Club – Then and Now

By

This image is from the MyPE Editor’s Flickr Account – offering some topical daily images from a phone smarter than Alan, occasional images from a DSLR and scanned images of Port Elizabeth as he wanders around the Bay pretending to know a lot and sometimes succeeding in making a complete hash of it!

1915: German Club

awstratonpic
Image by awstraton

The Deutsche Liedertafel or German Club that stood on the site of the Park Gate Mansions (now Tenerife) in Western Road, prior to it’s being burned down by an infuriated crowd during the nights of 14, 15 and 16 May 1915.

This building was erected in the early 1880’s after the local German community raised four thousand pounds.

This handsome and commodious building comprised a lofty spacious hall surrounded by a series of rooms, which included a dining-room, a library, a billiards room, a bar, offices and reading room, all united to the main building by covered porticos.

The club flourished for over 35 years before meeting with a tragic end.

The black clouds of the 1914 war swept over the land and a further wave of indignation with the sinking of the Lusitania were the precursors to the systematic destruction of German property on 13, 14, and 15 May 1915 culminating in the looting, smashing and destruction by fire by an enraged mob.

Tenerife (Old German Club) Today:

This image is randomly selected from an ever growing repository of publicly available images taken in and around Port Elizabeth.

Many more Port Elizabeth images here.

The following two tabs change content below.

Port Elizabethan

This author is a 'catch-all' for occasional articles and letters written to MyPE. The Author of each article can be found in the signature at the bottom of each individual article.