Captain Martin KRIPPNER was one of
the colourful characters with which the colony in its early days seemed to abound.
He was a man of brilliant ideas but
perhaps rather impractical, unable to visualise the systematic difficulties of his
schemes.
Born 1819 at MANTUA, in the country
of BOHEMIA, he was the son of a blacksmith and a man of some education. At the age of nine
he entered an ecclesiastical school with the idea of studying for the priesthood but left
at the age of thirteen. With the basic education thus acquired he went on to College and
University in PRAGUE and VIENNA, passing legal examinations with honours.
VIENNA must have appealed to him
more than his native BOHEMIAN because he took a commission with the Imperial Austria Army,
joining as an Ensign and quickly rising to the rank of Captain. He was said to be a friend
of Archduke Maxmillian and a acquaintance of Emperor Franz Josef. He was decorated by
Wilhelm 1V, King of Prussia, and then went on to become a Knight of the Red Eagle.
It was while he was Commander of the
garrison at Frankfort-on-Main the he met and married Emily LONGDILL, an English woman, the
grand-daughter of a famous engraver.
Emily was a highly accomplished
woman, an artist and musician. She had studied at Frankfort University and was a fluent
speaker in French, Spanish and German. It was very unusual for a woman of her day to
achieve such an education and the PUHOI people who knew her in later years were unanimous
that she was a woman of great strength and character, high abilities, with surpassing
kindness and understanding.
Emily had a brother who in 1859 had
settled in NEW ZEALAND with his family and who urged the KRIPPNERS to come and join them.
Martin KRIPPNER had no private
income, only his Officer's pay and he had two sons to establish in the world. His friends
in VIENNA lived on a scale very different to that which his circumstances dictated and the
call from the LONGDILL family in NEW ZEALAND must have been very tempting.
With the promise of free land,
unlimited possibilities and a smaller social circle in which an Officer from Imperial
Vienna could cut a dash, Martin KRIPPNER resigned his commission, took ship on the
"Lord Burleigh" with his family and his household staff - the PANKRATZ and
SCHEIDLER families - and sailed for NEW ZEALAND.
Once arrived in AUCKLAND it didn't
take him long to become known in military and government circles and to become a close
friend of Sir George Grey. However his lack of private income still hindered his social
aspirations. There was land available but it had to be worked and, with plenty of good
places to choose from, Captain KRIPPNER took 40 acres at OREWA, 25 miles north of
AUCKLAND, a baron strip scarcely capable of supporting ti-tree.
In spite of his experience Capt.
KRIPPNER must have found much to his liking in this young colony. It had bought him
opportunity, freedom and equality and he must have thought back to the hard-working,
strong, preserving peasants of the BOHEMIA of his birth and realises that if any people
could wrest a living from reluctant soil, they could.
Perhaps his talks with Sir George
Gray on the subject of Immigration fired hid imagination, for he asked permission of the
government to organise a settlement of BOHEMIAN people in the AUCKLAND Province. This
Provincial Council agreed that all who came to NEW ZEALAND in the group could benefit
under the forty-acre system of land grants.
It was enough for Capt. KRIPPNER.
With characteristic enthusiasm he wrote to his brothers in BOHEMIA with lyric descriptions
of the Colony. And his brothers spread the word.
It was another version of the
symphonic song the people had been hearing from immigration agents from America and
Australia. Native caution made them hesitate enough to write to the PANKRATZ and SCHEIDLER
families to ask their opinion.
In spite of the fruitless two years
work at OREWA, these families, too, must have found something to praise in the colony, for
the would-be immigrants took their decision, sold their belongings, said good-bye to the
old world and departed for the new.
