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Dr Siegwardt BruehlDr Siegward Bruehl gained his qualifications from Halle in 1881 and passed his Staats Exam in 1882 in Berlin. Without any further delay he booked his trip for Australia and arrived in South Australia where he registered, and was accepted, Certificate 323, on 6 December 1882. During 1883 he was practising in Adelaide. However for as yet unknown reasons he left Adelaide for the north of South Australia and started a practice in Hawker in 1884. During his time there he travelled far and wide as many of the newly opened railway, agricultural or mining settlements had no resident doctor of their own. As early as January 1884 he was telegraphed from Blinman to attend a badly injured miner. To make it possible for a doctor to attend and for people to pay for his services several of these towns would implement some kind of Medical Benefit Scheme. After Farina had been connected by rail from Hawker Dr Bruehl was asked if he would be willing to operate under such a scheme. He would receive about £80 per annum for visiting the town once a month. Members at Farina would pay £1 per year for singles and £2 for married couples. Non members would have to pay £20 per visit if they needed a doctor. The scheme operated successfully until 1899 when Dr Bruehl left for Naracoorte. He was replaced in Farina by another German doctor. This time it was Dr Edward Hoche. He was later joined by his wife and two children but left for Birdsville in 1893. While working from Hawker Bruehl was much respected and did well financially. In September 1886 he was appointed Member of the Board of Advice for schools in the Hawker district. He had become a small landowner and in 1888 Rev J. Bennett leased a block of land in Fifth Street, Hawker from Dr Bruehl. To make it possible for Bruehl to attend to the sick who did not have the means to pay for his services Bruehl wrote a letter to the Hawker Council to appoint him as Medical Officer for the District to the Destitute Poor.
During the early 1890s he made a short visit to Germany where he married Minna Viesel before returning with her to Hawker. The couple had three children in Hawker, Charlotte Josepha, born 3 September 1892, Siegwardt Martin, born 6 February 1895 and John David on 15 March 1897. John died at Hawker on 4 January 1898. After leaving Hawker in 1899 and settling down in Naracoorte their fourth child Anton Justus was born there on 11 March 1900. Anton would eventually become famous and known all over the world,...... except in Australia. Dr Bruehl's stay at Naracoorte was only of a short duration. In 1903 he was practising at Denial Bay where he stayed until 1906. Once again he was working under the town's medical scheme and travelling hundreds of kilometres along the West Coast and Eyre Peninsula. After having experienced the dry conditions at Hawker and even more so at Denial Bay, the family now moved to Victoria. All postings there were of a rather short duration. Rupanyup for less than a year, Moyhu about 1 year, Woods Point lasted nearly three years, from 1910 to 1912. For 1913 there is no listing but in 1914 he was at Beech Forest. The next year he was working in Carlton and in 1916 at Northcote. By this time the first World War was raging and being a German, Bruehl noticed the dislike of Germans very much. From 1916 onwards he was investigated by the Australian Military Forces Office in Melbourne. Its report stated that Bruehl had been Naturalised in South Australia in 1891 but had lost his papers during a fire in Western Australia. It continued that while in Hawker he was a very popular man but left a broken man in health and also financially. He was supposed to be a 'drug fiend'. It described him as an old man of small statute, decrepit, heavily addicted to morphia and speaking with a strong German accent. He was also suspected of harbouring strong enemy sympathies. A year later, and after Dr Bruel had returned to Hawker, A letter from Keswick to the Hawker police stated that there was no record of Naturalisation and Bruehl was disfranchised by the Commonwealth Electoral Department for not being a British Subject. In a reply from the Hawker police it was stated that the doctor had lived in Hawker since April 1917 and was never away from home other than professionally. He had given no cause publicly to doubt his loyalty. Even so Keswick replied that in view of his age a prosecution would not be necessary but he should be paroled as a prisoner of war by the Hawker Police. Nothing was ever proved against Dr Bruehl and it is needless to say that it would have affected his work and mind to a great extent. In March 1919 he wrote a letter to Johann Viesel, possibly his wife's father or brother, which was intercepted by the Censors. In it he wrote that he was 'fearfully unhappy' about the state of affairs in Germany and longed to return to the homeland. We are heartily tired of this country, he wrote, as we can not enjoy the companionable and brotherly love which makes life worth living at home. The family did not return to Germany but in December 1920 they were granted a permit to leave Australia by ship for America. There remains one interesting question. Where was Bruehl in 1907/8? There does not seem to be a listing of him anywhere in Victoria. However, on 11 April 1908 a Hans Georg Bruehl was born in Berlin. Did the doctor and/or his wife go to Germany around that time? On 6 July 1940 Hans Georg Bruehl was arrested at Letchworth and transferred to the Loveday Interment Camp in South Australia. If he is the doctor's son, he would have been 12 years old when they left for America. Did he stay in Australia? Little is known about the family in America except for Anton. He died on 10 August 1982 after having become a world famous photographer. He had a lot of his work published in Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, Voque, US Camera and many other publications. He produced WWII posters, industrial shots, his most famous The Cadillac V16 chassis in 1929. Other works included everyday people in Mexico and portraits, including those of Louis Armstrong and Marlene Dietriech. If you like to find out more,
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