Information Sought: Alfred J. Eggeling – Kiautschou, Peking & Beyond….
Posted: February 22nd, 2022 | 12 Comments »Tony Eggeling writes to me seeking more information on his ancestor Alfred J. Eggeling. He’s hoping China Rhyming readers may have come across Alfred J. Eggeling in their researches. So here’s what he knows….
Eggeling was born and grew up in Edinburgh. However, his father Julius, who was a Professor of Sanskrit at Edinburgh University, was German and never took up British nationality. Julius is thought to have been quite involved in patriotic German societies in the Scottish capital.
Alfred emigrated to the German colony at Kiautschou (Jiaozhou) in 1899 and seemes to have lived in Peking working as a manager at the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank HQ in the Legation Quarter. It is thought he became fluent in Chinese.
Then comes World War One and Eggeling is faced with a decision…Forced to choose between loyalty to his native Britain or to Germany (his employer and whose community he seems to have made a home within), he appewars to have walked a tough line. Things then got even trickier when China joined the Allies in 1917. Eggeling appears to have gone into hiding to avoid deportation. One report puts him at the seaside resort of Peitaiho (Beidaihe, Hebei) in 1919, but he had gone by the time police arrived.
Back in Scotland Julius was also having some problems. He had gone on holiday to Germany prior to the outbreak of war an, though he apparently made strenuous but unsuccessful efforts to get back to Scotland once hostilities began, could not. He submitted his resignation from his Chair at the University and was not awarded a pension for his 30 years service. Julius spent the rest of the war lodging with his daughter in Germany and died there in 1918. Alfred’s sister was married to a German pastor with the surmame Wilm. Their son Paul Wilm, an agriculturalist, later went out to China at the invitation of his Alfred to work initially at dairy farms in Mongolia which were financed by development loans from the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank (DAB). Paul eventually married Charlotte (Lotte) Cordes, the (Chinese speaking) daughter of the German Consul in Peking. Before moving into the diplomatic service Cordes had been Alfred’s superior at the DAB.
Paul Wilm later wrote an entertaining account of his career in China which adds a few interesting details about the activities of his ‘Onkle Bob’, but also mentions a rift that opened between them that caused he and Charlotte started to dislike Alfred, though the reasons why are unclear. It may have been a result of a 1927/8 court case at the U.S. Court in Shanghai in which Alfred (via his control of a U.S. State of Delaware shell company) was accused of defrauding the DAB of a significant sum. The bank appears not to have uncovered the alleged fraud for two years, Alfred having loaned himself the money towards the end of 1924 in the form of a mortgage on a property in Tientsin.
Alfred does seem to have engaged in some rather dubious activities. During the war he was (according to the pro-British press) seen as pro-German by virtue his actions – i.e. absconding with the ledgers of the DAB so as to frustrate its liquidation. There was also allegations (unproven) that he was plotting with senior members of the German Legation to sabotage the railways and burn Weihaiwei (Weihai).
Alfred was also involved in the reformed Peking Gazette in 1913, foermly a Chinese government publication but then reformed as a more commercial, and Republican-oriented, newspaper. It is claimed he employed a young Eugene Chen (the influential Trinidadian-Chinese later to become foreign minister of the Kuomintang) as editor at the outbreak of World War One, when the sitting editor, an Englishman, was considered too anti-German for Alfred’s taste, it is said. Chen’s contacts amongst the competing factions in the Beiyang government after WW1 and the onset of the Warlord Era later put up the money to buy the paper from Alfred.
Anyway, some, part, all of not much of this may actually be true and Tong Eggeling continues to dig in various archives (subject to the world of covid!) in the UK, France, Germany and China.
Any help on the enigmatic and mysterious Alfred Eggeling much appreciated….
What year was he born? Did he pass away in 1946?
And what is his full name? (The ‘J.’ means what?)
the ‘J’ is for Julius –
Alfred Julius Eggeling 1876 – 1952(?)
His elder brother Julius Franz Wilhelm (‘William’ Or ‘Willi’) Eggeling, who was a GP in Fife, Scotland, died in 1946.
Thanks a lot! In The North China Desk Hong List 1938, there was a company (insurance agents) in Peking (Beijing) called ‘Karius & Eggeling’, held by Alfred J. Eggeling and Max Karius. Do you know their relationship and who is Max Karius?
I have found a ‘M. Karius’ (喀佑斯), who was the manager of Telge & Schroeter (泰来洋行) in Tientsin (Tianjin) in the 1900s and 1910s. This company built the Zhongshan Bridge in Lanchow (Lanzhou), and the Tsinghua University Library in Beijing.
Thankyou Y. Huang! This is very interesting and is also new information for me. The North China Desk Hong lists have been very useful but there are big gaps in the date sequence of those that have been digitised and made available on the internet.
In it’s September 8, 1917 issue, the North China Herald reported:
“The following letter from the Minister of the Interior to the Military Commissioner for Sungkiang and Shanghai should prove interesting as detailing some of the special directions in which the Germans still in China are exerting themselves. The letter is dated August 26 and is as follows: – The Minister for Foreign Affairs informs me that the diplomatistsbhave advised him that Germans resident in Peking are engaged in intrigues for disturbing the public peace, and he asks us to hild an investigation in the matter and to have the necessary preventive measures taken. We have advised the Prefect of Police in Peking of it and also the commander-in-chief of the infantry in Peking. We are sending herewith a summary of information which we have received and we ask you to send us an account of the measures which you take.
The ex-director of the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank, Cordes, and his agent Eggeling, have paid to various foreign and Chinese bad characters money to destroy the Chinese Eastern Railway, to set Weihaiwei on fire and to disturb the public peace. The correspondent of a German newspaper in Shanghai, residing in Peking, Kreiger, and his assistant Troppman are spreading false news on the Russian situation and about the other Allied Powers in the hope of breakingthe bonds between Chi a and the Allies.
The representative of Calowitz & Co., Bross, and the representative of Krupps have bough munitions for the local bandits.
The manager of Siemens Electrical Engineering Co., Pfutzenreuter, has helped German and Austrian prisoners of war taken by Russia to escape into Chinese territory.
The Director of Telge and Shroeter, Karius, and his accomplice, Dello, have combined with the Hunghutze sincr the third year of the Republic for the purpose of destroying the Chinese Eastern Railway.
The German vagabond “Ka-la-ting” has gone to Kalgan to join the Hunghutze of Hsinminfu for the same purpose, and the Turkish Jew “Tsi Se-pei”, a German protégé, has helped Austrian and German prisoners of war taken by Russia to escape into Chinese territory.”
On July 9, 1927 Max Karius and Alfred J. Eggeling are mentioned in the North China Standard newspaper as two of the chief mourners paying their respects to Yuksin Cordes, the wife of the late Heinrich Cordes, former German Consul and a director of the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank. Cordes had recently died from oesophageal cancer in Germany. Karius is described as the manager of the Machiao-pu Brick Factory, and Eggeling as a ‘retired financial man.’
So in summary, Karius, Eggeling, and Cordes were close friends within the small German community in Peking.
Thank you Eggling! The information is very important. I can recognize some people and firms, in the brackets are their Chinese names or old translation,
Heinrich Cordes (柯达士)
Alfred J. Eggeling (鄂葛岭)
A. Pfuetzenreuter
Max Karius (喀佑斯)
O. Dello (德罗) mentioned by Victor Segalen (谢阁兰) and George Ernest Morrison (莫理循) as a killer who killed a person in Kansu (Gansu) Province in 1909, but Robert Sterling Clark (柯拉克) said Dello had nothing to do with that. Dello was just an accountant who was working for the Telge & Schroeter to build the Yellow River Bridge (now Zhongshan Bridge) in Lanchow (Lanzhou).
M. V. Calatin (嘎拉廷, Wade-Giles romanization Ka-la-ting)
Deutsch-Asiatische Bank (德华银行)
Siemens China Electrical Engineering Co. (西门子电机厂/西门子电气公司)
Telge & Schroeter (泰来洋行)
Machiapu Steam Brickery (马家堡机器砖厂) Machiapu (Majiapu马家堡) is a place in Beijing, now near the Beijing South railway station.
From October 1918 to 1919, about one hundred German people were held in the Yunju Temple云居寺 (Xiyu Temple西峪寺/西域寺) in Beijing. The first 21 people, including Heinrich Cordes, M. V. Calatin, Constantin von Hanneken (汉纳根) and his wife, Hans von Hellfeld (贺尔飞) and his wife, entered the Yunju Temple between 1918-10-24 and 1918-11-08. If Alfred J. Eggeling did not escape, he would be sent into this beautiful temple with them too.
I am searching the answers of these questions:
1. The name of Alfred J. Eggeling’s wife, and her birth and death year. (A Chinese book published in 1981 said she is a daughter of Heinrich Cordes. Is it wrong?)
2. The names of Alfred J. Eggeling’s children.
3. The Chinese name of Yuksin Cordes (née Chou).
4. The Chinese names of Paul Wilhelm Wilm and Charlotte Cordes.
I am very sorry, I did not write your name correctly. Hope you can forgive me. Thank you again, Eggeling!
Thankyou again Y. Huang for all your research. It is very interesting. I think the book you mention from 1981 must be incorrect. I am curious where the author got their information and whether he/she has cited a source for the idea that Alfred Eggeling was married to a daughter of Heinrich Cordes. Paul Wilm was married to Charlotte (‘Lotte’) Cordes. Paul was Alfred Eggeling’s nephew – so this may be the source of the confusion.
As far as I know Alfred did not have any children and was married once, very late in life (after 1945) to a German woman by the name of Richter, but whether this was her maiden name or that of her husband from a previous marriage I am not sure. Alfred did not have any children as far as I know. In any case Alfred tried to obtain British passports for his himself and his new wife but these were refused.
I am guessing that after the defeat of Germany in 1944 and the imminent defeat of the KMT in China by the Communists that Alfred was seeking diplomatic protection from the country of his birth in case his business interests were damaged by the new Communist regime.
Incidentally, Max Karius, was buried in the German and International Cemetery when it was located within the old Beijing city wall near the Dongbian Gate. In 1949 the cemetery was moved to the eastern suburbs to Qi Ke Shu near Jiuxian-qiao but only 14 headstones now survive – one of which belongs to Max Karius and another to Yuksin Cordes. I do not know if Alfred Eggeling was buried here too, but it seems likely.
P.S. I am sorry I do not know the Chinese names of Paul and Lotte Wilm or Yuksin Cordes
Hello Eggeling! The information is very interesting. Yestereday I asked the Foreigners’ Cemetery in Qi Ke Shu, the cemetery told me that they checked their name list, but did not find Max Karius, Yuksin Cordes or Alfred Eggeling. They also told me that there are some old headstones not in their name list, because the names on these headstones are too vague.
So how do you know Max Karius and Yuksin Cordes are in this cemetery in Qi Ke Shu? Next month I would like to go to this cemetery to find Karius, Yuksin Cordes and Alfred Eggeling. If I know the birth and death year of Karius and Yuksin Cordes, maybe I can find their headstones or even Alfred Eggeling’s more easily!
Welcome to provide more information.
My apologies Y. Huang. The 14 headstones were moved from Qi Ke Shu to the new German Embassy site at 17 Dongzhimen Outer St., Chaoyang, in 1998 – but I’m not sure if the burials themselves were also moved. I have emailed you with more details
Yuksin Cordes (1881-1934)
Max Karius (1869-1944)