[Vwoolf] Of possible interest

[Stuart N. Clarke]

“And if he says that he is fighting to protect England from foreign rule, she will reflect that for her there are no 'foreigners', since by law she becomes a foreigner if she marries a foreigner.” (“Three Guineas”)

Over to Australia . . .
Bill, full name, Willy Karl Arthur Shaufelberger, was born in Zurich, Switzerland, on 25 October 1902, into a wealthy business family.  We have no information on his early life other than that he qualified in Zurich as an accountant, did his army service in Switzerland and was enlisted in the reserves as a machine gunner.  He came to Australia in August 1925, apparently on the recommendation of a friend who operated a sporting goods business.  His first home in Australia was ... in Melbourne.  His passport listed his occupation as businessman and he had a share in the friend’s sporting goods business but in this first period he also worked as Secretary to the Swiss Consul and Nestle as an accountant.

While in Melbourne he married Phyllis Jean Cattanach of South Yarra, whose father, AR Cattanach was Principal of the Prahran Technical College and a leading figure and innovator in the fields of adult and technical education.  In April 1928, he and Phyllis visited Switzerland for a year, probably associated with Bill’s involvement in family business and after returning briefly to Australia, moved to England in July 1930.

They did not come back to Australia until February 1934.  We do not know anything about their time away, except that it was longer than they wanted.   Bill had not previously arranged a re-entry permit and this had never been a problem before – but the tighter conditions of the early thirties meant years of lobbying before he and Phyllis could get back in.   Phyllis was Australian-born and had been an Australian citizen at the time of her marriage.  However, under the law of the time, she lost her Australian citizenship on marriage and was also unable to return.

Loss of citizenship by women on their marriage was an issue of concern to many in the 1920s and 1930s.  It was very common practice internationally for a woman to lose her citizenship when marrying a foreigner.  Sometimes, depending on local law, this meant that she gained citizenship of her husband’s country but not infrequently, the woman became stateless.  At the instigation of activists on the issue, it was discussed at a number of international forums.  In general, Australia’s approach before and immediately after the second world war tended to be somewhat two-faced – voting for reform at international meetings but leaving its own legislation unchanged.

After the war, the situation in Europe and potential loss of citizenship became a major issue for women considering marrying men whose home countries were in a very bad situation or under communist control.  The fiancée of the Victorian state representative, Edgar Mohl, faced a similar situation.

Australia finally changed the law to allow women marrying foreigners to retain citizenship in 1946 and in 1948 created full gender equality in the law.

Bill and Phyllis returned to Australia in 1934 but this time to Sydney. ...

Phyllis Schauffelberger died in 1937 and Bill, probably for a combination of personal and business reasons, returned to Europe between April and November 1938.  Bill became a citizen in 1939.  Foreign residents were not encouraged to take up citizenship as is the case now and the process required Bill to place an advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald so that any objections could be recorded and he was vetted by a team of two officials who interviewed  referees.  The elite nature of the bridge world meant that Bill was not short of prominent advocates.  His main referees were the Parliamentary Draftsman, Edward Cahalan and Hubert Millingen, a prominent businessman and husband of the pioneering bridge author, player and teacher, Myra Millingen who had died in 1936.  The officials’ final verdict was the Bill ‘seems a good sort’ and his citizenship was approved.

His immigration worries were therefore over but his family and personal life continued to be something of a window into the murky state of immigration requirements in the 1940s and early 1950s.  During his return to Europe after his first wife’s death, he met Margaret (Greta) Schaffer in Vienna and in 1939, narrowly before the beginning of war, brought her back to Australia.  They married in July 1939.  It is clear that Bill assumed that Greta automatically gained citizenship by marrying him in the same way that she automatically lost her German citizenship.  However, the rules were that she was required to apply and there was a small time window for the citizenship to be granted more or less automatically because of marriage.  Otherwise the normal lengthy process applied.  The fact that Greta was not a citizen was discovered only later.  Lobbying and legal intervention got a waiver of the requirements but it was again a reminder of the fragile position of married women.

Bill’s history also brought to light another little known aspect of Australia’s past immigration policy.  After the war, he also applied for an entry permit for Jeanette Beer, a former Viennese who had been living in Switzerland since 1938.  Jeanette had secretarial qualifications and Bill guaranteed that he would employ her and ensure that she was not a charge on the state after her arrival.  Normally, such an application would have a reasonable chance of success as Australia had embarked on a massive immigration program.  However, there was a problem with Jeanette’s application – she was a Jew.  It is not widely known but from mid-1946, Australia had a quota for Jewish immigrants.  In any passenger ship bringing migrants, no more than twenty-five per cent could be Jews.  In 1948 the quota was extended to planes.  The definition used was a racial not religious one.  The NSW representative [bridge] player, John Makai, for example, came from a Hungarian family with Jewish origins that had been Catholics for some generations.    However, when he tried to bring his brother over after the war, he was classified as a Jew for quota purposes.

There were a number of other restrictions on Jewish immigration in the post- war period, driven in large part by Government concern that public opposition to Jewish immigration would bring down its broader immigration reform of bringing in large numbers of non-English speakers and displaced persons from Europe, which was already treading on thin ice in terms of public acceptance. In Jeanette’s case, it was noted that she was a refugee from Austria, the current and future status of which was still very uncertain, being then under Soviet occupation.  It was agreed that processing of her application would be deferred until peace treaties had been completed that would clarify whether Austria had obligations to take back its Jewish refugees from the Nazi era.  There is no record of the application ever being processed again.


Bridge players may like to look at the whole memorial article:
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.abf.com.au/about-abf/biographies/bill-schaufelberger/__;!!KGKeukY!lcXuxJ3KvMM_kS0_PFRZD9voVnfjAan1Na6CdUmLuXD9FopQi5ZSQSmjzhrUoaCijJs$ 

Stuart
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