12 C O N T E X T 1 3 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 4 MALCOLM NOBLE ‘To obliterate forever Hunnish names’ As it became apparent that the war would not be ‘over by Christmas’, anti-German sentiment took hold in the British national psyche, leading to streets and places being renamed. The centenary of the start of the first world war has been marked by a large number of community heritage projects. Many of these are training volunteers to research the home front using archival, print and oral history sources. ‘How Saxby Street Got its Name’ goes further: by capitalising on the ethnically-diverse population of South Highfields, Leicester, family stories from around the globe have been collected. In this way the exhibition and accompanying catalogue explore the experience of the war globally and domestically. An important part of this is the built heritage of the war: memorials and other traces in the urban fabric. One of the most remarkable episodes was the change of several street names in response to anti-German hostility in 1918–19. Anti-German sentiment during the war saw places and streets renamed in Australia, the United States and Britain. Such acts offered an inexpensive way to demonstrate nationalism and express xenophobic feeling, so they tell historians much about identity. Towards the end of 1914, as it became apparent that the war would not be ‘over by Christmas’, anti-German sentiment started to take hold in the British national psyche and popular culture. Jingoistic journalists encouraged fear and suspicion. Rumours of spies and conspiracy theories abounded. Germans, naturalised or otherwise, were under permanent suspicion, had to register with police, and if the authorities considered them to pose a threat, were interned.1 While there were some riots in response to the sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania in May 1915, the hatred was not generally violent. All things German were to be avoided. German businesses suffered heavily. German culture had been in fashion: the music of Beethoven, Bach and especially Wagner had resounded from concert halls. In their place English composers, especially of nostalgic and nationalist songs, found new audiences.2 Germans had emigrated to Britain, the USA and Australia in the later 19th-century. Their names were given to businesses, streets and places. During the war, these became an embarrassment. George V changed the royal family’s name toWindsor from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. If they could, private citizens with Germansounding names followed suit. Anti-German sentiment inAustralia followed a similar trajectory of internment and intolerance. The entire German community, and other persons considered suspicious, were interned in New South Wales – what Gerhard Fischer has described as ‘an imagined internal enemy’.3 In the camps, German internees created huts in the style of farmhouses, and in one the main road was dubbed Kaiser-Wilhelm Street.4 The Nomenclature Act 1917 changed many Australian place names. For example, in New South Wales Germanton became Holbrook; German’s Hill, Lidster; and German Creek, Empire Vale.5 In all, References 1 Panikos Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst, Berg, NewYork, 1991; Prisoners of Britain, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2012 2 Samuel Hynes, AWar Imagined, Bodley Head, London, 1990 3 Nadine Helmi and Gerhard Fischer, The Enemy at Home, New SouthWales Press, Sydney, 2011 4 Ibid 5 CHWickens, OfficialYear Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, Melbourne, 1926 Saxe Coburg House, Mecklenburg Street (Photo: Andrew Thirlby) Gotha Street and the streets to its north, seen in 1915 and then with changed names in 1930
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