An Interesting Journey

July 24, 2023July 24, 2023kira0030

I’m beginning an interesting journey to research and publish articles about my 1st cousin 3x removed Blanka Buring. Blanka is the sister of well known Australian wine expert Leo Buring. There are many, many websites, articles, books etc about Leo but very little about Blanka or her sisters Meta and Edelgarde. My main focus at the moment is Blanka. This will be a long term project which I’ll be able to work on in between my other work and interests.

No one in my immediate family had any photos of Blanka so I was thrilled to find one right at the start of this research.

I’ve done a small amount of editing to the photo as it is a newspaper photo and very poor quality. I haven’t been able to remove the discolouration and make it look passable yet.

Blanka was born in Adelaide, South Australia on 24 Mar 1881 and died in Avalon, New South Wales on 11 Jun 1956. She is the youngest surviving child of Theodor Gustav Hermann Buring and Henriette Friedricke Louisa Lina Dohrenwendt.

Blanka attended Norwood school and the Advanced School For Girls whose purpose was to prepare girls for entry into the University of Adelaide. She passed her Junior Examination in 1896 and Senior in 1898. Blanka then went on to study Invalid Cookery at the School of Mines in 1912 and Nursing at Adelaide Hospital (now Royal Adelaide Hospital) in 1913. In 1915 she also completed study at Queen’s Home which became the Queen Victoria Hospital. This study was possibly in midwifery or paediatric nursing.

After a time of nursing in Western Australia and after the death of her father she began travelling the world. Her trips throughout the 1920s and 30s included British Columbia, America, Crete, and Spain. I am yet to find out the full extent of her travels. The newspaper reports of her travels speak about her interest in social work particularly with regard to nursing and hospitals.

I am currently researching the influences in Blanka’s life growing up and whilst at university to see from where this interest in social work came. I have found connections to Catherine Helen Spence and indirectly Miles Franklin. Blanka’s uncle Heinrich Franz Rudolph Buring and his family were all part of the Adelaide Unitarian church right down through the generations to my mother. The Unitarian beliefs of social justice and individual beliefs (no one guiding creed) may have also influenced Blanka however I still need to confirm this.

I won’t go into detail of Blanka’s life achievements here on my blog just yet. This will come in future posts.

This is a far deeper dive into an individual’s life than I have previously undertaken. It differs from my usual genealogical research in that I wouldn’t usually look heavily into childhood or family influences in someone’s life. I do look at historical context and people’s achievements when researching but nothing like this depth of research. It is very interesting and has so many aspects of life in South Australia, feminism, German immigrants and Adelaide society that I am very happy to have found this wonderful person to research and write about. There is so little about Australian women’s achievements from the turn of the century that I’m hoping to add a small piece to the wider picture.

Another area where this research differs from genealogical research is the software I am using. Being a proponent of Free and Open Source Software I am using Zotero to gather and organise my research rather than a commercial, proprietary software such as Endnote or others. Not having been to university I hadn’t used this form of software before but I am finding Zotero extremely easy to use and will continue to use it in my future genealogical research.

The journey continues……….

Blanka Buring Investigated By Military Police Intelligence Section

May 28, 2022kira0030

On the 27th June 1940 Miss Stella Armstrong made a report to the police about Miss Blanka Buring. The following is a paraphrase of the original report which I obtained from the National Archives of Australia.

Miss Armstrong says that she met Miss Buring about two or three years ago at the Women’s Club in Elizabeth St, Sydney. Miss Armstrong believes that Miss Buring is of German nationality. Stella reported that Blanka had said to her she hated England and was going to visit her beloved Germany.

Miss Armstrong also reports that Blanka had received an unexpected dividend in 1939 and that she was deciding whether to buy a car, or a house in Avalon. Stella noted to the police that Blanka also had a sister in South Australia.

As I was unfamiliar with this kind of activity I did some searching for context. I knew that German people were interned during World War II but I didn’t realise that every day Australians of German descent were reported on and then questioned by the police.

During World War II the Police Subversive Organisations Branch combined with elements of the Commonwealth Police, Navy and Army to form the Military Police Intelligence Branch to fulfill the role of a domestic security service. This involved the monitoring and control of enemy aliens, internees, prisoners of war, and suspected enemy agents plus the prevention of espionage, sabotage, sedition, and trading with the enemy.

Transcript of the above statement

No 14 Police Station Manly 12 July 1940

We beg to report having interviewed Miss Blanka Buring of Plateau Road, Avalon, on the 11th, instant, with the following result.
Miss Buring stated that she reside (sic) alone, does not associate with the local residents, and drives to town twice or three times a week in her own car.
She is about 60 years of age and was born in Australia of German parents, who came to Australia from Germany when they were each three or four years of age. Her parents are now deceased, and during their lifetime neither of them visited Germany. They were engaged in business as wine merchants and her brother Leo Buring, who resides at Emu Plains, is still connected with the same business. She receives an income from the South Australian branch of this business. She has been residing in this district for about two years, and is considered to be of good reputation but of an eccentric nature, as she has been observed walking alone on the roadway muttering to herself.
She has no associates in this locality except that she occasionally calls at the local store and Post Office.
She stated that she had visited a number of foreign countries including Spain, Italy and Germany and was last in Germany in the year 1929 for a period of three weeks when she was investigating social service work. During the year 1936, she visited England, Spain and France. On her return to Australia she resided at Mosman and later moved to Avalon. She stated that she was a most loyal British subject, and that in regard to the war, her sympathies were definitely with the British. She said “I think it must be admitted that one can find some good in every country, and I do think that Germany was unjustly treated in the Versailles Treaty. Having travelled (sic) about the world a lot, I am naturally broadminded and people do not seem to understand my outlook. I do not remember ever making any remark that could have been interpreted as being disloyal.”
This person is not required to register as an alien.

There wasn’t anything further of note in this packet from the National Archives.

Apart from being astounded at this course of events I also learnt a lot about Blanka from her statement. I didn’t know from where she derived her income so finding out that she was supported by Leo’s business answers my questions about how she could afford her overseas travel. This also explains her owning her own house and car. I am pleased to know she was comfortable at this stage in her life.

Instead of thinking of her as eccentric as the report suggests we would now think of Blanka, perhaps as an introvert who kept to herself. In her own words she says that people didn’t understand her, “I am naturally broadminded and people do not seem to understand my outlook.” By this time in her life Blanka had worked as a nurse, volunteered on boards and in training new social workers. Her broad-mindedness would have served her well in those endeavours. Blanka wrote about the need for social workers in hospitals and investigated what other countries were doing in this regard during her travels however I have yet to ascertain whether she worked as a social worker herself in hospitals or elsewhere.

This blog post is part of a series I’m writing about Blanka Buring. The previous post in this series is:

An Interesting Journey