TOPIC:

This postcard is rather intriguing. It was sent by one A. Poser, POW # 2336, from the Pietermaritzburg POW camp to his family in the Transvaal and depicts a jolly band of men drinking beer around a Ohlsson-Lager beer barrel.



Greetings to you all, papa

The Bloemfontein museum website gives only a single hit on the name Poser and that is for POW # 31046 Jakob/Jacobus Poser, a 29 year old German volunteer from Heltersburg (Heltersberg) in Germany. Given the rarity of the name Poser in South Africa, Jacobus was likely a family member of the man who sent the postcard.

Looking for clues for the unusual upbeat subject matter of the postcard, I came across a paragraph in a long article about the Pietermaritzburg Concentration Camp written by Elizabeth van Heyningen for the Natal Society Foundation in 2010 that may shine some light on it:

“Although I [Elizabeth van Heyningen] have written of the incarceration of the families and accounts often refer to the families as prisoners, in fact most were not. The camp people could visit Pietermaritzburg freely without passes. The war brought labour shortages to loyalist towns in the Cape and Natal, and many men were able to obtain fairly well-paid jobs on the railways, breweries and other businesses. Women, too, worked as seamstresses or occasionally in domestic labour”

So, perhaps, A Poser was imprisoned in Natal on the basis of a family member’s volunteering for the Boers and hailing from a country with great beer brewing traditions, was subsequently employed by what eventually became the South African Breweries to fill labor shortages caused by the war.

Hi EFV,

Definitely intriguing; I didn't get any hits from the usual corners of the internet.

One comment though; there appears to be a difference in handwriting between the body of the postcard and the top left corner.

I wonder if someone didn't misspell his surname; he did have quite an eloquent hand writing for the time.

What are your thoughts on the cursive portion of his surname?

Regards,
Shaun

Shaun, the left hand corner is in my opinion in the same hand, possibly added in haste at the last moment. The scribbles in front of his name read "Sender". The Poser family name is from Thuringen in Germany and not uncommon. Apparently there are no records available listing inmates of the Pietermaritzburg camp, perhaps Elmarie can help here.
Everhard

Everhard,

A couple of observations.

According to the POW Returns, No. 2336 was assigned to one Jan Adriaan VENTER, captured at Paardeberg. Most of the men in that range were captured with Cronje.



Also, I assume Poser was in transit when the postcard was written, as I am not aware that there was a permanent POW camp at Pietermaritzburg.

Or, as you alluded to in your first post, is it possible that in this case "P.O.W." indicates that the writer was "imprisoned" in Pietermaritzburg concentration camp? Unfortunately the Concentration Camp database draws a blank for the name Poser. However, a refugee camp scenario could explain the P.O.W. number discrepancy. Were Concentration Camp detainees given numbers?

A database of 642 people held in Pietermaritzburg Camp can be found here:

BCCD (Pietermaritzburg)


Neville

..

This postcard was sent to PO Box 194 Middelburg Transvaal.

This is what I was able to find.
See attached document showing that an FA Poser was paroled in Middelburg on 16 July 1919. The archive could have made a mistake with the number 2326 instead of 2336.

During the ABW, photographers sometimes wrote just one initial next to a name on the back of the photo and I believe this is also the case here.