Kōrero: Citizenship

During the First World War some people of German descent who were living in New Zealand – even some who had been naturalised – were interned as ‘enemy aliens’. Businessman Gustav Kronfeld (seated, centre), though naturalised in 1893, came under suspicion because of his German birth and was imprisoned. He wrote to the minister of justice because being declared an enemy alien was a source of great worry to him. He was particularly concerned that his children who had been born in Samoa of his Samoan wife Louisa (seated, left) might be deprived of the privileges of British nationality.