Bernhardt Otto Holtermann (29 April 1838 – 29 April 1885) was a successful

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...

miner, businessman, politician and photographer in Australia. Perhaps his greatest claim to fame is his association with the Holtermann Nugget, the largest gold specimen ever found, long, weighing and with an estimated gold content of , found at Hill End, near Bathurst, New South Wales. This gave him the wealth to build a mansion in North Sydney, which is now one of the boarding houses at Sydney Church of England Grammar School (known as the Shore school).

Early life

Holtermann was born in

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. He emigrated in 1858 to avoid Prussian military service. He departed Liverpool aboard the ship ''Salem'' and reached

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

in August after a journey lasting 101 days.

Mining

After working at a variety of jobs, he teamed up with Ludwig Hugo 'Louis' Beyers. They began prospecting around Hill End, New South Wales. Years of unrewarding labour followed. On 22 February 1868, Holtermann married Harriett Emmett, while Beyers married her sister Mary. In 1871, the Star of Hope Gold Mining Company, in which he and Beyers were among the partners, struck rich veins of gold. On 19 October 1872, the Holtermann Nugget was discovered. Not strictly speaking a nugget, it was a gold specimen, a mass of gold embedded in rock, in this case

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica ( silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical ...

. Holtermann attempted to buy the specimen from the company, offering £1000 over its estimated value of £12,000 (about AU$1.9 million in 2016 currency, AU$4.8 million on the 2017 gold price), but was turned down, and it was sent away to have the gold extracted. Disheartened, he resigned from the company in February 1873. When the Hill End Borough Council was constituted on 6 August 1873, Holtermann was elected an

alderman An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council member chosen by the elected members t ...

of the first council. In October 1874, Holtermann was elected an alderman in a special election for the Belmore Ward of the Borough of St Leonards.

Later life

He built a large mansion, "The Towers" in North Sydney, complete with a stained glass window depicting himself and the specimen. Located at a panoramic location near Blue and William streets, he resided there until his death in 1885 and its site is now the Sydney Church of England Grammar School. He invested wisely and kept his wealth, allowing him to take up his true passion of photography. Sydney Harbour from the Holtermann residence St

Sydney Harbour from the Holtermann residence St

Holtermann financed and possibly participated in Beaufoy Merlin's project to photograph

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and exhibit the results abroad to encourage immigration. The work was taken up after Merlin's death in 1873 by his assistant,

Charles Bayliss Charles Bayliss (1850-4 June 1897), photographer, was born in Hadleigh, Suffolk, England in 1850.albumen silver photographs which join together to form a continuous 978-centimetre view of Sydney Harbour and its suburbs." Some of the photographs, including the panorama, were displayed at the

Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition The Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, the first official World's Fair to be held in the United States, was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from May 10 to November 10, 1876, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the ...

, where they won a bronze medal. The panorama was also displayed at the 1878 Exposition Universelle Internationale in Paris. Holtermann and Bayliss also made the largest glass plate negatives produced in the nineteenth century. These were made in Holtermann's tower in 1875, and three are held in the

Holtermann Collection The Holtermann Collection is the name given to a collection of over 3,500 glass-plate negatives and albumen prints, many of which depict life in New South Wales goldfield towns. It also includes numerous photographs of Australian rural towns a ...

at the State Library of New South Wales. Almost seventy years after Holtermann's death, more than 3,000 of the glass negatives created by Merlin and Bayliss were retrieved from a garden shed in the Sydney suburb of Chatswood. The UNESCO-listed collection of negatives, known as The Holtermann Collection, is housed in the State Library of New South Wales and presented in

Gulgong Holtermann Museum Gulgong Holtermann Museum is a community project and a museum space located in gold rush town of Gulgong, New South Wales. Two of the town's earliest buildings, also featured on Australian ten-dollar note (see The Greatest Wonder) renovated and ...

. Holtermann was also interested in patent medicine. He was proud of having cured fellow passengers on his 1858 sea voyage to Australia. After he retired from mining, he wrote papers and devised formulae for medicines, and promoted and sold "Holtermann's Life Preserving Drops". In 1882, on his third try, Holtermann was elected to the

New South Wales Legislative Assembly The New South Wales Legislative Assembly is the lower of the two houses of the Parliament of New South Wales, an Australian state. The upper house is the New South Wales Legislative Council. Both the Assembly and Council sit at Parliament Ho ...

for

St Leonards St Leonards may refer to: Places Australia *St Leonards, New South Wales **St Leonards railway station *St Leonards, Tasmania, suburb of Launceston *St Leonards, Victoria Canada *St. Leonard's, Newfoundland and Labrador New Zealand * St L ...

, which he served until his death. He died in Sydney, Australia on his birthday, 29 April 1885, of " cancer of the stomach,

cirrhosis Cirrhosis, also known as liver cirrhosis or hepatic cirrhosis, and end-stage liver disease, is the impaired liver function caused by the formation of scar tissue known as fibrosis due to damage caused by liver disease. Damage causes tissue rep ...

of the liver and

dropsy Edema, also spelled oedema, and also known as fluid retention, dropsy, hydropsy and swelling, is the build-up of fluid in the body's tissue. Most commonly, the legs or arms are affected. Symptoms may include skin which feels tight, the area ma ...

", leaving a wife, three sons and two daughters.

Literature

* Hein, Christoph: Australia 1872. How Bernhard Holtermann turned gold into a unique photographic treasure, Emons Verlag, Cologne 2020,

References

External links

The Holtermann Collection Story
at the State Library of New South Wales
The Holtermann Collection of glass plate negatives
at the State Library of New South Wales
''The Greatest Wonder of the World'' (Exhibition), (23 Feb 2013 – 12 May 2013), State Library of New South Wales
{{DEFAULTSORT:Holtermann, Bernhardt 1838 births 1885 deaths Australian gold prospectors German emigrants to Australia Members of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly Businesspeople from Hamburg 19th-century Australian politicians North Sydney Council