Stories of Auckland opens Auckland War Memorial Museum

Caryn Wilkinson Reporter from Community News

The Auckland War Memorial Museum’s latest exhibition, Tāmaki Herenga Waka: Stories of Auckland, tells the diverse narratives of the people and places that call the city home.

The city’s heterogeneous nature is the crux of the Auckland War Memorial Museum’s latest exhibition, Tāmaki Herenga Waka: Stories of Auckland.

It tells the diverse narratives of the people and places that call the city home, with a particular focus on early immigrant families who had – and continue to have – a fundamental impact on its formation.

The Kronfeld family, who moved to Auckland in the 1890s, have had a particularly trailblazing existence.

In as little as 10 years after moving, Prussian Jew Gustav Kronfeld boasted a hugely successful import-export business and had become a naturalised member of the British Empire.

Along with his Samoan wife Louisa he also helped care for those who passed through Auckland from the Pacific Islands, in a grand house he had built himself.

Emily Parr, the Kronfeld’s great-great-granddaughter said her ancestors' warm and familial hospitality helped countless travellers and established Pacific Island roots in Auckland, at a time when very few Samoans were in New Zealand.

EMILY PARR/SUPPLIED
The Kronfeld family, who moved to Auckland in the 1890s, with friends at Te Muri campground, Matakana.

Read more here:

www.stuff.co.nz...