Ernst Kesa (1910-94): From Farming to Skyscrapers by Ann Tündern-Smith

Updated 22 December 2024.

Nauru House was once the tallest building in Melbourne, if not in Australia, with a height of 600 feet or 183 metres. Its architect was a man recruited to Australia as a builder’s labourer. Ernst Kesa was one of the refugees on the FirstTransport. 

Nauru House maquette

(Photograph courtesy Perrot, Lyon, Mathieson)

Ernst was the lead architect for other Melbourne landmarks. They include 50 Queen Street, the Southern Cross and Travelodge hotels and the Hotel Hilton, the YMCA Building in Elizabeth Street, the Trades Hall Council Chambers and the Gas and Fuel Corporation headquarters. He also designed Fiji’s Customs House.

 

By the time he was doing this, he had become a partner in the firm of Perrott, Lyon, Timlock and Kesa.  The firm specialised in hotels and office buildings and, at its peak, had over 100 employees and offices in all States of Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.

 

Portrait of Ernst Kesa by DW Hughes

 (Courtesy Erika Kesa)

Ernst’s road from builder’s labourer and, before that, Estonian art student, to senior Australian architect was not all smoothness, however. 

 

When Australia’s first Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, obtained the approval of his Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, to bring refugees from Eastern Europe to Australia, the country had an critical need for people who could help it back to its feet again quickly after the impact of World War II. 

 

A total of nearly one million Australians had enlisted in the military during the War, out of a total population between six and seven million. In construction, those who remained in Australia had focussed on building military camps rather than new houses for families.  

 

With the return to civilian life and the delayed marriage of sweethearts, anyone who could help construct new homes for new families was needed urgently. The need was so pressing that anyone presenting to the interviewers who had even helped put up a shed on the family farm was pulled to one side.  They sent immediately for a medical to check that they were fit enough to become a builder’s labourer in Australia.

 

Though born on 15 January 1910 to a farming family in central Estonia, Ernst was more than a builder of farm sheds.  After high school he undertook compulsory military training, which he left with a rank equivalent to second lieutenant.   

 

Next, in 1931, he started as a student at the esteemed and still active Pallas Higher School of Art in Tartu for less than one year.  The experience made him realised that, although he was a fine artist, he lacked the creativity of the best.  He would be better off studying some form of applied art.

 

 

Bust of his brother, Elmar, by Ernst Kesa

(Photograph courtesy Erika Kesa)

Later in 1931, he moved to Brno, now in the Czech Republic, where he studied architecture in German at the Technical University.  He completed his degree in 1936 with excellent results.

 

He joined the Estonian Ministry of Roads and Building where he worked under Alar Kotli, one of the most esteemed Estonian architects from the 1930s to the 1960s. Together with Kotli and independently, he was successful in many architectural competitions.  

 

No other Estonian at that time had been awarded as many prizes as Ernst.  Due to this success, he was able to join the Estonian Institute of Architects without the customary two-year probationary period.  He was receiving many private commissions so he left the Ministry to establish his own practice.

 

He continued his interest in the arts, which led to an invitation in 1939 to become the Director of the Jaan Koort School of Applied Art in Tallinn.  He started to re-organise existing programs and establish new courses.

 

The Soviet Union invaded Estonia in August 1940. Ernst lost his job at the School of Applied Art. German forces replaced the Soviet ones in June 1941 and occupied Estonia for the next three years. During this time, Ernst enrolled for doctoral studies in the Brno Technical University, in 1943, but the War did not allow him to continue.  

 

The War and its aftermath also meant that those prize-winning plans never became realised buildings.

 

With news of the Soviet advance towards the west arrived in the later summer of 1944, Ernst would have reasoned that he had no future in Czechoslovakia or Estonia, having been fired once already by Communists. He left for Germany, where he reached the port of Lubeck. There he was able to help the Royal Engineers in the rebuilding of the historic city.

 

He heard that the Australians were taking migrants. He decided to go because he was told that he would be under contract to the Government for only one year. The Government decided to lengthen the contract period to two years while his ship was sailing to Australia.

 

It wasn’t until after they had arrived in the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre, in early December, that Ernst and his fellow refugees learnt to their dismay about the extension of the contract period.

 

One of the English language teachers at Bonegilla remembered Ernst as “a charming, well educated man”. It was in Bonegilla that Kesa met his first wife, another English language teacher, Zoë Ritchie.

 

He was sent to pick fruit in Ardmona in January 1948. He returned to Bonegilla in early April, leaving at the end of the month for Iron Knob in South Australia to labour for BHP. He also had a job with a building firm in Sydney. In February 1949, when still under contract, he described himself as being employed by the Commonwealth Department of Labour and National Service in Melbourne, his work “being associated with the planning and supervision of hostels”.

 

The description was contained in a letter he sent to the Architects’ Registration Board of Victoria, asking if he could be registered to work as an architect in that State based on his previous experience. Ernst’s hope of quick registration must have been based on experience of this in Estonia.

 

 

Another Kesa achievement, the Travelodge Hotel, St Kilda Road, Melbourne

(Photograph courtesy Perrot, Lyon, Mathieson)

 

The senior partner in a Melbourne architectural firm, Lesley Perrott, had heard that one of the Displaced Persons was an Estonian architect with a Czech degree. In his letter of support for Kesa’s application, Perrott wrote that he had been “in fairly close touch with Mr Kesa” and that he had “also seen something of his work”. Perrott pointed out that, “The university at (Brno) was one of the well-recognized seats of learning in Europe”.

 

The Registrar told Ernst that the Board had exempted him from five of its examination subjects. He was still required to sit examinations for the remaining four subjects. 

 

What followed was a classic example of many European refugees’ struggle to obtain recognition of their previous qualifications.  Most gave up the struggle. Kesa might have too if he was not working with Lesley Perrott.

 

In 1955, Kesa wrote to the former Registration Board, by now the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects, to inform them that he had been transferred interstate and had not sat for the examinations for this reason plus “certain circumstances of a private nature”.

 

Due to his work experience since 1949, Kesa sought exemption from two of the four subjects for which the Board had required examinations when it replied previously.

 

Perrott wrote to the Institute about this time to admit he had sought a meeting with the Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, one year after Kesa arrived, to discuss his obligation to work for two years.  Some of the first Baltic refugees had been released already from their two-year obligations to work in Australia after just one year. Perrott had asked Calwell to release Kesa.

 

He told the Institute that, “the release was not granted when the Government realized his service was being sought by an outside architect. They quickly drafted him to their own Department of Labour. In a very short time Mr Kesa experienced a series of promotions until he was in charge of all migrant hostels.”

 

While the Institute exempted Kesa from eight of its current subjects, it still required him to sit for examinations in three subjects. The results were a pass in Professional Practice with a mark of 69 per cent, but failures in both Specifications and Services and Equipment.  One year later, he was told that he had again failed the Specifications examination.

 

Kesa’s reply to this latest knockback was it was not a true reflection of his abilities and knowledge. His current duties did not involve him in “a great deal of this specific type of work (but he had) so far been able to do this work to the satisfaction of everybody concerned”. 

 

He offered the time limit as the main reason for his failure, given that he was sitting for the examination in a foreign language.  He did not remark that this language was at least his third, after his native Estonian and German—and maybe Czech too.

 

He thought that he would not be able to complete the examination in a timely manner at his third attempt without first attending a course on the subject.  This would be difficult for him for domestic reasons. One of the domestic reasons would have been his son, Peter, then just two years old. He asked the Board to either reconsider exempting him or allow him to attend for an oral examination.

 

This time, the Board’s response was to regret its inability to grant either of his requsts. However, it did offer an alternative: a meeting with one of the examiners.

 

The meeting seems to have been what Ernst Kesa needed. Early in 1957, the Board certified that he finally had passed that Specifications examination. Midway during the following year, the Board confirmed that it had admitted him to registration as an architect under the provisions of Victoria’s Architects Act.

 

Admission had taken only eight years and a half years after Ernst first applied. 

 

He had able to continue working professionally with Lesley M Perrott & Partners because his Brno degree actually was in engineering and engineers did not require registration to work in Victoria at the time.  

 

When Lesley Perrott retired in 1966, his son, also Lesley, took over as the senior partner.  Ernst Kesa was offered the vacant partnership.  The name of the firm changed to Perrott, Lyon, Timlock and Kesa (PLTK).

 

 

Ernst Kesa at work in Melbourne

(Photograph courtesy Perrot, Lyon, Mathieson)

 

Ernst remained a partner until he retired on his sixty-fifth birthday, in January 1975.  For all this time at PLTK, he had been known as “Crusher”, apparently a tribute to the time in 1948 he had spent with BHP.  After retirement, he continued as a consultant to the firm.

 

Like the “flaxen-headed ploughboy” of the traditional English song, Ernst came a long way from his beginnings in rural Estonian province of the Tsar Nicholas II's Russia.  His Nauru House, now called 80 Collins Street, is still number 24 on a list of the highest buildings in Melbourne, which now has more skyscrapers than any other city in Australia.

 

The 1940s, with World War II, flight to Germany and re-establishment in Australia, were the toughest decade in Ernst’s long life.  They coincided with his thirties, when he was still young enough to show the resilience which enabled him to climb back from the edge of disaster.

 

Many former refugees have contributed greatly to Australia but the life and work of Ernst Kesa provide an outstanding example.

 

Sources

Anonymous, Eulogy, Ernst Kesa, 15.1.1910–15.1.1994.  

Beaumont, Joan,  Australian Defence: Sources and statistics, 2001,Oxford University Press, Melbourne, as cited in Enlistment statistics, Second World War, Australian War Memorial. viewed 5 January 2020, https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/enlistment/ww2. 

Carrington, Lois, A Real Situation: the story of adult migrant education in Australia, 1947 to 1970, 1997, Canberra, Lois Carrington.  

Carrington, Lois Griffiths, personal communication, 2000.  

Eesti Arhitektuurimuuseum, Eestirahvuskulturi Fond, 1994, Ernst Kesa, 15.1.10-15.1.93 (sic), Sirji, (in Estonian). 

Eesti Sõjamuuseum/Kindral Laidoneri Muuseum (Estonian War Museum/General Laidoner Museum) n.d., Ohvitseride andmekogu, Eesti ohvitserid 1918-1940 (Officer database, Estonian officers 1918-1940, in Estonian), viewed 5 January 2020, http://prosopos.esm.ee/index.aspx?type=1&id=20092.   

Freymuth, Lydia, personal communication, 2003.  

Kesa, Erica, personal communications, 2005 and later. 

Kesa, Ernst, Letter to Secretary, Architects' Registration Board of Victoria, Re State Registration, 2 February 1949, in SLV MS 9454, Box 32. 

Lillemets, Enn, Gunnar Neeme ja Ernst Kesa, email to A. Tündern-Smith, 1 July 2018.

National Archives of Australia (NAA): Department of Immigration; A434, Correspondence files, Class 3 (Non British European Migrants), 1939-50; 1949/3/7658 Attachment, SS General Heintzelman [Nominal Roll], 1947-1947. 

NAA: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla (Victoria); A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1956; 126, Kepes, Jeno Matyas to Kilberger, Jindrich. 

Oja, Urmas, Ernst Kesa – meie mees Austraalias (Our man in Australia) (in Estonian), 2008, Eesti Ekspress, viewed 1 November 2020, https://ekspress.delfi.ee/areen/ernst-kesa-meie-me es-austraalias?id=27681171

Oliver, Helen and Peter Hilyer, Perrott Lyon Mathieson, personal communications, 2005. 

Perrott, Lesley, Letter to Secretary, Architects' Registration Board of Victoria, Re Application of Mr Ernst Kesa, 9 February 1949, in SLV MS 9454, Box 32.

Pihlak, Vella, personal communication, 2001. 

Records of the Victorian Chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, MS 9454, Box 32, State Library of Victoria (SLV), Manuscript Collection.  

Salasoo, Tiiu Jalak, personal communication, 2000. 

Tallinna Ülikooli Akadeemiline Raamatukogu, TLÜAR väliseesti isikud (Estonians abroad), 2003, TLÜAR (Tallinn University Academic Library), viewed 4 January 2020, http://isik.tlulib.ee/index.php?id=1301.

Tündern-Smith, Ann, USAT General Stuart Heintzelman, 2008, Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild, viewed 5 January 2020, https://www.immigrantships.net/v10/1900v10/generalstuartheintzelman19471128_01.html, based on National Archives of Australia (NAA): Department of Immigration; A434, Correspondence files, Class 3 (Non British European Migrants), 1939-50; 1949/3/7658 ATTACHMENT, SS General Heintzelman [Nominal Roll], 1947-1947

Vilder, Valdemar, personal communication, 2001. 

Wikipedia, 2020, Nauru House, viewed 6 January 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru_House.

Zeugnis über die zweite Staatsprüfung aus dem Hochbau- und Architekturfache, Brünn, 22 Juni 1936 (Certificate of the second state examination in building and architecture, Brno, 22 June 1936, in German), in State Library of Victoria (SLV) Manuscripts collection, Records of the Victorian Chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, MS 9454, Box 32, Membership subscription and general: 1946-1963.

Please contact Ann at tundern@yahoo.com.au if you would like the full-length version of Ernst Kesa’s life story.

 

Who was General Stuart Heintzelman? by Ann Tündern-Smith

Updated 27 April 2024

The first refugees from World War II in Europe to be brought to Australia by the Government came on a US Army ship, crewed by the US Navy.  As such, it carried the prefix USAT, for United States Army Transport.  Here is the story of the man behind the remainder of the name.

Stuart Heintzelman was the son of a military man, Charles Stuart Heintzelman, and a grandson of an American Civil War General, Samuel Peter Heintzelman.  Samuel Heintzelman had married a Margaret Stuart, explaining his son's middle name and his grandson's first name.

A liberty ship called the SS Samuel Heintzelman had been launched on 30 September 1942, so the later General GO Squier-class transport ship also had to have the younger General's name spelled out in full, as the General Stuart Heintzelman. All the other 29 ships in the Squier class were named after American Army generals but, for most, their rank, initials and family name was sufficient.

Stuart Heintzelman was born in New York City on 19 November 1876. His father had reached only the rank of Captain when he died at the age of 35. Stuart was four years old at the time.

All three generations were graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Brigadier Stuart Heintzelman, Chief of Staff, 2nd Army Corps,

American Expeditionary Force in France on 20 October 1918

(Source:  Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69589269)

Stuart Heintzelman's leadership qualities were evident early in his military career as a cadet. He was the captain of the class gym and track teams, and was elected president of the Cadet Athletic Association. As a star football player, he was an Army letterman, the American equivalent of a sporting "blue" from Australian or British universities.

Upon graduation from West Point in 1899, he was commissioned a second lieutenant. Assigned to the 4th Cavalry in the Philippines, he served there until the following year. He then joined the 6th Cavalry in China and participated in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion. 

He was an honour graduate of the Infantry and Cavalry School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1905, and graduated from the Army Staff College there the following year.  During 1909-1912 and 1914-1916, he was an instructor at the Army Services Schools in Fort Leavenworth.

He married Rubey Bowling, known as Ann, on 14 March 1910.  His wife brought a ten-year-old daughter, Dorothy Ann, into the marriage.

In 1916, he was assigned to Princeton University as a military instructor and was awarded an honorary degree of Master of Arts. 

Then a major, he was ordered to France from Princeton in July 1917, three months after the USA entered WWI. First, he was an observer with the French army during the Chemin-des-Dames offensive.  Then he spent time with the Tenth French Army on the Italian front during the 1917-18 winter.

By June 1918, he had become chief of staff of the Fourth Army Corps, then chief of staff of the Second Army.  In October, he was promoted to the rank of temporary brigadier general.

For his service in WWI, the US Army awarded him a Distinguished Service Medal. This is for clearly exceptional performance outside of normal duties. He had been instrumental in the planning of the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, 12-19 September 1918, in which the Americans and French, under General Pershing, had captured the town of that name from the Germans.  He also had organised the Second Army of the American Expeditionary Force until its commander, General Robert L. Bullard, arrived, at which point he became that Army's Chief of Staff.

The French made him a Commander of the Legion of Honor, and awarded him the Croix de Guerre with Palm, while the Italians named him a Commander of the Order of the Crown.

He reverted to his substantive rank of major on his return from France to America in July 1919.  His first appointment in America was as Director of the Army War College in Washington, DC. 

He was appointed a brigadier-general in 1922.  Further Washington assignments were with the War Department General Staff at Headquarters, where he was in charge of military intelligence, followed by supply and war plans. He was commander of the 22nd Infantry in Hawaii (1924-27); and commander of the Harbor Defenses of Eastern New York (1927-29). 

The Command and General Staff School in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 1936
(Source: https://www.cardcow.com/24999/fort-leavenworth-kansas-command-general-staff-school/ accessed 31 Oct 2020)

General Heintzelman was the Commandant of the Command and General Staff School at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas for six years. During this time, he was promoted to major-general in 1931.  On 1 February 1935, he became commander of the Seventh Corps Area with headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska.

His wife, Ann Bowling Heintzelman died on 14 April 1935.  In early June, his gall bladder was giving sufficient trouble for him to be sent to Hot Springs, Arkansas, for treatment.  This was followed by an operation from which the General did not recover.  He died on 6 July 1935.

The obituary published in the American press said, "Of a quiet, friendly, forceful personality, General Heintzelman was not afraid to voice his views and was tolerant of the views of others."

He and his wife Ann share a grave in the Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia. 

Stuart and Ann Heintzelman's gravestone, Arlington National Cemetery

Source:  Loretta Castaldi on FindaGrave 

The ship named after him was launched a decade after his death.

Acknowledgements

I had great help from Karen Kirshner, Sherrill Brown and Pauline Anthony (a relative of the Heintzelmans), all of the United States, two decades ago before there was so much digitised material on the Web.

Sources

Ancestry.com data

Garraty, John A and Mar C Carnes, American National Biography, Volume 10, 1999, New York, Oxford University Press.

Marriage announcement for Dorothy Ann Heintzelman, the Washington Post, 22 July 1923.

FindaGrave, 'MG Stuart Heintzelman', https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/49201682/stuart-heintzelman accessed 27 April 2024.

Obituaries from the Leavenworth Times, 7 July 1935, page 1, the Sedalia Democrat, 7 July 1935, page 8, and the Kansas City Star, 7 July 1935, page 2A (the latter two available online).

Paterson, Michael Robert, 'Stuart Heintzelman — Major General, United States Army', Arlington National Cemetery, 1 March 2004, https://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/heintzelman.htm accessed 27 April 2024.

Press release from the War Department, 9 October 1934.

Who Was Who in America, 1897-1942.

 

Why the First Transport? by Ann Tündern-Smith

Updated 20 July 2024

The arrival of 839 refugees in Fremantle on 28 November 1947 was a turning point in the history of  Australia.  The refugees were from the three Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. They were the first non-British migrants to have their travel to Australia, on the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman, paid by the Australian Government.  The Government also arranged their initial settlement here.

Their arrival was part of the beginning, in 1946-47, of migration to Australia organised  by the Federal Government.

The States had handed their immigration powers to the Federal Government in 1920.  They continued to play an active role in recruiting migrants, especially from Britain, as late as the 1970s and 1980s.  

For its part, the Federal Government did not play much of an active role until Arthur Calwell in 1945 suggested to the Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, that the Australia Government needed a separate Immigration portfolio.  Calwell became its first Minister on 13 July 1945.

Calwell was keen for a prompt start to an immigration program.  He was spurred on by his belief that a larger population would be better for Australia's security, which had been tested time and again during the World War now coming to an end. The start was rather slow, however, consisting chiefly of wives of service personnel.  

Several ships had brought some immigrants to Australia after July 1945 and before the Heintzelman arrived, but these immigrants had the means to pay for their own fares and initial settlement or had sponsors in Australia.  One such ship was the controversial Misr, about which you can read here, https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/immigration-and-citizenship/migrant-stories/migrant-ships/voyage-misr, and here, https://www.theage.com.au/national/when-the-boat-came-in-20070311-ge4e9h.html.

The voyage of the Heintzelman was organised by the Preparatory Commission of the International Refugee Organisation (PCIRO) on behalf of the Australian Government.  The Government also ran the arrival program, taking over part of the Bonegilla Army Camp in northern Victoria.  

There the new arrivals received English language lessons if they needed them, attended to bureaucratic requirements such as health examinations and discussed their placements in the workforce with the recently established Commonwealth Employment Service. 

The excitement of the Australian press about the start of the program is still palpable to anyone reading the 1947 reports all these years later.  The positive reception of the Baltic refugees led to the Australian Government agreeing to accept another refugee voyage from Europe, which arrived in February 1948.  

The PCIRO became the International Refugee Organisation but the people it sent to Australia, Canada, the United States, South America and even New Zealand were called "displaced persons".  One suggestion is that this name was adopted when the USSR was still one of the Allies at the end of World War II, so as to not offend the Soviets. At this time it was thought that the displaced persons would return home at the earliest opportunity. 

Altogether, 149 chartered ships brought to Australia most of the 180,000 and more European refugees who came here between 1947 and 1954.  By this time, many other migrants were arriving also from countries like Malta and the Netherlands, with which Australia had signed migration agreements.  Our post-War program was getting into full swing and continued up to the present COVID-19 interruption. 

I have provided more background to the Heintzelman's first voyage (there were three others later as a refugee ship and some as a military ship before the November 1947 arrival) in Bonegilla's Beginnings.  This book is available over the Internet, from http://www.bonegillasbeginnings.com/.  

Egon Kunz wrote Displaced Persons: Calwell's New Australians, which now is out of print but still provides the best overall coverage of what was called officially the IRO Mass Program.

Jayne Persian's book on the Beautiful Balts:  From Displaced Persons to New Australians, first published in 2017, takes a critical look at how the Mass Program often ran to the disadvantage of Displaced Persons.  It was managed to fill what Australians saw as their workforce needs, not to match previous training and experience to vacancies.

In some cases discussed in later blogs, skilled Displaced Persons did manage to find their way back to work which suited them.  Many of the younger ones, students when they left their home countries, never attained the same status that they would have had there.  On the other hand, they were on the other side of the world from the trauma of war and, if they had children, those children were achievers.

My purpose here is to provide the public with some of the lives of those who came on the Heintzelman's first voyage, known among the European refugees/displaced persons as the "First Transport".  The term "Transport" was used because USAT stood for "United States Army Transport" and 40 of the 149 voyages were on ships with this prefix.  

The first 4 of the 149 voyages were made on "Generals" or "Transport", setting the trend for these ships to be known generically as "transports".  Older Australians who arrived this way still ask each other, "Which transport did you come on?"

The USAT General Stuart Heintzelman at anchor, possibly 1945

(Source:  U.S. Navy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

In an era when not only the Australian public but citizens around the world have been encouraged to fear refugees and displaced persons as "the other", it is important to consider the contributions they can and do make to their new homes. 

Some of their lives have been published already on the Web. A leader in the Lithuanian community, Kostancija Brundzaitė, has an obituary at http://www.slic.org.au/News/news_240405.htm.  The life of CSIRO research assistant, Zenta Liepa, from Latvia, is outlined at https://www.womenaustralia.info/entries/liepa-zenta/.  Library assistant and philanthropist, Salme Koobakene, from Estonia, is remembered at https://www.womenaustralia.info/entries/koobakene-salme/.  Amanda Hickey has written about the life of her Latvian mother, Vera Ludzitis, at https://amandahickey.substack.com/p/a-stolen-story. 

The life of Latvian journalist, Emils Delins, and incidentally, that of his wife who arrived here on the same voyage, Nina-Aurelija Sics, was honoured with an obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald, available at https://www.smh.com.au/national/protector-of-communitys-prosperity-20040419-gdirhx.html. The Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has published a tribute at https://www.mfa.gov.lv/en/news/latest-news/3932-in-memoriam-emils-delins, since Delins served in various consular roles in Australia, culminating in that of Honorary Consul General of the Republic of Latvia to Australia and New Zealand from 1993 until his death.  There is also a brief biography at https://prabook.com/web/emils.delins/566906.  Latvians Online also has a biography, which is unfortunately inaccurate in relation to one date important to this history: https://latviansonline.com/journalist-activist-emils-delins-dies-at-82/.

I intend to post more of lives of First Transport passengers on this blog as time permits.  Meanwhile, I welcome feedback, especially from anyone who can provide detail of the lives of any of the other arrivals on the "First Transport". 

If you are related to someone from the "First Transport", you can join the discussion and memories at https://www.facebook.com/groups/505412590020835/. 

Still wondering if you had a relative on this important voyage?  The complete passenger list is on the Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild Website, at https://www.immigrantships.net/v10/1900v10/generalstuartheintzelman19471128_01.html.