Walter Matters

Story

Walter was born in 1917 in Breslau Germany and was the son of Jewish parents, Max and Emma Mattersdorff. After his wife died in 1936, Max started making plans for his son, Walter, and daughter, Hella, to emigrate to Australia because he feared the rise of National Socialism in Germany and saw the risk to his children. Through his cousin Sir Harry Railing in London, a director of British General Electric, he initially arranged for Walter to travel to London and join his sister. However, through his business connections, Harry arranged that Walter move to Australia and an executive of G.E. Australia, J.R. Gibson be Walter\’s legal guardian.

Walter was eager to go. His education had been cut short and as Mr Hurst a friend of Gibson wrote, ‘A young Bavarian boy who, like so many under the Hitler regime has no possible chance of success in Germany.’

Walter travelled to Bremen on 13 Jan 1938 and then London on 15 Jan 1938, where he was given a letter from his ‘aunt’ Clair Railing and £50, a significant sum to tide him on his way to the new land. He set sail to Australia on 22 Jan 38 from Hamburg on the SS Stassfurt, a merchant ship with few passengers. Walter celebrated his 21st birthday at sea.

On the 12 March 38 Hitler invaded Austria and it was the start of the Anschluss. Germany was at war. Off Port Philip Bay the captain feared entering Australian waters lest his German ship be impounded, but management in Hamburg ordered the ship to proceed to Sydney where she docked on 17 March 1938.

Walter was both excited by his new home and in awe of the sunshine and its happy, friendly people.

Walter quickly obtained work at Pagewood Studios as a cleaner. While working there he was lucky to meet the filmmaker Ken Hall. Around Christmas 1938 his friends at work took him down the road to the Sydney Cricket Ground where he watched Don Bradman playing a strange game called cricket which he could not understand.

In 1939 as war began, Walter had to register as an Enemy-Alien because of his German citizenship. He worked in many factories around Sydney as a sheet-metal worker. In 1940 he attended a dance at the Maccabean Hall in Darlinghurst and met his future wife, a pretty young 20 year old Jutta HŸbsch, herself a Jewish immigrant from Austria. Jutta was a dress-maker.

With war raging in Europe, ‘enemy aliens’ in Sydney were prohibited from living closer than 5 miles from the harbour so they moved to a flat in Chatswood. Walter decided that with his broad German accent and long German name he would change his name by deed-poll to Matters.

Jutta and Walter married on 7 February 1942 in a Neutral Bay Presbyterian church, near the police station.

Shortly after their marriage they became naturalized citizens. Walter joined the Australian Army (N237383) and served in the 3 EMPLOYMENT COMPANY at Holdsworthy and Goulburn barracks, assembling war munitions. He was often AWOL visiting his young wife in Sydney and when the Japanese midget submarines attacked Sydney he was caught AWOL and ‘impounded’ for a few weeks, as punishment in Goulburn.

In October 1943 Walter was discharged from the Army and through the final war-years he and Jutta had to move flats and jobs. They saved a deposit of £45 and early in 1945 started building their own home in Chelmsford Avenue, Willougby on the North Shore. Jutta had twice miscarried (in 1943 and 44) but shortly after Christmas 1945, when they had the keys to their new home, she discovered she was pregnant again. Unfortunately, she had also contracted a severe case of polio and the doctors gave her little change of carrying the new baby to term. Walter was working as a process-worker and was terribly worried about his sick wife, who was isolated in the infectious diseases hospital at Little Bay.

However, in September 1946 Walter became a father to a son, David Oliver. Then in November 1948 a daughter Nora Elizabeth was born and in October 1950 his second daughter Connie Hella was born.

Walter was employed in his later years as a process-worker in plastics factories and as a taxi driver. He retired in 1972.

He often reflects on how fortunate his life in Australia has been and how lucky he was to come here and lucky to have such a wonderful family.

Although he remembers his struggle to support his family, he still enjoys a full life. He loves his eight grandchildren and two great-granddaughters. He walks every day, plays cards, swims on occasions and loves his one beer on Sunday.

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