Gustav and Louisa Kronfeld lived inspiring lives. Gustav, a German-Jewish emigrant to Samoa, and Louisa, Granddaughter of Chief Fiamē of Lotofaga, married and settled in Auckland where their home became a centre of hospitality and symbol of Samoan culture that still resonates today.

In the early 1900s Auckland’s Eden Crescent was graced by a grand, 20-room mansion with wide balconies and stained-glass windows. It was a beacon of Pacific hospitality and a testament to an extraordinary love story.

The story begins in 1876 when 20-year-old Gustav Kronfeld emigrated to Āpia, Samoa to work for a German trading firm. There, he met Louisa Silveira. Her father was a Portuguese sailor and former priest, and her mother the daughter of the High Chief Fiamē of Lotofaga, Samoa. As Gustav was Jewish and Louisa a Christian, the couple eloped to Tonga to marry.

They settled in Auckland 1890, raising a vibrant family of ten children. Gustav built a highly successful merchant business, shipping goods between Europe, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. Every year, Gustav returned to the islands. The locals affectionately nicknamed him mata fā (“four eyes”) because of his spectacles. He didn’t just trade; he learned local languages, built genuine friendships, and was frequently gifted priceless measina and taonga (cultural treasures) by high chiefs who respected his character.

 

Meanwhile, back in Auckland, Louisa turned ‘Oli Ula’ into a cultural sanctuary. The home was adorned with Samoan fine mats (kie) and kava bowls (tanoa fai’ava), and its doors were permanently open to Moana peoples traveling to New Zealand. Louisa ensured that anyone arriving from the islands found a home away from home. She even housed the then future Queen Sālote Tupou of Tonga.

Tragically, World War I tested the family fiercely. Despite being a naturalized British subject for two decades, Gustav was deemed an “enemy alien” due to his German birth and interned by the NZ Government on Motuihe Island. The family faced immense anti-German and anti-Jewish prejudice, and when their youngest son, Tui, passed away, guards stood outside the bedroom door during Gustav’s single night of compassionate leave.

Yet, their profound connection to Samoa never waned. After the devastating 1918 influenza pandemic, which New Zealand authorities tragically allowed to spread to Samoa killing a quarter of the population, the high chiefs of Lotofaga and hundreds of Samoan men approached Gustav and Louisa’s son, Samuel. Because so many elders who held the oral traditions and genealogies had died in the pandemic, the chiefs begged for Louisa to return to Āpia to “hold court” and help reconstruct the vital lineages of titles. Though Gustav ultimately felt it was too much to ask of Louisa after so many years away, the request highlighted just how deeply the Samoan people trusted and revered her.

Before her death in 1939, Louisa donated the incredible Kronfeld Collection of Pacific artefacts to the Dominion Museum, preserving a physical legacy of a family that lived at the intersection of European and Pacific worlds.

Today, their descendants—like artist Emily Parr—continue to trace these deep, interconnected root systems across the Pacific.

Check out her work here: https://www.circuit.org.nz/work/through-the-time-spiral-te-muri

And read her in-depth account of the family at the Auckland War Memorial Museum: https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/war-memorial/online-cenotaph/features/reflections/parr

Gustav, Louisa and other members of the Kronfeld family rest at Purewa.

And their children at Purewa

Samuel Tonga Kronfeld – F/40/024

Isidore Fiame Kronfeld – F/39/085

Leo Le’ega Kronfeld – F/39/085

Walter Tui Kronfeld – F/39/085

Minna Priscilla Lily Else Wolfgramm – cremated and scattered at Purewa