People Australia

Oscar Emil Tannert (c.1846-1935) basket maker, restaurateur and socialist

Birth: about 1846 at Schandau, Saxony, [Germany], son of Johann Heinrich Christian (Carl) Tannert (or Thanert) (1801-1882) and his wife Johanne Caroline Henriette, née Bonitz. Marriages: (1) 26 June 1877 at the residence of the bride, near Macclesfield, South Australia, to Margaretta Johanna Schmidt (1853-1926), whose parents had been born in Hildesheim, Saxony. (2) 11 June 1930 at Reno, Nevada, United States of America to Elizabeth Shannan (b. 1880). The marriage was annulled on 24 July 1930. Death: 12 December 1935 at San Francisco, California, USA. 

• After learning the trade of fancy cane and wicker worker in Freiburg, Germany, where he served his apprenticeship, he travelled Germany and spent two and a half years in London.
• He arrived in Adelaide, South Australia, aboard the Lady Joselyn on Christmas Day 1874. His parents and three sisters also migrated to South Australia.
• Oscar was a cane and wicker worker. He had a hawker’s licence in the 1880s and a shop in Rundle Street in 1885. The following year he was bankrupted. He was naturalised at Adelaide in 1895. Later he ran a restaurant and in 1905 he opened new and commodious business premises at William Street, Adelaide.
• He was a member of The Concordia Lodge, No. 28, Adelaide's German-speaking Freemasons' lodge and was sometime Junior Deacon.
• A prominent socialist, he was founding treasurer, and from 1902 to 1904 president of the SA Allgemeiner Deutscher Verein, an organisation of SA German socialists (established in 1886) affiliated with the SA branch of the Labor Party of Australia and the German Social Democratic Party.
• Chaired Adelaide meeting addressed by Tom Mann in November 1902.
• Left Australia with his wife and travelled to the United States of America in 1906.
• In the 1920 US census he was a wicker worker and his wife a saleswoman living at San Francisco, California.
• In July 1930 Californian newspapers reported that the widowed, 87-year-old basket weaver had been kidnapped, married, robbed and deserted.

Sources
Verity Burgmann, In Our Time: Socialism and the Rise of Labor, 1885-1905 (Sydney, 1985); Biographical Index of South Australia; San Francisco Examiner (California, US), 25 July 1930, p 3.