Obituaries

But it is completely misleading (not to mention sexist, God forbid) to suggest that Ann’s life be defined in terms of being “Wolf’s wife” or “Bill’s Mum”. That sort of pigeonholing has no place in the life of Ann Rosenberg, who lived a very full and fascinating life and whom I had known and valued as a friend in her own right for the 35 plus years that I have had the privilege of knowing the Rosenberg family.

I knew Ann in many capacities. She and Wolf were foundation members of CAFCA way back in the early 1970s, a membership which only ceased with her death. For many years both of them were among the hardy band of souls to regularly attend our Annual General Meetings. Likewise, in 1991 they were foundation monthly pledgers to the CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account which provides my income, a pledge that also lasted up until her death.

For 50 years he and Ann lived in their beautiful home on the Cashmere Hills (their health forced them to come down onto the flat a few years ago), a house full of books, art and music, and wonderful exotica (such as a preserved snake in a bottle next to a photo of an in-law shaking hands with Chairman Mao). For a good 25 of those years I was a regular guest at that home, mainly for dinner parties which were a memorable constant feature of those decades – I went there by myself, with Bill and Dianne and their kids, with my former partner, with my wife Becky (and her Filipino family on one occasion), and with various friends. We regularly used to run into them at cinemas and art galleries as well as the whole gamut of political meetings and events. Wolf and Ann were in the thick of everything in Christchurch for as long as I can remember. For many years during her “retirement” Ann was a volunteer at the WEA, and that’s another place where I regularly saw her.

In the last decade they lived in a small house in Beckenham, where Ann (whose own health had never been good) assumed responsibility for looking after Wolf who was virtually blinded and incapacitated by a devastating attack of shingles in 1998. When that became no longer possible, and after frequent health crises, they both went into the same retirement home, where they lived separately but spent as much time as possible in each other’s company and always spoke to each other like a couple of lovestruck kids. It must be said that Ann handled the challenges of old age, ill health and mortality much better than Wolf who, to be frank, became a grumpy old bugger to visitors (but as one of my female colleagues said very recently: “That’s men. Women handle it much better and just get on with things”).

Then finally, just a couple of months before she died, I went alone to visit her in hospital. She was too weak to get out of bed, but was delighted to see me. She took my hand and we had a clear eyed discussion about life and death. She unflinchingly asked me if I thought she had any quality of life left. I told her “no” and she agreed with me. She was ready to go. My one big regret was that, because Becky and I were away in Manila at the time, we were unable to attend her August funeral. But we’d already said our goodbyes to her, in person, in the months following Wolf’s death (he would have been absolutely lost if she had died first).

Student Activist, Communist

Ann Eichelbaum was born in 1921 in Wellington, the oldest in a family of four girls. Her mother was from a distinguished legal family which put a high value on education (Ann’s maternal grandfather and great grandfather were both judges, her great-uncle was a founder of the prominent law firm, Chapman Tripp. “Cousin Tom” went on to become Chief Justice Sir Thomas Eichelbaum). Ann went to Queen Margaret College and it was as a teenager attending a piano lesson in 1937 that she met the 22 year old Wolfgang Rosenberg, a refugee from Nazi Germany, on his very first day in Wellington.

Their paths were to cross again when Ann went to Victoria University (then simply a College of the University of New Zealand) which had only 850 students in those days. They were both on the Students’ Association Executive at the same time (Wolf was Treasurer). And the politics were vigorous, as befitted the times. For example, the Students’ Association sent congratulatory telegrams to Stalin after the Soviet victory at the former Stalingrad during World War Two (this led to complaints from the College authorities who pointed out that benefactors had removed it from their wills because of similar student activities in the past).

When I first met Wolf, in the early 1970s, it was to interview him for Canta, the University of Canterbury student newspaper. There was one subject that he asked me not to include, namely that Ann had been a member of the former Communist Party of New Zealand. I respected his wishes. Just a few months ago, after Wolf’s death, she and I had a long phone conversation, and I told her about Wolf’s request and asked about her Party membership. She was delighted to tell me that she had been a member for years, first in Wellington and then in Christchurch. She was proud to add that she had helped to sew hammer and sickle patterned curtains for the Party’s rooms in Christchurch (I wonder where they are now. They’d be a collector’s item). Many Western Communists left their parties in disillusionment after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Bill doesn’t think that was the reason that Ann left, rather that she just drifted away at some time in that decade.

Ann was in her 50s when I first met her, so it was a very recent revelation to see photos of her as an attractive young woman. By now the earnest young student activists were a courting couple. After Wolf’s death, when Becky and I went to visit her at the home, she reminisced about his idiosyncratic courting technique. “Wolf was good, because I came from a family of all girls without much experience of men. But he happily walked me through the streets of Wellington talking about Marxist economic theories. And I was happy to listen”. So that’s how you get the girls! It must have worked though (at his funeral, their daughter Vera related how he used to take her for long bike rides “while delivering a Stage 1 Economics lecture” to keep her occupied).

Union Activist, Solo Traveller

Her first job was in the Youth Centre (later the Vocational Guidance Centre) which dealt with manpower allocation for young people during the wartime labour shortages. Ann’s responsibility was for girls under 17, she did psychological testing and guidance. She joined the Public Service Association and became a departmental representative. She later described that period in the PSA’s history as “… (it was) about to burst out of its traditional role, facilitated by a vigorous new group, whose aim was to make it into a functioning trade union with a Labour-aligned policy and civil liberties orientation” (Ann Rosenberg, “Talk To National Organisation Of Women, Celebrating Women’s Suffrage Day”, 3/9/99). Among the changes initiated were: the employment of married women; permanent appointments for married women; movements towards equal pay, and maternity leave.

In 1946 Ann graduated with a Master of Arts degree in Philosophy (“at that time an unusual accomplishment for a woman in itself”, as noted by Cabinet Minister and friend, Jim Anderton, in his August 2007 “Obit Note”) including options in the relatively new fields of Psychology, Anthropology and Psychotherapy. She and Wolf married that year. By then he had got a job as an Economics Lecturer at the University of Canterbury and they had moved to Christchurch, which was to be their home for their rest of their lives (Wolf worked in the Canterbury Economics Department until his retirement in 1980, rising to Reader [Associate Professor]. He then worked as a criminal lawyer until the age of 83). But she didn’t settle down as a housewife.

“Ernest Beaglehole, my professor, said: ‘What are you going to do with this useless degree in psychology, Ann? Why not go to England and qualify as a psychiatric social worker? You can apply for a British Council scholarship to get you there because there is no social work training in New Zealand’” (Ann Rosenberg, ibid.). So she did that, was successful and sailed off to England for more than a year by herself, but not before discovering that she needed Wolf’s signed permission to acquire a British passport (there were no NZ passports then, we were all “British subjects”). At Manchester University in 1947 she gained her social work qualification and undertook practical placements in child guidance clinics, psychiatric hospitals and at Wakefield Prison for first offenders. She also spent time with friends hitchhiking around Europe. All of which was far from usual behaviour for young New Zealand women in those days, particularly a newly wed.

She returned to Christchurch and to Wolf. Theirs was a true love match (when Ann read an advance copy of my obituary of Wolf she was embarrassed that I included their constant references to each other as “sweetheart” and “darling”, asking me to leave them out) and those 61 years of marriage were a central feature in the lives of both. In Wolf’s own 2001 “Proposal For A Funeral Speech For Wolfgang Rosenberg” he concluded it with: “And as far as my marriage goes there is more than I can say that I owe to Ann, particularly during these last years when I lost my sight and have been suffering from constant tiredness. Thank you Ann!”. For her part Ann told the Press that “if she kept her mouth shut over certain topics ‘he was very nice to live with’” (Obituary, 24/2/07; “Socialist lawyer and economist”, Mike Crean).

Trailblazer For Working Married Women

She had no intention to stop working now that she was married (which was the custom for women in those days). “…There was no job as a psychiatric social worker available, however Charles Peek, new Director-General of (the then) Child Welfare, was keen to appoint staff with social work qualifications, and he offered me a job in the Christchurch office. Girls’ Welfare Officers were all nurses then, and Boys’ Welfare Officers all teachers. He seems to have made this appointment without consulting the Senior Girls’ Welfare Officer, Miss Helen Burnett, about to become my boss. With hindsight, I think it was a big surprise for her, because married women were only just beginning to be appointed in the public service, and Girls’ Welfare Officers were traditionally nurses.

“When I came in to meet her on the first day, she said: ‘Mrs Rosenberg, you will understand, nothing you may have learned will be of any use to you in this work’. She was right. ‘The Work’ as Miss Burnett called it, was indeed pretty demanding stuff. Placement and supervision of children under 12, and girls under 17, who were State Wards, and outfitting them before placement. Interviewing mothers of new-born illegitimate babies (which was the official language until the 1970s. Ed.)… Assessing applicants for adoption, placing of children for adoption, ‘uplifting’ neglected or abused children, under warrant to come before Children’s Court and be made State Wards. Supervision of delinquent girls under 17, who had been charged in the Children’s Court. Assessment and supervision of ‘needy families’, escorting children on transfer from one institution to another, all this requiring much home visiting.

“The office was allocated a small Prefect car by the Public Service Garage, but I was the only Girls’ Officer out of eight staff who had a driver’s licence. After 18 months I became pregnant (with George, the oldest of her three children. Ed.) and worked til seven months, unheard of at the time, I afterwards realised, and finally, when I was just able to squeeze behind the steering wheel of the Prefect and was driving Miss Burnett to Templeton Hospital, she finally let on that she had had enough and I would have to leave. I was one of the first public servants to obtain maternity leave…” (Ann Rosenberg, ibid.).

It was during the time of the birth and infancy of her kids that she became involved in Parents Centre, a non-profit organisation devoted to spearheading change against the medical profession’s domination of the childbirth and child rearing processes (things like having to give birth under total anaesthetic, with the husband excluded and only allowed to visit on Sundays during the mother’s mandatory fortnight confined to a hospital bed). “I really went along to Parents Centre to help facilitate new ideas I had got in my social work training where those seeds had been sown” (Social Work Notice Board, NZ Association of Social Workers’ newsletter, November 2007). She put her ideas into practice as well, having her youngest child, Vera, by home birth, with Wolf present and helping.

Esteemed Social Worker, Very Active Retirement

“…In 1966, Dr John Dobson, who had established the first Department of Psychological Medicine in a general hospital, outside a psychiatric hospital, in New Zealand, asked me to join the staff at Princess Margaret Hospital. Here, in a confined space, with ten in-patient beds, 30-40 day patients, and many out-patients, a highly trained and sophisticated staff ran treatment programmes involving up to date psychiatric and medical care, group and individual psychotherapy, involvement of patients’ families and community care. There I worked for 15 years before I joined Child and Family Guidance...“ (Ann Rosenberg, ibid.). “When the School of Social Work opened at the University of Canterbury in 1976, Ann became an accredited fieldwork teacher to the programme. She was a staunch professional supporter, a strong proponent of the necessity for formal education and training and a well respected mentor for students” (Social Work Notice Board, ibid.). I can vouch for her reputation as a social worker. In recent years I had to be interviewed by a hospital social worker in connection with a family health matter. As soon as I mentioned that I knew Ann, he was off into fond reminiscences, as she had been his teacher.

Ann retired at 65, in the mid 1980s, having become a leading figure in the social work profession. She certainly didn’t put her feet up during the remaining 20 years of her life. From the 1960s onwards, she was actively involved in all the great campaigns of the times, such as opposition to the Vietnam War, sporting contact with apartheid South Africa, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the feminist movement, the NZ China Friendship Society, etc. (as well as volunteering for the likes of the WEA). She travelled internationally with Wolf, both before and after his retirement from academia. For example, in 1962 he took the whole family to Geneva (the kids went to school there) on sabbatical. In 1978, he and Ann spent two months in the former East Germany. They went to China with the China Society. Wolf’s plunge into ill health in 1998 came just before they were supposed to go on a Mediterranean holiday.

In the early years of their marriage, motherhood and chronic ill-health (she had bad asthma, among other things) prevented her from accompanying Wolf on some of his regular overseas travels. Prior to the Geneva trip she had such a bad reaction to the smallpox vaccination that was mandatory in those days that she went into a coma. Bill told me that seeing his mother unconscious and not knowing if she was going to wake up again was one of the worst memories of his childhood. Once smallpox was declared eradicated and the vaccination was no longer required, she was able to travel overseas much more freely. Despite constant battles with health she lived an exceptionally full and active life (even if she did regularly nod off at meetings). She had a wide circle of friends; the Rosenberg home on the Cashmere Hills was one of the most intellectually stimulating places I’ve ever visited; she read widely; both listened to and played Early Music and was a member of the Risingholme Orchestra. She had a great sense of humour and was famous among family and friends for her idiosyncratic approach to driving. Her Beckenham home included a garage with no back wall, so that she could drive through and turn round on the back lawn, rather than to have to back out.

Ann Rosenberg’s death, following so closely on that of Wolf, really does mean the end of an era. Those two were central figures in the life of Christchurch, and in the life of myself and countless others, for many decades. I concluded my obituary of Wolf by saying that I considered myself lucky to have known him. The same goes for Ann. I speak on behalf of all of us in CAFCA when I express my deepest condolences to George, Bill and Vera, and their children and their children’s children, for the deaths of their parents (and grandparents and great grandparents) but the consolation that all of us have is that they - individually, as a couple, as a family and as public citizens - lived extraordinarily rich and fulfilling lives.

DEATHS IN THE FAMILY

CAFCA expresses condolences to our long time committee colleague, John Ring, for the death of his father, Patrick Ring in August 2007, in Nelson, aged 82. When asked for a photo, John supplied a rear view action shot of his Dad - pole vaulting. It is unique in Watchdog’s 30+ year history. Pole vaulting has never featured before and quite likely never will again (unless we institute a sports section).

And CAFCA expresses condolences to our Christchurch member Lynette White whose husband, Graeme White, 46 disappeared in Lyttelton Harbour in August 2007, presumed drowned. His body has never been found. Graeme was a well known radical Christian, active in the Catholic Worker group, and was prepared to go to prison for his belief and activities. He was a regular participant at the Anti-Bases Campaign’s Waihopai spybase protests in recent year. Murray Horton’s obituary of him is in Peace Researcher 35, December 2007.

IN MEMORY OF AL KREBS

-        Murray Horton

For several years CAFCA received, very regularly, the excellent online American newsletter Agribusiness Examiner. This was so prolific that we quite often received several issues per week (that puts Watchdog to shame, doesn’t it). As its title stated, it offered an ongoing and comprehensive analysis of all aspects of agribusiness in the US. American agriculture is a different beast to its New Zealand counterpart (particularly since the Rogernomics cold turkey treatment of our farmers in the 1980s), being still heavily dominated by subsidies and the pork barrel handouts peculiar to the Federal system. The main difference is that, unlike here, US family farmers are an endangered species, with huge agribusiness corporations running the farming sector. Some of their names are not familiar to New Zealanders; some, like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) have, or recently have had, a presence here (Agribusiness Examiner reported the breathtaking corporate criminality of ADM in minute detail for years); others, such as Cargill, are globally notorious and are among the biggest transnational corporations (TNCs) in the world in any sector.

We found this newsletter fascinating because, although it specialised in analysing a foreign country and was primarily aimed at Americans, it described what ominously could be the near future of agriculture here (in the case of Fonterra, more like the present). When you’re part of an empire, what happens at the heart of that empire affects you greatly, whether you realise it or not, and whether you like it or not. The Agribusiness Examiner did not confine itself to the US – for example, it covered in great detail the Bush Administration’s moves to reshape the agricultural sector of occupied Iraq for the greater profit of US agribusiness TNCs. And it was very interesting to get an American grassroots perspective on our common enemy. It was only after talking to a visiting American activist some years ago that I realised that, to him, what I was describing are not foreign corporations. They are simply American corporations trampling all over their own people as much as the people of any other country. To him they are all just Big Business.

All we knew about Agribusiness Examiner was that it was edited and published by somebody called Al V Krebs in Washington State. We knew absolutely nothing about him and never had any kind of contact with him, beyond being on his electronic mailing list. What we did know was that it was a one man production (as was his other online newsletter, Calamity Howler, which just as regularly offered a broader commentary on US politics, economy and corporations). When it suddenly became much less regular, we knew something was up. It struggled on for a while and then it stopped, to be followed by a message from his son that Al Krebs had died of liver cancer, aged 75, in October 2007. The newsletter died with him.

Inspired By 1960s’ Farmworkers’ Struggle

We felt that we should honour the memory of this man about whom we knew nothing, and we are indebted to his family for supplying us with material about his life and work, including photos (we’d never seen him). They sent us a number of American obituaries of him, from both the mainstream and progressive movement media. So who was Al Krebs? In short:...”the guru, the intellectual and activist genius of the family farmer advocacy movement” (Counterpunch, 15/10/07; “Seek The Facts, Agitate, Raise Hell. Al Krebs, A Fighter For Family Farmers”, Heather Gray. The full obituary can be read online at http://www.counterpunch.org/gray10152007.html).

Albert Valentine Krebs Junior had a background in journalism (starting with sports journalism; friends described him as a walking encyclopaedia on baseball, who “never hated anything but the New York Yankees”). He was heavily influenced by the Catholic social justice movement, to the extent of helping the Catholic Worker group establish soup kitchens for the homeless in San Francisco. In the early 1960s, as a freelance journalist for publications such as the National Catholic Reporter, he met the charismatic Cesar Chavez, the leader of the seminal Mexican grape workers’ strike in California (Chavez led the United Farm Workers’ Union, confronting the fierce resistance of big farmers and State authorities). It was being inspired by Chavez and the immigrant farmworkers’ struggle that led him in the direction which he followed for the remaining 40+ years of his life. He became the most passionate advocate for family farmers against agribusiness and a world expert on the subject.

John Hansen, President of the Nebraska Farmers’ Union, said: “His journalistic background and the research standards he brought to every issue were impeccable. His research and writing on agribusiness and family farm issues changed the course of more than one public policy battle over the many years. You had to be glad that Al was on our side. Anyone unfortunate enough to go grocery shopping with Al got the ‘rest of the story’ on who owns what brands and the ‘illusion of choice’ in the supermarket aisle. The passion of his life was family farm agriculture. He had more institutional memory on who the agribusiness conglomerates were than any other person I have ever met or known. He was a walking family farm agriculture historian who chose to defend our traditional system of family farmer and rancher owned and operated agriculture. His research skills and standards were remarkable. When you got the facts from Al, you knew they were solid, or he would not have used them" (Counterpunch, ibid.).

He Wrote The Bible On Agribusiness

In 1992, he produced (after ten years’ work on it) “The Corporate Reapers: The Book On Agribusiness”, described as “…a remarkably detailed 600 page history of American agriculture from the 1700s to the 1990s. Al describes the struggles and movements of family farmers and rural communities to hold on to their livelihood, their land, their economic independence and integrity while constantly being challenged by corporate agribusiness and corrupt politicians. Al explained at length that the corporate agribusiness control is at the expense of consumers, the environment, our health and our democracy. Ralph Nader writes: ‘A veritable almanac of information, “The Corporate Reapers” details how multinational agribusiness has worked to destroy the family farm. Krebs explains that the decline of the family farm is not a result of the interplay of market forces, but rather of the price-fixing and anti-competitive policies of Cargill, Continental and ConAgra and the allies’" (ibid.).

In his book Krebs spelled out his own vision for American agriculture: "As the United States confronts the economic and political morass of the 1990s and keeping in mind that the early 1990s also marks the centennial of the agrarian populist movement, the time has come to disengage ourselves from the endless fratricide debates that have existed in the past among farmers, farm workers, labor, consumers and environmentalists. Rather, this period should be viewed as that one propitious 'democratic moment' in our lifetimes that we begin to seriously put together a progressive populist movement. It is time to be bold in our vision if we are going to be about the business of reviving the agrarian populist spirit of the 1880s and 1890s, we need to both think and act ‘globally’ but act locally. Yes, Joe Hill. We need to quit mourning and start organising! (Joe Hill was an American labour martyr who, when he was about to be executed in 1915, wrote: “Don’t waste time mourning for me. Organise!”. Ed.).

"Rural Americans and family farmers in particular have traditionally associated themselves with the ideals of American democracy as enunciated by Thomas Jefferson (one of the American Revolution’s Founding Fathers and one of the country’s first presidents. Ed.) and embodied in the rich historical tradition of agrarian populism. They should not be ignored for the leadership they can and should provide in our nation's continuing struggle for economic and political democracy" (ibid.).

Al, we never knew you, but we salute you. It always amuses me that people espousing the views that we do are routinely branded “anti-American”. We have no argument with the people of that huge and fascinating country, and Americans such as Al Krebs are our friends, allies and colleagues. Anti-Americanism my arse. In that case, Al was also “anti-American” because he passionately fought the same transnational corporations and Government that we do, with the difference being that he fought them at home. CAFCA expresses our deepest condolences to his family. His was a life well lived, a fight well fought. And we miss the newsletter.

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