CHAPTER 16 | 1920s – Bountiful Years
The only known photograph showing renown sculptor Albert Julius Henschke carving ‘Australian Venus’ in Rayner Hoff's studio Adelaide ca 1927. The work is now in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, attributed to Rayner Hoff. [Courtesy Jennifer Marshall]
Albert Henschke also carved war memorials at Tanunda and Freeling in the Barossa region. But Gawler South Council narrow-mindedly refused to commission him for their memorial because of his German name, despite Henschke being a patriotic third-generation Australian. Some of his works can also be found in the Gnadenberg Cemetery, which lies near the Hill of Grace Vineyard. Henschke’s skilled craftsmanship was highly prized by architects for landmark buildings in Adelaide, including Parliament House and the Art Gallery of South Australia. But he is remembered by the wine community of the Barossa as a highly popular and skilled player of the euphonium and member of the Tanunda Brass Band. (Albert’s father had formed the first brass band in the Angaston district in 1888.) Albert Julius Henschke’s nephew was the winemaker Cyril Henschke, who revitalised the Henschke winery during the 1950s and ’60s with his single- vineyard wines, Mount Edelstone and Hill of Grace. The Henschke family has memorialised Albert’s contribution to its heritage with its Julius Eden Valley Riesling and Marble Angel Cabernet Sauvignon. . . . By the end of the 1920s, the world was on the cusp of extraordinary social and industrial changes. This would also impact the Australian wine industry in many different ways. In Australia, there was a mood to develop the country with massive new infrastructure projects and assisted migration schemes, in which 450,000 British migrants alone were encouraged to settle in this land
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