Carl Borckenhagen
He was for a period one of the most powerful men in southern Africa, however the Dictionary of National Biography adds: "It is almost impossible to define the precise extent of his influence and political significance since, while seeing to it that others, in public posts, carried out his ideas, he himself kept in the background.
Carl Borckenhagen was schooled in the nearby town of Koblenz, where his health began to deteriorate from severe exposure to nighttime mid-winter temperatures, when he spent a period there without shelter.
The country was undergoing a vast economic boom, but as Borckenhagen's health continued to deteriorate, he swiftly decided to leave the humid Cape, and head inland to the dryer Orange Free State – a long and laborious journey by ox-wagon.
They moved to Bloemfontein in 1875, where Borckenhagen began work as a bookkeeper, then as an ambitious young journalist, and swiftly rose to a position of extreme influence in the republic.
He also acquired the printing press of Frederick Schermbrucker (an incendiary and deeply unpopular politician who was burned in effigy as he left) and built the business into the biggest media source in the republic.
During the First Anglo-Boer war, he used his influence and resources to ensure that the Transvaal Republic remained connected to the outside world in spite of British attempts to cut off lines of communication.
For the Orange Free State, the long moderate rule of President Brand had meant close ties with the British Empire and with the Cape Colony to the south.
The next two Presidents, Francis William Reitz and Martinus Theunis Steyn, were both protégés of Borckenhagen, who assisted them to come to power and remained their mentor to some degree, even after they assumed office.
"[7][8] Under his direction, Reitz and other leaders joined him in founding the Afrikaner Bond in 1881, as a political organisation for all those who, regardless of ancestry, considered Africa to be their home rather than Europe.
Borckenhagen reportedly accused Rhodes of "crass materialism", a reverence for money, and the intention of forcefully bringing the republics into the British Empire.
His strategies and ideas continued to exercise a huge influence on republican politicians throughout southern Africa, such as du Toit of the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners in the Cape Colony.
[14] However, it was in the Orange Free State that his influence was strongest; as related by Basil Worsfold: "(Borckenhagen) was probably the most consistent of all the South African exponents of the nationalist creed.
In his private time he built up a large trading company, and a farming estate which he named Rodenbeck, after his birthplace, and which was situated just outside Bloemfontein (now within the city limits).
