Robert Homburg first Australian judge as a non-British migrant: on the South Australian supreme court in 1905
Robert Homburg (in foreground at right, and inset), as a South Australian supreme court justice, shares the 1912 arbor day guard of honour by Houghton Primary School students with Mary Bosanquet (at left), wife of the state governor Day Bosanquet.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia
Robert Homburg was appointed to the supreme court of South Australia in 1905 – the first non-British migrant to hold such a position in Australia.
Homburg was born in 1848 in Brunswick, Saxony, the son of gain merchant Wilhelm Homburg and his wife Caroline Magdalene Pauline (née Schumacher). In 1853, Wilhelm left Germany for the Victorian goldfields and his wife and children followed 12 months later. In 1856, the family went to Tanunda in South Australia's Barossa Valley where Robert attended the English-German Educational Institution of Leschen and Niehuus. He later worked for Dr Koehnke, a local land agent.
In 1867, he was articled to lawyer and South Australian premier James Boucaut (1866-67,1875-76) and the next year he moved to the Tanunda branch of the legal firm of another South Australian premier John Downer (1885-87, 1892-93).
Robert Homburg was admitted to the bar in 1874. He had married Emilie Peters at Angaston a year earlier and, after she died from tuberculosis, he wed Johanne Elisabeth Fischer in Adelaide in 1882.
From 1880, Homburg was president of the German Club, patronised by relatively wealthy conservative German-Australians wanting to keep German culture alive. He was naturalised in 1883.
In 1884, Homburg was elected to the House of Assembly for Gumeracha, a seat with a strong German-Australian element, that he retained until 1902 when he transferred to Murray and retired in 1905.
Homburg was attorney general (1890-92) in premier Thomas Playford II’s ministry, the Downer ministry (1892-93) and John Jenkins ministry (1904-05) when he was also education minister. He was a good speaker in the House of Assembly with his views shifting gradually to the right as he shook off the mild radicalism of his youth.
In 1905, Homburg was appointed a justice of the supreme court. This was widely criticised in the legal profession as a political move, with Homburg’s experience at the bar and legal expertise questioned. Some sources suggest his German origin was the unspoken objection. Homburg proved his critics wrong and gained respect by bringing to the bench the incorruptible integrity, impartiality and compassion that had marked his political life.
Homburg's home life was cited as a model: filled with love, music, literature and art. Although not a strict Lutheran, he enjoyed the full confidence of the Lutheran pastors. He was one of the first men in Australia to bridge successfully the gap in public life between British and non-British cultures.
He died in 1912 at the Adelaide suburb of Medindie. The family declined a state funeral and he was buried in North Road cemetery. A son, Hermann Robert Homburg, followed him as a lawyer and politician but in more controversial circumstances.
