Australian Dictionary of Biography

Dr Michael Cigler, c.1985

National Library of Austrlalia

Michael Joseph Cigler (1923–1990), historian and educationist, was born Miroslav Jozef Cigler on 27 December 1923 at Košice, Czechoslovakia (later Slovakia), elder child of Czech parents Vaclav Cigler, train driver, and his wife Julia, née Hellebrant. Educated at a Slovak school in Košice, Miroslav was encouraged to read by his bookish parents. His father was a staunch socialist, and his mother a devout Catholic from a rural background. His grandparents were small farmers whose adherence to Czech folk customs influenced Cigler’s later commitment to multiculturalism.

Evicted from their home in November 1938 when the Slovakian border territories were handed to Hungary, the Cigler family left the new Slovak Republic and returned to the Czech lands. During the German occupation, Miroslav trained as a schoolteacher at Plzeň. Later in World War II he was forced to work as a labourer at a German airport north of Prague. He was left without a family when his parents and his sister were killed during a Royal Air Force raid on Plzeň on 17 April 1945.

After the war Cigler completed two years of national service in the Czechoslovak army then studied political science for a year at a university in Prague, where he was treasurer of the Social Democratic Club. Unwilling to join the Czechoslovakian Communist Party after it took power, he applied for a teaching position in a school near the German border, then crossed to a new life in December 1948. From a camp in West Germany, he applied through the International Refugee Organization for an Australian immigration scheme, which required him to work as stipulated by the government for two years. He intended to fulfil his obligations then emigrate to America.

Cigler boarded the Goya at Naples, Italy, in November 1949, with hundreds of displaced persons from Eastern Europe. Disembarking in Melbourne in December, he was taken by train to Bonegilla migrant camp in north-east Victoria. He was soon appointed an orderly in the camp hospital and impressed his superiors with his hard work and initiative. Of his time at Bonegilla, he later recalled: ‘for anyone who came from a hungry refugee camp it was a really beautiful holiday’ (York 1996, 63). He left Bonegilla in April 1951, to take up a position as an attendant at the Kew Mental Hospital, Melbourne. In 1954 he established a taxi-truck business, also importing fishing rods from Japan and working as an insurance salesman.

On 15 August 1955 Cigler married Victorian-born Florence Beryl Howe, a cashier, with Anglican rites at Christ Church, St Kilda. Now committed to Australia, he turned to intellectual pursuits. In 1957 he enrolled part time at the University of Melbourne (BA, 1964; DipEd, 1968), where he studied history, philosophy, and Russian language. A shortage of qualified teachers meant that the Department of Education keenly accepted his application to teach at Blackburn High School in 1959. Promoted to senior teacher in 1964, he taught history at Greythorn High School, Balwyn North, and helped introduce Asian history to the Victorian curriculum. In 1969 he travelled to Britain with Beryl and their daughter Julie (b. 1958), teaching at a school in Cardiff and completing a remedial English teaching course at the University of Liverpool. Beryl completed a master’s degree in linguistics at Lancaster University. Returning to Melbourne in 1971, he became a lecturer in remedial education at the Technical Teachers’ College, Hawthorn (later the Hawthorn Institute of Education).

Outside work hours, Cigler began to research ethnic groups in Australia. In 1967 he had enrolled part time at La Trobe University (MA, 1973), studying with the sociologist Jean Martin, who encouraged his interest in multicultural studies. His master’s thesis (1973) examined Czechoslovak community organisations in Australia. In 1983 he completed a doctorate remotely through Columbia Pacific University, California, with a thesis titled ‘Ethnic Heritage: Its Place in Australian History and Social Studies Curricula Development.’ This thesis was the theoretical basis of the Australian Ethnic Heritage Series, published between 1983 and 1988 with Cigler as general editor. A pioneering effort in the field of Australian immigration and ethnic studies, the series included histories of sixteen migrant groups. Cigler wrote the books on the Czechs and the Afghans and co-authored those on the Italians and Germans. A competent researcher and scholar, he was hurt by criticism of the books for their popular, non-academic, style. During this productive time, he also wrote, with Beryl, the secondary school textbook Australia: A Land of Immigrants (1985) and completed a second doctoral thesis at Deakin University (PhD, 1986) in which he contrasted the two waves of Czech immigration to Australia in 1948 and 1968.

Retiring in 1988, Cigler worked on three projects until he became ill: a Czech translation of his book The Czechs in Australia; a book about the Welsh in Australia with Beryl; and a biographical novel about the Aboriginal Australian prisoner of war Douglas Grant. A humble man, usually in a hurry and anxious about his latest projects, he was dedicated to promoting the place of migrants in Australian history and society. He campaigned for the preservation of the Bonegilla migrant camp and its conversion to a museum in 1986. While he valued politeness, manners, and etiquette, he also had a fun side and enjoyed music nights over red wine with friends at his home in Hawthorn.

Cigler’s politics were anti-communist and right-wing social democratic, and he identified with the Democratic Labour Party during his initial years in Australia. A turning point in his outlook came with the Vietnam War, which he opposed. A member of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party-in-exile from 1951 until his death, he never returned to his homeland but was planning a visit when he became ill. Survived by his wife and daughter, he died of prostate cancer in East Melbourne on 13 January 1990 and was buried in Springvale cemetery.