German Brazilian
Encyclopedia
A German Brazilian is a Brazil
ian person of ethnic German ancestry or origin. Although there are German Brazilians in many parts of Brazil, they live mostly in the Southern part of the country, comprising the states of Rio Grande do Sul
, Paraná
, Santa Catarina
and São Paulo
.
of Europeans to different parts of the world, which led to a process of Europeanisation
of these areas. Between 1816 and 1850, 5 million people left Europe; between 1850 and 1880 another 22 million people emigrated. Between 1846 and 1932, 60 million Europeans emigrated. Many Germans left the German states after the failed revolutions of 1848
. Between 1878 and 1892, another 7 million Germans left Germany; after the 1870s Germany was one of the countries from which the largest numbers of people emigrated, the vast majority to the United States. From 1820 to 1840, Germans represented 21.4% of all European immigrants entering the USA; 32.2% in the following two decades; and at the end of the century they were the largest immigrant group (21.9%) in the US.
German immigration to Brazil
was small compared to the numbers who went to the United States, and also compared to immigration of other nationalities, such as Portuguese, Italians
and Spaniards
, who together made up over 80% of the immigrants to Brazil during the period of greatest immigration by Europeans. Germans appeared in fourth place among immigrants to Brazil, but dropped to fifth place when Japanese immigration increased after 1908.
Even though the immigration of Germans to Brazil was small, it had a notable impact on the ethnic composition of the country, particularly of the Southern Brazilian population. Different factors led to this large influence. First of all, German immigration to Brazil is an old phenomenon
which started as early as 1824, many decades before the beginning of the immigration of other European ethnic groups to Brazil. For example, the first significant groups of Italians to immigrate to Brazil only arrived in 1875, many decade
s after the arrival of the first Germans. When the settlement of other Europeans in Brazil began, the Germans had already been living there for many generations. Another factor was the high birth rate
s among German Brazilians. Research has found that between 1826 and 1828 a first-generation German Brazilian woman had an average of 8.5 children, and the second generation had an average of 10.4 children per woman. Birth rates among German Brazilian women were higher than those of other Brazilian women, resulting in faster growth of the population of German origin than of the population of non-German origin and a rapid increase in the population of German origin in the country.
In the book The Monroe Doctrine by T B Edgington is said:
The natural increase of the German population in southern Brazil is marvelous. As a rule they rear from ten to fifteen children in each family. Blumenau, a colony which was settled by the Germans over fifty years ago, more than doubles itself every ten years. Southern Brazil is now called ‘Greater Germany’, and the Germans exercise there a commercial and financial supremacy.
Even though the population of German descent makes up a small minority in Brazil, they represent a very large percentage of the population of the South. Jean Roche estimated that people of German descent made up 13.3% of the population in Rio Grande do Sul in 1890, and that they had increased to 21.6% of the population in 1950. By 1920, the vast majority of the population of German descent was Brazilian-born. The Census of 1920 revealed that foreigners
constituted only 3% of the population of the old German communities of São Leopoldo, Estrela, Montenegro and Bom Retiro. São Leopoldo
, then with 46,482 inhabitants, had only 1,159 foreigners. In the new German communities the proportion of foreigners was larger, for example in Ijuí (15%) and Erechim (25%), indicating they were newer destinations of immigrants in the state. The Census of 1940 revealed that virtually all the population of German descent was native-born.
The occupation of vast areas in Southern Brazil by people of German origin had a visible and important influence in the region. The descendants of German immigrants preserved their language and customs more than any other immigrant group in Brazil, creating a paradox of identity between German and Brazilian. In the Brazilian tradition, citizenship is inherent in the place of birth (Brazilians are all people born in Brazil). In the German tradition, citizenship is passed down to descendants (Germans are all people with German blood). Thus, Germans considered that a person could be legally a Brazilian citizen, but due to ancestry be still part of the German people. Thus, terms such as fatherland, (Vaterland), mother country (Mutterland), homeland (Heimat), guest country (Gastland) and several others came to be used by a few German Brazilians, denoting the contrast between being a Brazilian citizen and still having the feeling of belonging to the German people. This led to the creation of some Germanism (Deutschtum) in Brazil, influenced by Pan-Germanism
.
Only a minority of German Brazilians were Germanists. Most German Brazilians did not consider it important to be connected to Germany through associations or political parties. Despite attempts by Germanists to attract the population of German origin in churches or schools, few of them followed these ideas. This was evident in the failure of the Nazi Party when trying to attract a following among German Brazilians. The 1920s were the decade of peak German immigration to Brazil, some 75,000 people (24,000 in 1924 alone). They were fleeing the consequences of World War I and, therefore, it was considered a transitory immigration. Joining the Nazi Party would give them an advantage if they returned to Germany. However, very few German Brazilians were interested: fewer than 5,000 joined, out of a population at that time of about 100,000 German immigrants and nearly 1 million German descendants. This shows that the connection between German Brazilians and Germany was not as strong as believed. The connection was mostly focused on language and culture, while racist ideas and so-called German racial superiority had few adherents among German Brazilians, although there are reports that a minority did hold such views. German Brazilians were not completely unified in their political ideology; research shows that they voted for a variety of candidates in elections. There was no "vote from the Germans", but different ideas within the community.
The idea of a perigo alemão ("German threat") emerged in Brazil in the late 19th century, the fear of what a “confederacy of German Brazilians” could mean for Brazil and its integration. In fact, that fear seems to have been exaggerated given that German Brazilians did not form a united group and most of them seemed not to be interested in getting involved in political issues (given the failure of the Nazi Party in Brazil) or in racist or separatist
groups that could represent a real problem for Brazil. Nonetheless, the conservation of the German language among German Brazilians, the isolation of the population in rural areas in Southern Brazil and the small but notorious number of people who were seduced by Germanist ideas seemed to be a problem in the eyes of the Brazilian Government. As a result, policies were implemented to force these people to assimilate. Both the Germanism followed by a few Germans in Brazil and the assimilationist ideology of the Brazilian government were racist. The first was based on the idea of the superiority of the German people, and that they should keep themselves separate from other ethnic groups. The second was based on the idea that whites should mix with non-whites, in order to cause a whitening of the Brazilian population that would culminate in the disappearance of the “inferior non-white races”. The Brazilian process of forced assimilation, like any other aggressive policy against immigrants, brought more problems than solutions, but it weakened the learning of the German language. In the following decades, many of the German Brazilians left the isolated areas where they used to live and migrated to urban centers. Like other immigrants in the Brazilian cities, they found themselves in the minority there and as a consequence adopted Portuguese instead of German and their sense of German identity, already weakened due to the forced assimilation of the past decades, was replaced by a Brazilian identity shared with Brazilians from other ethnic backgrounds.
The first German immigrants to settle in Brazil were 165 families who settled in Ilhéus
, Bahia
, in 1818. One year later, 200 families settled São Jorge, in the same state. Some Germans were brought to work in the Brazilian army after Independence from Portugal
in 1822.
However, the cradle of the German settlement in Brazil was São Leopoldo, in 1824. At that time Southern Brazil had a very low population density. Most of its inhabitants were concentrated on the coast and a few in the Pampa
s. The interior was covered by forests and populated by Indians
. This lack of population was a problem, because Southern Brazil could easily be invaded by neighboring countries.
Since Brazil was recently independent from Portugal, it was not possible to bring Portuguese
immigrants. Germany was suffering the effects of the wars against Napoleon, overpopulation and poverty in the countryside. Many Germans were willing to immigrate to Brazil. Furthermore, Brazil's Empress, Maria Leopoldina
, was Austria
n and encouraged the arrival of German immigrants.
Major Schaeffer, a German who was living in Brazil, was sent to Germany in order to bring immigrants. He brought immigrants and soldiers from Rhineland-Palatinate
. To attract the immigrants, the Brazilian government had promised large tracts of land where they could settle with their families and colonize the region. In fact, these lands were in the middle of big forests and the first Germans had been abandoned by the Brazilian government. From 1824 to 1829, the Major brought 5,000 Germans to Brazil.
German immigrants in Brazil settled mostly in rural areas, called colonies (colônias in Portuguese). These colonies were created by the Brazilian government, and the lands were distributed among the immigrants. They had to construct their own houses and cultivate the land.
The first years were not easy. Many Germans died of tropical disease, while others left the colonies to find better living conditions. The German colony of São Leopoldo was a disaster. Nevertheless, in the following years, a further 4,830 Germans arrived at São Leopoldo, and then the colony started to develop, with the immigrants establishing the town of Novo Hamburgo
(New Hamburg). From São Leopoldo and Novo Hamburgo, the German immigrants spread into other areas of Rio Grande do Sul
, mainly close to sources of rivers. The whole region of Vale dos Sinos was populated by Germans. During the 1830s and part of the 1840s German immigration to Brazil was interrupted due to conflicts in the country (War of the Farrapos).
Immigration restarted after 1845 with the creation of new colonies. The most important ones were Blumenau
in 1850 and Joinville
in 1851, both in Santa Catarina state
; these attracted thousands of German immigrants to the region. Some of the mass influx was due to the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states
. Nowadays these areas of German colonization are among the wealthiest parts of Brazil, with the lowest levels of unemployment and illiteracy found in the country, and still retain a strong influence from German culture.
By the end of the 19th century, 122 German communities had been created in Rio Grande do Sul
, and many others in Santa Catarina
, Paraná, São Paulo
, Minas Gerais
and Rio de Janeiro
. Germans helped to establish a middle-class population in Brazil, a country that was formerly divided between slaves and their masters.
Not all Germans who settled in Brazil became farmers. In the early 20th century, very few rural areas of Southern Brazil were empty. Most of them had been settled by German, Italian and Polish immigrants during the 19th century. Given this situation, most Germans who immigrated to Brazil during the 20th century settled in big towns, although many of them also settled in the old rural German colonies. German immigration to Brazil peaked during the 1920s, after World War I. These Germans were mostly middle-class laborers from urban areas of Germany, different from the poor peasants who had settled in the colonies of Brazil during the 19th century.
In 1858, Germans were 15% of Porto Alegre´s population, 10% of São Paulo´s population for 1860 and 60% of immigrants living in Curitiba by the end of XIX century. In Rio de Janeiro
, by 1830 there were 20 businesses owned by Germans. Twenty years later the number reached 50.
People of German descent actively participated in the industrialization and development of big cities in Brazil, such as Curitiba
and Porto Alegre
.
In São Paulo
, Germans founded their first colony in 1829. The city attracted Germans immigrants until the 1950s. Today, there are 400.000 German Brazilians living within Greater São Paulo
.
grazing areas. The areas of German settlement emerged in the center of the region, isolated from other settlements. In these remote pastoral and farming areas, the immigrants were not under the control of the powerful Brazilian landowners. Due to this isolation, the immigrants were able to organize themselves independently, building their own churches, schools and municipal authorities. The children were educated in German. Portuguese became dominant later, as a means of communication with Brazilians or with immigrants of other nationalities.
The first generation of immigrants faced the arduous task of surviving while opening gaps in the virgin forest to build their own houses and roads. Attacks by Indians
were common. Isolated from other settlements, the Germans also had to face the difficulty of finding markets for their products. The initial difficulty was to define which productive activities could be integrated into the Brazilian economy. Only the penury faced by these people in Europe, due to the consequences of the Industrial Revolution
and of the crisis during the consolidation of European nations, can explain their persistence in Brazil, sometimes facing miserable conditions which were worse than those they left in Europe. Once in Brazil, however, they became small landowners, which facilitated their development.
The following generations benefited from the efforts of the pioneer immigrants and prospered. The families grew and the settlements expanded, coming to constitute a thriving German community of small landowners. At first, they found virgin forests that could be occupied or bought at low prices. During this period, the more isolated communities suffered from messianic
anomie
, influenced by popular German traditions of Protestant aspirations. This led to the Revolt of the Muckers
in the 1870s, which culminated in several crimes and murders.
, despite their isolation, the descendants of Germans knew that Brazil was their home now. The new immigrants who arrived from Germany were clearly different from German Brazilians of older stock. German Brazilians had moved away from European standards, habits, language and aspirations. However, coexistence with the local Brazilians (Indians, Gauchos and Azoreans) showed that the differences with the locals were also great. The misery faced by Brazilians of other origins was also not attractive to German Brazilians. Hence, German Brazilians eventually created a third identity, which was not completely German (because of the distance that created sharp differences) but also not completely Brazilian (because of the undesirable misery seen in Brazilians). Their isolation and cultural and linguistic conservatism gave rise to conflicts between German Brazilians (and also Japanese Brazilians, Italian Brazilian
s, etc.) on one side, and Brazilians of older extraction on the other. The nationalization was fundamental, compelling the teaching of foreign languages at schools, breaking the isolation of the communities and recruiting young people of foreign origins to serve in the military.
Migrating to urban centers, the younger generations broadened their cultural horizon and their own vision of Brazil. When they returned to their hometowns, they endorsed a Brazilian identity which was already becoming imperative. The above-average social, economic and cultural progress of the German settlements and their simultaneous integration into Brazilian markets as producers and consumers facilitated the integration of the descendants of Germans in Brazil. Today, this population is no longer seen as "foreign" by other Brazilians, but as a modern progressive urban population. The identification as "Brazilians" is also dominant among German Brazilians, since the cultural world of their ancestors was completely changed; it has become unrealistic for them to assert any other ethnic identity than Brazilian. Today, the only notable differences between Brazilians of German and of non-German ancestry are in levels of education (higher among German Brazilians), in a few surviving German traditions, and in some cases, the phenotype.
, Novo Hamburgo
, Blumenau
, Joinville
and Itajaí
. The Germans became entrepreneurs due to their knowledge of more complex techniques of production than those dominated by other Brazilians. In addition their bilingualism gave them better European contacts.
.
.
The use of the German language
is in decline in Brazil. However, the existence of important German-speaking communities in Brazil, even almost 200 years after the beginning of immigration, is an interesting fact. According to Born and Dickgiesser (1989, p. 55) the number of Brazilians of German descent in 1986 was 3.6 million. For Rio Grande do Sul, based on data from Birsa (Bilingualism in Rio Grande do Sul), for 1970, Altenhofen (1996, p. 56) estimated at 1,386,945 the number of speakers of a variety of German. As of 1996, he estimated that it had dropped to between 700,000 and 900,000 speakers. Damke (1997, p. 59), as of 1996, estimated more than 2 million speakers of any variety of the German language in Brazil.
German immigrants preserved their language more than any other group of immigrants in Brazil. This was mainly due to shared cultural identity and the desire to recreate in Brazil an environment with characteristics of the country they believed they would never return to. In addition, the large differences between the German and Portuguese languages hindered learning of the national language of Brazil, which was and remains a pretext for continuing use of German dialects. (This may be contrasted to the United States, where a huge German population almost completely switched to English, while on the other hand, Italian
persisted longer than in Brazil.) The main German dialect
spoken in Brazil is Hunsrückisch
, and according to Ammon, who visited German-speaking communities in Southern Brazil in 2004, the Riograndenser Hunsrückisch
(Brazilian Hunsrückisch) lexicon
is still quite similar to that of modern German speakers, even after almost 200 years of distance.
Hamel (1988, p. 64) and Damke (1997, p. 60-61) observed that there is a balance between the use of German and Portuguese in the German-speaking communities of Brazil. But, gradually, the trend is that Portuguese is becoming dominant. Despite the "myth of monolingualism in the country", i.e., that all Brazilians speak only Portuguese, German continues to have a strong presence even today. This myth is effective in hiding the country's linguistic minorities, including the indigenous nations
and as well as the speakers of immigrant languages. But it also hides the majority of the Brazilian population that speaks discredited varieties of Portuguese instead of the formal standard Portuguese taught in schools. According to Oliveira (2000: 84), Brazil is one of the most multilingual countries in the world, with inhabitants speaking around 200 language
s, of which about 170 are indigenous and 30 languages of immigrants.
The Brazilian Census of 1940 revealed that German was the second most spoken language in Brazil, with 644,458 speakers. In a total population of nearly 1 million German Brazilians at that time, over half still spoke German as their mother tongue. The vast majority of the German speakers were Brazilian-born, with a minority born in Germany or in another German-speaking country. The other main languages spoken were Italian with 458,054, Japanese with 192,698 and Spanish with 74,381.
's government, during World War II, when Brazil broke off diplomatic relations with Germany (and also with the other Axis Powers, Italy
and Japan), the use of the German language was repressed: teaching German in schools and publication of German newspapers were forbidden (together with Italian and Japanese).
In this context, monolingualism appeared to solve the problems of learning Portuguese, and the language of immigrants was regarded as responsible for school failure and difficulties in learning Portuguese. In 1989 there was a controversy regarding German speakers in Brazil when the mayor of Santa Maria do Herval, a town in Rio Grande do Sul, issued a verbal orientation to the municipality's elementary teachers to retain students using Hunsrückisch during break time to "teach them Portuguese". Disagreement ensued, with some decrying the initiative as repressive, and others (including people of German descent) supporting the mayor on the basis that not being able to speak Portuguese is a handicap in Brazilian society. The guideline has since been overturned.
). As with other Brazilians, there is a significant minority of non-religious people, and Pentecostalism is on the rise. Almost 85% of all Lutherans in Latin America and the Caribbean live in Brazil.
WhenGermans first arrived in Southern Brazil in 1824, they found a country with a climate
, vegetation
and culture very different from those of Germany. Southern Brazil was a land of gauchos, cattle herders who lived, and still live, in the Pampas region of the Southern Cone
. In the following decades, however, waves of German-speaking immigrants arrived, to the point that in many areas of Southern Brazil the vast majority of the inhabitants were Germans and even after three or four generations born in Brazil, these people used to consider themselves Germans.
Between 1937 and 1945 a significant portion of the Brazilian population suffered interference in daily life produced by a "campaign of nationalization". This population - called "alien
" by the Brazilian government - was composed of immigrants and their descendants. Both the Brazilian Empire and the early Republic allowed groups of immigrants to settle in isolated communities, mainly in Southern Brazil, and to some extent in other parts, such as Espírito Santo
, in the Southeast. These people had not been assimilated into the majority Brazilian society, a fact that worried the government of President Getúlio Vargas
. The army had an important role during this process of forced assimilation of these areas of "foreign colonization" that created so-called "ethnic cysts" in Brazil. German Brazilians saw themselves as part of a pluralist society, so that the Deutschtum conception (of being part of a community with a shared German ancestry) seemed compatible with the fact that they were also Brazilian citizens. However, the Brazilian government only accepted the idea of the jus soli
, so that all people born in Brazil should see themselves as Brazilians, and leave other ethnic associations behind. The Brazilian view contrasted with the jus sanguinis
conception of most German Brazilians of that time, who were still connected to the ancestral homeland.
Not only the people of German origin were considered "alien": almost all descendants of immigrants, in some degree, were "non-assimilated", in the opinion of Bethlem and other participants in the campaign. However, evidence of greater resistance to abrasileiramento (Brazilianization) was found in those areas considered "redoubts of Germanism", a situation considered risky to the cultural, racial and territorial integrity of the nation. One of the areas considered "non-patriotic" was the Vale do Itajaí
, where the population was composed mostly of Germans, Italians and Poles. In the 1930s, the Vale do Itajaí was described as a place of "strange costumes, full of non-national Brazilians, contaminated by ideals of a nation that collapsed Brazil, a place of disintegration of national spirit". During this period of nationalization, the Germans were considered the most "alien", the Italians closest to the Brazilians, and the Poles in an intermediary position, but none of them were seen as unequivocally Brazilian. The fear of secession
was not a novelty in regard to the definition of the Brazilian nation-state: long before 1939, Brazilian nationalists feared the collapse of the South, considering it "too Germanized". Many members of the Brazilian army participated during this process, such as Nogueira:
Nogueira also compared the German Brazilians to "an octopus extending its tentacles" in Southern Brazil. Nogueira used the image of the occupation of the most fertile areas of southern territory by foreigners, who had no intention of being integrated into the country, but had remained segregated since the beginning of their settlement. The record of the first impressions about the city of Blumenau in his book received the subtitle of "One Weird City", arguing that "the German language is spoken without constraints, including in public offices". Silvio Romero (1906) compared German immigration to the Barbarian Invasions which brought about the end of the Roman Empire
. Writings by different authors against the German settlement in Brazil displayed clear xenophobia
against the so-called "German threat". The Portuguese language
was presented as a fundamental criterion of nationality and this justified the nationalization of education and the closing of ethnic schools. Most German Brazilians could barely speak Portuguese, and when German was prohibited in the country, they faced many difficulties due to this language barrier.
From this perspective, the human element representative of the "more legitimate" national formation had the task of conforming immigrants and their descendants to the myth of the amalgam of the three races that makes up the Brazilian nation (whites, blacks and Indians).
In the 1930s, Brazil was home to one of the largest German populations outside Germany, with 100,000 German-born people and a community of 1 million people of German descent, whose ancestors had been settling the country since 1824. Brazil also had the largest number of members of the Nazi Party outside of Germany, with 2,822 members. The large number of people with German roots and a notable number of Nazi members were used by the Brazilian government to justify their programs of nationalization. During World War II, in 1942, Nazi Germany attacked Brazilian ships and Brazil declared war against Germany. President Getúlio Vargas
initiated a strict program of forced cultural assimilation - Nacionalismo- that worked quite efficiently, if not initially.
He forbade any organised manifestation of German culture
in Brazil. Schools were required to teach exclusively in Portuguese, and the publishing of books, newspapers and magazines in foreign languages (which in practice meant German language
and Italian language) was subjected to prior censorship by the Ministry of Justice The use of foreign languages in governmental precincts was forbidden, as well as the use of foreign languages in religious services. Members of the Brazilian army were sent to areas of "foreign colonization" to "monitor" the local population. There are records of arrest or moral coercion motivated by the use of foreign languages.
These problems were aggravated with the rise of Nazism
in Germany. The Nazi Party soon took to the task of organizing abroad, wherever significant populations of German origin were present. In Brazil the results were not as the party expected. About 3,000 people joined it, making the Brazilian section the numerically most important foreign branch of the Nazi Party; however, the considerable population of German origin in Brazil may have been more a problem than an asset for the German Nazi Party: if on the one hand it raised the hope of interfering in Brazilian internal politics, on the other hand there was a concern not to alienate the Brazilian government, which Germany at the time hoped could be brought to its side, or at least remain in a benevolent neutrality.
In addition there was the issue of the local Brazilian Fascist-like Party, the Brazilian Integralist Action
. In contrast to the Nazi Party, the Integralists favoured miscegenation
, which they thought was essential to Brazilian national identity; this directly conflicted with the Nazi ideology of racial purity. This was a problem, since the Integralists were able to attract some membership among Brazilians of German ancestry, thus competing with the Nazi organisation; moreover, until 1937, when Vargas imposed a dictatorship, the Integralists, unlike the Nazi Party, were able to participate in elections, and so there was a natural tendency of informal Nazi support for the Integralists.
Support for the Nazi regime in Germany was widespread among Brazilians of German descent, which certainly worried the Brazilian authorities. The racial and nationalist views of the Nazis easily blended into the Deutschtum ideology. However, the Nazis weren't able to capitalise this into a really strong membership, and their local actions, such as proposed boycotts, were resisted by most of the population of German ancestry.
In fact, the fears of the Brazilian authorities regarding the expansion of Nazism in Brazil seem exaggerated in retrospect; however, it should be taken into consideration that in 1938 Germany annexed Austria, and in 1939 it dismembered, then also annexed Czechoslovakia, and that the local sections of the Nazi Party were fully involved in these actions; manipulation of German minorities also played an important role in the internal politics of Poland (Danzig) and Lithuania (Memel). So, while exaggerated, the Brazilian government's worries seem to a certain extent justifiable.
In April 1938, Vargas outlawed the Nazi Party in Brazil (interestingly, the Brazilian parties themselves were outlawed in December 1937). However, in December 1937 the Nazi German Ambassador to Rio de Janeiro, Karl Ritter
, was already reporting nationalising actions by the Brazilian government. At that moment, conditions were being imposed for the continued functioning of German schools. Ritter had a problem in that his powers as Ambassador did not enable him to interfere on behalf of Brazilian citizens of German origin. However, in February 1938 Ritter met Vargas, and demanded criticism of Germany and Nazism in the Brazilian press be gagged. As confirmed by diplomatic documents later declassified, the interest of the Embassy was in the Reichsdeutschen, or German citizens, not the Deutschbrasilianer, or Brazilian citizens of German ancestry.
In April, Vargas forbade any political activity by foreigners; in May, the Integralists attempted a coup against Vargas, which further complicated relations between Brazil and Germany. Up to this moment, however, no actions were taken against cultural, religious or sports associations. Measures were intensified in 1939, when the public use of foreign languages was forbidden, including in elementary schools and religious ceremonies (harsh as this is, it is necessary to remember, as René Gertz points out, that about half of Lutheran ministers in Rio Grande do Sul were affiliated with the Nazi Party). The cultural associations had to stop promoting foreign cultures. In 1942, when Brazil entered World War II, further restrictions were put in place, and their enforcement was made stricter. No effort was made to suppress the Lutheran church; the teaching of foreign languages, including German, in high schools and colleges continued, as well as their private use. Publicly speaking foreign languages, including German, was banned under penalty of imprisonment
; this was especially enforced against the public use of German. Stores owned by Germans were ransacked. Establishments registered in foreign names had to be changed and worship in churches had to be only in Portuguese. During World War II, the Brazilian Expeditionary Force (FEB) enlisted many Germans and people of German descent to fight alongside the Allied
forces, which was tragic for many of them, considering that the soldiers were forced to fight against Germany.
There were differences in emphasis during the nationalization campaign; in particular, the interventor (unelected governor) of Rio Grande do Sul, Cordeiro de Farias, was notable for his harshness. At the time of Brazil's declaration of war against Germany, popular riots against citizens of German origin erupted in Rio Grande do Sul, as a response to the brutal sinking of Brazilian merchant ships by German U-boat
s that resulted in more than 600 deaths. When the Army repressed those riots and ensured the physical integrity of the citizens, Cordeiro de Farias offered his resignation, which was rejected, but he was soon sent to Italy as a military commander and replaced Colonel Ernesto Dornelles, a much more moderate leader.
Germans are regarded as good industrialists in Brazil, manufacturing shoes, leather goods, furniture, textiles, charcoal
, mechanical devices, etc., as well as good farmers. Many Brazilian towns were built using German architecture.
According to the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs,the Colégio Visconde de Porto Seguro
,founded in 1872 as Deutsche Schule by the Germans immigrants in São Paulo, is the largest German School worldwide. São Paulo is also home to the largest concentration of German businesses worldwide.
Many aspects of Brazil's culture
have been influenced by Germans. Today Brazil hosts Oktoberfest
s in Blumenau, Santa Catarina
, in Santa Cruz do Sul
and Igrejinha
, Rio Grande do Sul
and in Marechal Cândido Rondon
, Paraná, along with many other cities. Beer itself is said to have been brought to Brazil by German immigrants, and today it is the country's most popular alcoholic beverage.
German immigrants spread the Protestant faith (especially Lutheranism
). The regions heavily settled by Germans still retain a strong German influence.
Germans introduced new types of food and beverage in Brazil or reinforced their utilizations by brazilians.
Kuchen
, Sauerkraut
(known in Portuguese as Chucrute, is also used as derogatory term to designate Germans) , Eisbein
, new types of sausage and vegetables are some examples of food introduced in Brazil by the immigrants. In Curitiba, sausage are commonly known as Vina, from the German Wiener(Wiener Würstchen).
The tradition of brewing in Brazil dates back to German immigration in the early nineteenth century. The first breweries date from the 1830s, although the brand Bohemia is claimed to be the first Brazilian beer, with production starting in 1853 in the city of Petrópolis
founded by the German brazilian Henrique Kremer. In 1913 there were 134 breweries only in Rio Grande do Sul
. Brahma
was founded in 1888 in Rio de Janeiro
by the Swiss immigrant Joseph Villiger. Antarticta (Companhia Antarctica Paulista
) was founded in the same year by the Brazilian Joaquim Salles and the German immigrant Louis Bücher in São Paulo
. In 1999 the two brands merged creating AmBev
.
The percentages are higher in some cities. For example, in the town of Pomerode
, Santa Catarina
, 90% of the population are Brazilians of German descent, and the main local language is a Pomeranian dialect. It is considered the most "German" city in Brazil. Many towns in Southern Brazil have a majority of German-descended people.
Sometimes, Germans surnames were adapted or changed in Brazil to a more "understandable" writing in Portuguese since many were incomprehensible to brazilians.
family in Brazil. The surname is original from the surrounding areas around Linz
(Austria). The Brazilian family comes from the branch from Ulm
(Germany).
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=REG&db=patriziat&id=I7997
s and seem to be proportionally better represented in these areas than Brazilian models of other ethnic origins. The small cities of the states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul are ideal grounds for talent hunters from all over the world. The best known German Brazilian model is Gisele Bündchen
; others include Ana Claudia Michels
, Ana Hickmann
, Mariana Weickert
, Letícia Birkheuer
, Raquel Zimmermann
, Cintia Dicker
, Solange Wilvert
, Monique Olsen
, Carol Trentini, Jeísa Chiminazzo
and Bruna Erhardt
.
Winners of the Miss Brazil beauty pageant have included Vera Fischer
(1969), Mariza Sommer (1974), Ingrid Budag (1975), Eveline Schroeter (1980), Maria Carolina Portella Otto (1990), Leila Cristine Schuster (1993), Thaisa Thomsen (2002), Carina Beduschi
(2005) and Rafaela Zanella
(2006).
The Miss Brazil 2007 pageant broke all records regarding the participation of women of German descent. They were: Jakeline Lemke (state of Espírito Santo
), Priscilla Riker (Amazonas), Liandra Schmidt (Goiás
), Sabrina Rhoden (São Paulo
) and Manoella Heiderscheidt (Santa Catarina
).
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian person of ethnic German ancestry or origin. Although there are German Brazilians in many parts of Brazil, they live mostly in the Southern part of the country, comprising the states of Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...
, Paraná
Paraná (state)
Paraná is one of the states of Brazil, located in the South of the country, bordered on the north by São Paulo state, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by Santa Catarina state and the Misiones Province of Argentina, and on the west by Mato Grosso do Sul and the republic of Paraguay,...
, Santa Catarina
Santa Catarina (state)
Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by...
and São Paulo
São Paulo (state)
São Paulo is a state in Brazil. It is the major industrial and economic powerhouse of the Brazilian economy. Named after Saint Paul, São Paulo has the largest population, industrial complex, and economic production in the country. It is the richest state in Brazil...
.
Overview
The 19th century was marked by an intense emigrationEmigration
Emigration is the act of leaving one's country or region to settle in another. It is the same as immigration but from the perspective of the country of origin. Human movement before the establishment of political boundaries or within one state is termed migration. There are many reasons why people...
of Europeans to different parts of the world, which led to a process of Europeanisation
Europeanisation
Europeanisation refers to a number of related phenomena and patterns of change:*The process in which a notionally non-European subject adopts a number of European features...
of these areas. Between 1816 and 1850, 5 million people left Europe; between 1850 and 1880 another 22 million people emigrated. Between 1846 and 1932, 60 million Europeans emigrated. Many Germans left the German states after the failed revolutions of 1848
Revolutions of 1848 in the German states
The Revolutions of 1848 in the German states, also called the March Revolution – part of the Revolutions of 1848 that broke out in many countries of Europe – were a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions in the states of the German Confederation, including the Austrian Empire...
. Between 1878 and 1892, another 7 million Germans left Germany; after the 1870s Germany was one of the countries from which the largest numbers of people emigrated, the vast majority to the United States. From 1820 to 1840, Germans represented 21.4% of all European immigrants entering the USA; 32.2% in the following two decades; and at the end of the century they were the largest immigrant group (21.9%) in the US.
Immigration to Brazil
Immigration to Brazil is the movement to Brazil of foreign persons to reside permanently. It should not be confused with the colonisation of the country by the Portuguese, or with the forcible bringing of people from Africa as slaves....
was small compared to the numbers who went to the United States, and also compared to immigration of other nationalities, such as Portuguese, Italians
Italian Brazilian
-Italian immigration to Brazil:The Italian government claims there are 25 million Brazilians of Italian descent, which would be the largest population of Italian background outside of Italy itself. There are no actual surveys, or even verifiable calculations supporting such claims. According to...
and Spaniards
Spanish immigration to Brazil
Spanish emigration peaked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was concentrated to Argentina and Cuba. Between 1882 and 1930, 3,297,312 Spaniards emigrated, of whom 1,594,622 went to Argentina and 1,118,960 went to Cuba...
, who together made up over 80% of the immigrants to Brazil during the period of greatest immigration by Europeans. Germans appeared in fourth place among immigrants to Brazil, but dropped to fifth place when Japanese immigration increased after 1908.
Phenomenon
A phenomenon , plural phenomena, is any observable occurrence. Phenomena are often, but not always, understood as 'appearances' or 'experiences'...
which started as early as 1824, many decades before the beginning of the immigration of other European ethnic groups to Brazil. For example, the first significant groups of Italians to immigrate to Brazil only arrived in 1875, many decade
Decade
A decade is a period of 10 years. The word is derived from the Ancient Greek dekas which means ten. This etymology is sometime confused with the Latin decas and dies , which is not correct....
s after the arrival of the first Germans. When the settlement of other Europeans in Brazil began, the Germans had already been living there for many generations. Another factor was the high birth rate
Birth rate
Crude birth rate is the nativity or childbirths per 1,000 people per year . Another word used interchangeably with "birth rate" is "natality". When the crude birth rate is subtracted from the crude death rate, it reveals the rate of natural increase...
s among German Brazilians. Research has found that between 1826 and 1828 a first-generation German Brazilian woman had an average of 8.5 children, and the second generation had an average of 10.4 children per woman. Birth rates among German Brazilian women were higher than those of other Brazilian women, resulting in faster growth of the population of German origin than of the population of non-German origin and a rapid increase in the population of German origin in the country.
In the book The Monroe Doctrine by T B Edgington is said:
The natural increase of the German population in southern Brazil is marvelous. As a rule they rear from ten to fifteen children in each family. Blumenau, a colony which was settled by the Germans over fifty years ago, more than doubles itself every ten years. Southern Brazil is now called ‘Greater Germany’, and the Germans exercise there a commercial and financial supremacy.
Even though the population of German descent makes up a small minority in Brazil, they represent a very large percentage of the population of the South. Jean Roche estimated that people of German descent made up 13.3% of the population in Rio Grande do Sul in 1890, and that they had increased to 21.6% of the population in 1950. By 1920, the vast majority of the population of German descent was Brazilian-born. The Census of 1920 revealed that foreigners
Alien (law)
In law, an alien is a person in a country who is not a citizen of that country.-Categorization:Types of "alien" persons are:*An alien who is legally permitted to remain in a country which is foreign to him or her. On specified terms, this kind of alien may be called a legal alien of that country...
constituted only 3% of the population of the old German communities of São Leopoldo, Estrela, Montenegro and Bom Retiro. São Leopoldo
São Leopoldo
São Leopoldo is an important Brazilian industrial city located in the south state of Rio Grande do Sul. It occupies a total area of 103.9 km² at circa 30 km from the State Capital, Porto Alegre. Climate is sub-tropical, with temperatures varying from 2°C minimum at Winter to more than...
, then with 46,482 inhabitants, had only 1,159 foreigners. In the new German communities the proportion of foreigners was larger, for example in Ijuí (15%) and Erechim (25%), indicating they were newer destinations of immigrants in the state. The Census of 1940 revealed that virtually all the population of German descent was native-born.
The occupation of vast areas in Southern Brazil by people of German origin had a visible and important influence in the region. The descendants of German immigrants preserved their language and customs more than any other immigrant group in Brazil, creating a paradox of identity between German and Brazilian. In the Brazilian tradition, citizenship is inherent in the place of birth (Brazilians are all people born in Brazil). In the German tradition, citizenship is passed down to descendants (Germans are all people with German blood). Thus, Germans considered that a person could be legally a Brazilian citizen, but due to ancestry be still part of the German people. Thus, terms such as fatherland, (Vaterland), mother country (Mutterland), homeland (Heimat), guest country (Gastland) and several others came to be used by a few German Brazilians, denoting the contrast between being a Brazilian citizen and still having the feeling of belonging to the German people. This led to the creation of some Germanism (Deutschtum) in Brazil, influenced by Pan-Germanism
Pan-Germanism
Pan-Germanism is a pan-nationalist political idea. Pan-Germanists originally sought to unify the German-speaking populations of Europe in a single nation-state known as Großdeutschland , where "German-speaking" was taken to include the Low German, Frisian and Dutch-speaking populations of the Low...
.
Only a minority of German Brazilians were Germanists. Most German Brazilians did not consider it important to be connected to Germany through associations or political parties. Despite attempts by Germanists to attract the population of German origin in churches or schools, few of them followed these ideas. This was evident in the failure of the Nazi Party when trying to attract a following among German Brazilians. The 1920s were the decade of peak German immigration to Brazil, some 75,000 people (24,000 in 1924 alone). They were fleeing the consequences of World War I and, therefore, it was considered a transitory immigration. Joining the Nazi Party would give them an advantage if they returned to Germany. However, very few German Brazilians were interested: fewer than 5,000 joined, out of a population at that time of about 100,000 German immigrants and nearly 1 million German descendants. This shows that the connection between German Brazilians and Germany was not as strong as believed. The connection was mostly focused on language and culture, while racist ideas and so-called German racial superiority had few adherents among German Brazilians, although there are reports that a minority did hold such views. German Brazilians were not completely unified in their political ideology; research shows that they voted for a variety of candidates in elections. There was no "vote from the Germans", but different ideas within the community.
The idea of a perigo alemão ("German threat") emerged in Brazil in the late 19th century, the fear of what a “confederacy of German Brazilians” could mean for Brazil and its integration. In fact, that fear seems to have been exaggerated given that German Brazilians did not form a united group and most of them seemed not to be interested in getting involved in political issues (given the failure of the Nazi Party in Brazil) or in racist or separatist
Separatism
Separatism is the advocacy of a state of cultural, ethnic, tribal, religious, racial, governmental or gender separation from the larger group. While it often refers to full political secession, separatist groups may seek nothing more than greater autonomy...
groups that could represent a real problem for Brazil. Nonetheless, the conservation of the German language among German Brazilians, the isolation of the population in rural areas in Southern Brazil and the small but notorious number of people who were seduced by Germanist ideas seemed to be a problem in the eyes of the Brazilian Government. As a result, policies were implemented to force these people to assimilate. Both the Germanism followed by a few Germans in Brazil and the assimilationist ideology of the Brazilian government were racist. The first was based on the idea of the superiority of the German people, and that they should keep themselves separate from other ethnic groups. The second was based on the idea that whites should mix with non-whites, in order to cause a whitening of the Brazilian population that would culminate in the disappearance of the “inferior non-white races”. The Brazilian process of forced assimilation, like any other aggressive policy against immigrants, brought more problems than solutions, but it weakened the learning of the German language. In the following decades, many of the German Brazilians left the isolated areas where they used to live and migrated to urban centers. Like other immigrants in the Brazilian cities, they found themselves in the minority there and as a consequence adopted Portuguese instead of German and their sense of German identity, already weakened due to the forced assimilation of the past decades, was replaced by a Brazilian identity shared with Brazilians from other ethnic backgrounds.
Immigration
When German-speaking immigrants first arrived in Brazil starting at the beginning of the 19th century, they did not identify themselves so much as a unified German-Brazilian group. However, as time went on this common regional identity did emerge for many different geo-socio-political reasons. Germans immigrated mainly from what is now Germany, but also from other countries where German communities were established. From 1824 to 1969, around 250,000 Germans emigrated to Brazil, being the fourth largest immigrant community to settle in the country, after the Portuguese, Italians and Spaniards. About 30% of them arrived between World War I and World War II.| German immigration to Brazil, decennial periods from 1824 to 1969 Source: Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE) |
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| Nationality | 1824–47 | 1848–72 | 1872–79 | 1880–89 | 1890–99 | 1900–09 | 1910–19 | 1920–29 | 1930–39 | 1940–49 | 1950–59 | 1960–69 |
| Germans | 8,176 | 19,523 | 14,325 | 18,901 | 17,084 | 13,848 | 25,902 | 75,801 | 27,497 | 6,807 | 16,643 | 5,659 |
First German settlement in Brazil
Ilhéus
Ilhéus is a major city located in the southern coastal region of Bahia, Brazil, 430 km south of Salvador, the state's capital. The city was originally founded in 1534 as Vila de São Jorge dos Ilhéus and is known as one of the most important tourism centers of the northeast of Brazil.The...
, Bahia
Bahia
Bahia is one of the 26 states of Brazil, and is located in the northeastern part of the country on the Atlantic coast. It is the fourth most populous Brazilian state after São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, and the fifth-largest in size...
, in 1818. One year later, 200 families settled São Jorge, in the same state. Some Germans were brought to work in the Brazilian army after Independence from Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
in 1822.
However, the cradle of the German settlement in Brazil was São Leopoldo, in 1824. At that time Southern Brazil had a very low population density. Most of its inhabitants were concentrated on the coast and a few in the Pampa
Pampa
The Pampas are the fertile South American lowlands, covering more than , that include the Argentine provinces of Buenos Aires, La Pampa, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos and Córdoba, most of Uruguay, and the southernmost Brazilian State, Rio Grande do Sul...
s. The interior was covered by forests and populated by Indians
Indigenous peoples in Brazil
The Indigenous peoples in Brazil comprise a large number of distinct ethnic groups who inhabited the country prior to the European invasion around 1500...
. This lack of population was a problem, because Southern Brazil could easily be invaded by neighboring countries.
Since Brazil was recently independent from Portugal, it was not possible to bring Portuguese
Portuguese people
The Portuguese are a nation and ethnic group native to the country of Portugal, in the west of the Iberian peninsula of south-west Europe. Their language is Portuguese, and Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion....
immigrants. Germany was suffering the effects of the wars against Napoleon, overpopulation and poverty in the countryside. Many Germans were willing to immigrate to Brazil. Furthermore, Brazil's Empress, Maria Leopoldina
Maria Leopoldina of Austria
Maria Leopoldina of Austria was an archduchess of Austria, Empress consort of Brazil and queen consort of Portugal....
, was Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n and encouraged the arrival of German immigrants.
The first communities
Rhineland-Palatinate
Rhineland-Palatinate is one of the 16 states of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has an area of and about four million inhabitants. The capital is Mainz. English speakers also commonly refer to the state by its German name, Rheinland-Pfalz ....
. To attract the immigrants, the Brazilian government had promised large tracts of land where they could settle with their families and colonize the region. In fact, these lands were in the middle of big forests and the first Germans had been abandoned by the Brazilian government. From 1824 to 1829, the Major brought 5,000 Germans to Brazil.
German immigrants in Brazil settled mostly in rural areas, called colonies (colônias in Portuguese). These colonies were created by the Brazilian government, and the lands were distributed among the immigrants. They had to construct their own houses and cultivate the land.
The first years were not easy. Many Germans died of tropical disease, while others left the colonies to find better living conditions. The German colony of São Leopoldo was a disaster. Nevertheless, in the following years, a further 4,830 Germans arrived at São Leopoldo, and then the colony started to develop, with the immigrants establishing the town of Novo Hamburgo
Novo Hamburgo
Novo Hamburgo is a city in the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.Its population is 237,044 . The city covers an area of 217 square kilometers, and the average temperature is 19°C, a mild one for the region...
(New Hamburg). From São Leopoldo and Novo Hamburgo, the German immigrants spread into other areas of Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...
, mainly close to sources of rivers. The whole region of Vale dos Sinos was populated by Germans. During the 1830s and part of the 1840s German immigration to Brazil was interrupted due to conflicts in the country (War of the Farrapos).
| First Settlers in Joinville | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Origin | Immigrants | ||
| Switzerland | 190 | ||
| Prussia | 70 | ||
| Norway | 61 | ||
| Oldenburg | 44 | ||
| Holstein | 20 | ||
| Hannover | 20 | ||
| Sleswig | 17 | ||
| Hamburg | 16 | ||
| Saxony | 8 | ||
| Poland | 5 | ||
| Lübeck | 4 | ||
| Mecklenburg | 4 | ||
| Luxembourg | 3 | ||
| Sweden | 3 | ||
| Wurtemberg | 1 | ||
| Brunsvick | 1 | ||
| Schwarzburg | 1 | ||
| Others | 4 | ||
Waves of immigrants
Blumenau
Blumenau is a city in Vale do Itajaí, state of Santa Catarina, in southern Brazil. It was founded on September 2, 1850 by Dr. Hermann Bruno Otto Blumenau along with 17 German immigrants. A few years later Fritz Müller migrated to Blumenau as well....
in 1850 and Joinville
Joinville
Joinville is a city in Santa Catarina State, in the Southern Region of Brazil. Joinville is Santa Catarina's largest city. In 2010, its population has reached approximately 520,000, many of whom are of German descent....
in 1851, both in Santa Catarina state
Santa Catarina (state)
Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by...
; these attracted thousands of German immigrants to the region. Some of the mass influx was due to the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states
Revolutions of 1848 in the German states
The Revolutions of 1848 in the German states, also called the March Revolution – part of the Revolutions of 1848 that broke out in many countries of Europe – were a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions in the states of the German Confederation, including the Austrian Empire...
. Nowadays these areas of German colonization are among the wealthiest parts of Brazil, with the lowest levels of unemployment and illiteracy found in the country, and still retain a strong influence from German culture.
By the end of the 19th century, 122 German communities had been created in Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...
, and many others in Santa Catarina
Santa Catarina (state)
Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by...
, Paraná, São Paulo
São Paulo (state)
São Paulo is a state in Brazil. It is the major industrial and economic powerhouse of the Brazilian economy. Named after Saint Paul, São Paulo has the largest population, industrial complex, and economic production in the country. It is the richest state in Brazil...
, Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais is one of the 26 states of Brazil, of which it is the second most populous, the third richest, and the fourth largest in area. Minas Gerais is the Brazilian state with the largest number of Presidents of Brazil, the current one, Dilma Rousseff, being one of them. The capital is the...
and Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
. Germans helped to establish a middle-class population in Brazil, a country that was formerly divided between slaves and their masters.
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- Nowhere are our colonies, those loyal offshoots from the mother root, so promising as here. Today in these provinces, over thirty per cent of the inhabitants are Germans, or of German descent, and the ratio of their natural increase far exceeds that of the Portuguese. Surely to us belongs this part of the world, and the key to it all is Santa Catharina, stretching from the harbor of San Francisco far into the interior with its hitherto undeveloped, hardly suspected wealth. Here indeed, in southern Brazil, is a rich and healthy land, where the German emigrant may retain his nationality, where for all that is comprised in the word ' Germanismus,' a glorious future miles.
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- Nowhere are our colonies, those loyal offshoots from the mother root, so promising as here. Today in these provinces, over thirty per cent of the inhabitants are Germans, or of German descent, and the ratio of their natural increase far exceeds that of the Portuguese. Surely to us belongs this part of the world, and the key to it all is Santa Catharina, stretching from the harbor of San Francisco far into the interior with its hitherto undeveloped, hardly suspected wealth. Here indeed, in southern Brazil, is a rich and healthy land, where the German emigrant may retain his nationality, where for all that is comprised in the word ' Germanismus,' a glorious future miles.
Urban Germans in Brazil
In 1858, Germans were 15% of Porto Alegre´s population, 10% of São Paulo´s population for 1860 and 60% of immigrants living in Curitiba by the end of XIX century. In Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
, by 1830 there were 20 businesses owned by Germans. Twenty years later the number reached 50.
People of German descent actively participated in the industrialization and development of big cities in Brazil, such as Curitiba
Curitiba
Curitiba is the capital of the Brazilian state of Paraná. It is the largest city with the biggest economy of both Paraná and southern Brazil. The population of Curitiba numbers approximately 1.75 million people and the latest GDP figures for the city surpass US$61 billion according to...
and Porto Alegre
Porto Alegre
Porto Alegre is the tenth most populous municipality in Brazil, with 1,409,939 inhabitants, and the centre of Brazil's fourth largest metropolitan area . It is also the capital city of the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. The city is the southernmost capital city of a Brazilian...
.
In São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
, Germans founded their first colony in 1829. The city attracted Germans immigrants until the 1950s. Today, there are 400.000 German Brazilians living within Greater São Paulo
Greater São Paulo
The Greater São Paulo is a nonspecific term for one of the multiple definitions the large metropolitan area located in the São Paulo state in Brazil.-Definitions:-Metropolitan Area:...
.
| Owners of Industrial and Commercial Establishments in Curitiba (1869-1889) | |
|---|---|
| Ethnic origin | Total |
| Brazilians | 230 |
| Germans | 104 |
| Italians | 26 |
| French | 18 |
| English | 8 |
The pioneering period
The German settlements, and also those of other European ethnic groups, occupy a vast area in the centers of the states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. To the east, they border the old areas of Azorean Portuguese colonization, and to the south and west, the GauchoGaucho
Gaucho is a term commonly used to describe residents of the South American pampas, chacos, or Patagonian grasslands, found principally in parts of Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Chile, and Southern Brazil...
grazing areas. The areas of German settlement emerged in the center of the region, isolated from other settlements. In these remote pastoral and farming areas, the immigrants were not under the control of the powerful Brazilian landowners. Due to this isolation, the immigrants were able to organize themselves independently, building their own churches, schools and municipal authorities. The children were educated in German. Portuguese became dominant later, as a means of communication with Brazilians or with immigrants of other nationalities.
The first generation of immigrants faced the arduous task of surviving while opening gaps in the virgin forest to build their own houses and roads. Attacks by Indians
Indigenous peoples in Brazil
The Indigenous peoples in Brazil comprise a large number of distinct ethnic groups who inhabited the country prior to the European invasion around 1500...
were common. Isolated from other settlements, the Germans also had to face the difficulty of finding markets for their products. The initial difficulty was to define which productive activities could be integrated into the Brazilian economy. Only the penury faced by these people in Europe, due to the consequences of the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
and of the crisis during the consolidation of European nations, can explain their persistence in Brazil, sometimes facing miserable conditions which were worse than those they left in Europe. Once in Brazil, however, they became small landowners, which facilitated their development.
| Farms owned by an foreign(1920) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Immigrants | Farms | ||
| Italians | 35.984 | ||
| Portuguese | 9.552 | ||
| Germans | 6.887 | ||
| Spanish | 4.725 | ||
| Russians | 4.471 | ||
| Austrians | 4.292 | ||
| Japanese | 1.167 | ||
The period of prosperity
Messiah
A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...
anomie
Anomie
Anomie is a term meaning "without Law" to describe a lack of social norms; "normlessness". It describes the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and their community ties, with fragmentation of social identity and rejection of self-regulatory values. It was popularized by French...
, influenced by popular German traditions of Protestant aspirations. This led to the Revolt of the Muckers
Revolt of the Muckers
The Revolt of the Muckers was a notable event that happened during the Empire of Brazil in the region of Sapiranga, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. It was a religious conflict led by Jacobina Mentz Maurer, that happened in the years of 1873 and 1874, between two groups in a German community in Southern...
in the 1870s, which culminated in several crimes and murders.
Identity
According to Darcy RibeiroDarcy Ribeiro
Darcy Ribeiro was a Brazilian anthropologist, author and politician. Darcy Ribeiro's ideas of Latin American identity have influenced several later scholars of Latin American studies...
, despite their isolation, the descendants of Germans knew that Brazil was their home now. The new immigrants who arrived from Germany were clearly different from German Brazilians of older stock. German Brazilians had moved away from European standards, habits, language and aspirations. However, coexistence with the local Brazilians (Indians, Gauchos and Azoreans) showed that the differences with the locals were also great. The misery faced by Brazilians of other origins was also not attractive to German Brazilians. Hence, German Brazilians eventually created a third identity, which was not completely German (because of the distance that created sharp differences) but also not completely Brazilian (because of the undesirable misery seen in Brazilians). Their isolation and cultural and linguistic conservatism gave rise to conflicts between German Brazilians (and also Japanese Brazilians, Italian Brazilian
Italian Brazilian
-Italian immigration to Brazil:The Italian government claims there are 25 million Brazilians of Italian descent, which would be the largest population of Italian background outside of Italy itself. There are no actual surveys, or even verifiable calculations supporting such claims. According to...
s, etc.) on one side, and Brazilians of older extraction on the other. The nationalization was fundamental, compelling the teaching of foreign languages at schools, breaking the isolation of the communities and recruiting young people of foreign origins to serve in the military.
Migrating to urban centers, the younger generations broadened their cultural horizon and their own vision of Brazil. When they returned to their hometowns, they endorsed a Brazilian identity which was already becoming imperative. The above-average social, economic and cultural progress of the German settlements and their simultaneous integration into Brazilian markets as producers and consumers facilitated the integration of the descendants of Germans in Brazil. Today, this population is no longer seen as "foreign" by other Brazilians, but as a modern progressive urban population. The identification as "Brazilians" is also dominant among German Brazilians, since the cultural world of their ancestors was completely changed; it has become unrealistic for them to assert any other ethnic identity than Brazilian. Today, the only notable differences between Brazilians of German and of non-German ancestry are in levels of education (higher among German Brazilians), in a few surviving German traditions, and in some cases, the phenotype.
Panorama of German communities
The German Brazilian areas form, today, a Brazilian region with its own character, made up of towns and large concentrations of residents around the church, commerce and school. These rural villages are connected to major cities where the economy was diversified, adding cottage industries to the original agricultural production. In this way, the Southern Brazilian areas of European settlements formed a prosperous regional economy and a European cultural landscape, contrasting with the relative Portuguese-Brazilian uniformity found in the rest of Brazil. In recent years a large industrial development has occurred in these areas, stemming from the cottage industry. Some of the old German communities are now prosperous industrial centers, such as São LeopoldoSão Leopoldo
São Leopoldo is an important Brazilian industrial city located in the south state of Rio Grande do Sul. It occupies a total area of 103.9 km² at circa 30 km from the State Capital, Porto Alegre. Climate is sub-tropical, with temperatures varying from 2°C minimum at Winter to more than...
, Novo Hamburgo
Novo Hamburgo
Novo Hamburgo is a city in the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.Its population is 237,044 . The city covers an area of 217 square kilometers, and the average temperature is 19°C, a mild one for the region...
, Blumenau
Blumenau
Blumenau is a city in Vale do Itajaí, state of Santa Catarina, in southern Brazil. It was founded on September 2, 1850 by Dr. Hermann Bruno Otto Blumenau along with 17 German immigrants. A few years later Fritz Müller migrated to Blumenau as well....
, Joinville
Joinville
Joinville is a city in Santa Catarina State, in the Southern Region of Brazil. Joinville is Santa Catarina's largest city. In 2010, its population has reached approximately 520,000, many of whom are of German descent....
and Itajaí
Itajaí
Itajaí is a Brazilian city in the state of Santa Catarina.-History:The city was founded on June 15, 1860, but the colonization of Itajaí started in 1658, when the Paulista João Dias D’Arzão arrived in the region. In 1750, Portuguese colonists coming from Madeira and the Azores made this region...
. The Germans became entrepreneurs due to their knowledge of more complex techniques of production than those dominated by other Brazilians. In addition their bilingualism gave them better European contacts.
.
| City | Population(2010) | State |
|---|---|---|
| Joinville Joinville Joinville is a city in Santa Catarina State, in the Southern Region of Brazil. Joinville is Santa Catarina's largest city. In 2010, its population has reached approximately 520,000, many of whom are of German descent.... |
515.288 | Santa Catarina Santa Catarina (state) Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by... |
| Blumenau Blumenau Blumenau is a city in Vale do Itajaí, state of Santa Catarina, in southern Brazil. It was founded on September 2, 1850 by Dr. Hermann Bruno Otto Blumenau along with 17 German immigrants. A few years later Fritz Müller migrated to Blumenau as well.... |
309.011 | Santa Catarina Santa Catarina (state) Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by... |
| Petrópolis Petrópolis Petrópolis , also known as The Imperial City of Brazil, is a town in the state of Rio de Janeiro, about 65 km from the city of Rio de Janeiro.... |
296.044 | Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th... |
| Novo Hamburgo Novo Hamburgo Novo Hamburgo is a city in the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.Its population is 237,044 . The city covers an area of 217 square kilometers, and the average temperature is 19°C, a mild one for the region... |
239.051 | Rio Grande do Sul Rio Grande do Sul Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine... |
| São Leopoldo São Leopoldo São Leopoldo is an important Brazilian industrial city located in the south state of Rio Grande do Sul. It occupies a total area of 103.9 km² at circa 30 km from the State Capital, Porto Alegre. Climate is sub-tropical, with temperatures varying from 2°C minimum at Winter to more than... |
214.210 | Rio Grande do Sul Rio Grande do Sul Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine... |
| Nova Friburgo Nova Friburgo Nova Friburgo is a municipality in the state of Rio de Janeiro in southeastern Brazil. It is located in the northern mountainous region of the state, 136 km from its capital Rio de Janeiro... |
182.016 | Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th... |
| Itajaí Itajaí Itajaí is a Brazilian city in the state of Santa Catarina.-History:The city was founded on June 15, 1860, but the colonization of Itajaí started in 1658, when the Paulista João Dias D’Arzão arrived in the region. In 1750, Portuguese colonists coming from Madeira and the Azores made this region... |
172.081 | Santa Catarina Santa Catarina (state) Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by... |
| Jaraguá do Sul | 143.123 | Santa Catarina Santa Catarina (state) Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by... |
| Santa Cruz do Sul Santa Cruz do Sul Santa Cruz do Sul is a city in central Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The city has approximately 130,000 inhabitants and sits about 150 km from the capital city of the state, Porto Alegre... |
118.287 | Rio Grande do Sul Rio Grande do Sul Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine... |
| Brusque | 105.503 | Santa Catarina Santa Catarina (state) Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by... |
| German Brazilians | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| State | 1872 | 1890 | 1920 | 1940 | 1950 |
| Santa Catarina Santa Catarina (state) Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by... |
7% | 20,5% | 22,34% | ||
| Rio Grande do Sul Rio Grande do Sul Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine... |
13,3% | 19,3% | 21,6% | ||
| Paraná Paraná (state) Paraná is one of the states of Brazil, located in the South of the country, bordered on the north by São Paulo state, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by Santa Catarina state and the Misiones Province of Argentina, and on the west by Mato Grosso do Sul and the republic of Paraguay,... |
6,9% | ||||
| São Paulo São Paulo São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among... |
2,5% |
| German Brazilians in Espírito Santo Espírito Santo Espírito Santo is one of the states of southeastern Brazil, often referred to by the abbreviation "ES". Its capital is Vitória and the largest city is Vila Velha. The name of the state means literally "holy spirit" after the Holy Ghost of Christianity... |
|
|---|---|
| Year | Population |
| 1960 | 73.000 |
| 1980 | 145.000 |
| 2004 | 250.000 |
| Ethnic Groups in Blumenau - Last decade of the 19th century | |
|---|---|
| Origin | Percentage |
| Germans Germans The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages.... |
70% |
| Italians | 15% |
| Others | 15% |
End of expansion
If in the beginning Germans found a region with vast empty areas, later with the compulsory occupation of the lands, the German expansion came to an end. As they expanded, the German settlements encountered the pastoral areas of the Gaúchos to the west and south. The Gaúcho area was an impoverished region consisting of huge farms, dominated by a small elite of landowners who monopolized the lands and a mass of underemployed people who worked for them in poor conditions, similar to the rest of Brazil and very different from the areas of German settlements, where each family had their own small farm. Due to the expansion of German and other European settlements in Southern Brazil, the lands for each family became limited because there was no more land available. Plots of land previously settled by a single family started to be occupied by two or four families. Without their own land, some descendants of Germans regressed to a situation of poverty, mingling with the mass of Gaúchos and descendants of Azorean Portuguese who make up the poor in Southern Brazil, in search of land to work.Language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
is in decline in Brazil. However, the existence of important German-speaking communities in Brazil, even almost 200 years after the beginning of immigration, is an interesting fact. According to Born and Dickgiesser (1989, p. 55) the number of Brazilians of German descent in 1986 was 3.6 million. For Rio Grande do Sul, based on data from Birsa (Bilingualism in Rio Grande do Sul), for 1970, Altenhofen (1996, p. 56) estimated at 1,386,945 the number of speakers of a variety of German. As of 1996, he estimated that it had dropped to between 700,000 and 900,000 speakers. Damke (1997, p. 59), as of 1996, estimated more than 2 million speakers of any variety of the German language in Brazil.
| Country | German speaking population (outside Europe) |
|---|---|
| USA | 5,000,000 |
| Brazil Brazil Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people... |
3,000,000 |
| Argentina Argentina Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires... |
500,000 |
| Canada Canada Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean... |
450,000 – 620,000 |
| Australia Australia Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area... |
110,000 |
| South Africa South Africa The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans... |
75,000 (German expatriate citizens alone) |
| Chile Chile Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far... |
40,000 |
| Paraguay Paraguay Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the... |
30,000 – 40,000 |
| Namibia Namibia Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March... |
30,000 (German expatriate citizens alone) |
| Mexico Mexico The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of... |
10,000 |
| Venezuela Venezuela Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south... |
10,000 |
German immigrants preserved their language more than any other group of immigrants in Brazil. This was mainly due to shared cultural identity and the desire to recreate in Brazil an environment with characteristics of the country they believed they would never return to. In addition, the large differences between the German and Portuguese languages hindered learning of the national language of Brazil, which was and remains a pretext for continuing use of German dialects. (This may be contrasted to the United States, where a huge German population almost completely switched to English, while on the other hand, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
persisted longer than in Brazil.) The main German dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
spoken in Brazil is Hunsrückisch
Hunsrückisch
Hunsrückisch is a German dialect spoken in the Hunsrück region of Germany . This mountainous region of Germany has long been an exporter of immigrants to the United States, Canada, Brazil, Australia and other parts of the world....
, and according to Ammon, who visited German-speaking communities in Southern Brazil in 2004, the Riograndenser Hunsrückisch
Riograndenser Hunsrückisch
Riograndenser Hunsrückisch , spoken in parts of Brazil, is a Brazilian West Germanic language derived primarily from the Hunsrückisch dialect of the German Language....
(Brazilian Hunsrückisch) lexicon
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
is still quite similar to that of modern German speakers, even after almost 200 years of distance.
Hamel (1988, p. 64) and Damke (1997, p. 60-61) observed that there is a balance between the use of German and Portuguese in the German-speaking communities of Brazil. But, gradually, the trend is that Portuguese is becoming dominant. Despite the "myth of monolingualism in the country", i.e., that all Brazilians speak only Portuguese, German continues to have a strong presence even today. This myth is effective in hiding the country's linguistic minorities, including the indigenous nations
Indigenous peoples in Brazil
The Indigenous peoples in Brazil comprise a large number of distinct ethnic groups who inhabited the country prior to the European invasion around 1500...
and as well as the speakers of immigrant languages. But it also hides the majority of the Brazilian population that speaks discredited varieties of Portuguese instead of the formal standard Portuguese taught in schools. According to Oliveira (2000: 84), Brazil is one of the most multilingual countries in the world, with inhabitants speaking around 200 language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
s, of which about 170 are indigenous and 30 languages of immigrants.
The Brazilian Census of 1940 revealed that German was the second most spoken language in Brazil, with 644,458 speakers. In a total population of nearly 1 million German Brazilians at that time, over half still spoke German as their mother tongue. The vast majority of the German speakers were Brazilian-born, with a minority born in Germany or in another German-speaking country. The other main languages spoken were Italian with 458,054, Japanese with 192,698 and Spanish with 74,381.
| People who usually do not speak Portuguese at home, by gender and nationality, according to the 1940 Brazilian Census | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German speakers | Men | Women | Brazilian born | Naturalized Brazilians | Foreigners |
| 644,458 | 327,443 | 317,015 | 580,114 | 5,083 | 59,169 |
Discrimination
The "myth of monolingualism", along with the general idea that speaking Portuguese was a "condition to be Brazilian", has masked the presence of minority languages and contributed to ideas that German Brazilians were self-absorbed, separatist, thought themselves superior, and did not want to learn Portuguese. However, these beliefs did not take into account that the German communities in Brazil were formed in places isolated by forests, where the Portuguese-speaking population was not present, and it was natural that the children continue speaking German rather than adopt the Portuguese language with which they rarely had contact. The fact that they spoke German did not prevent them from seeing themselves as Brazilians, since they saw themselves as "Brazilians of German culture". Under Getúlio VargasGetúlio Vargas
Getúlio Dornelles Vargas served as President of Brazil, first as dictator, from 1930 to 1945, and in a democratically elected term from 1951 until his suicide in 1954. Vargas led Brazil for 18 years, the most for any President, and second in Brazilian history to Emperor Pedro II...
's government, during World War II, when Brazil broke off diplomatic relations with Germany (and also with the other Axis Powers, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and Japan), the use of the German language was repressed: teaching German in schools and publication of German newspapers were forbidden (together with Italian and Japanese).
In this context, monolingualism appeared to solve the problems of learning Portuguese, and the language of immigrants was regarded as responsible for school failure and difficulties in learning Portuguese. In 1989 there was a controversy regarding German speakers in Brazil when the mayor of Santa Maria do Herval, a town in Rio Grande do Sul, issued a verbal orientation to the municipality's elementary teachers to retain students using Hunsrückisch during break time to "teach them Portuguese". Disagreement ensued, with some decrying the initiative as repressive, and others (including people of German descent) supporting the mayor on the basis that not being able to speak Portuguese is a handicap in Brazilian society. The guideline has since been overturned.
Religion
Most German-Brazilians are Roman Catholics or Lutherans (Evangelical Lutheran Church of BrazilEvangelical Lutheran Church of Brazil
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brazil, or Igreja Evangélica Luterana do Brasil , was founded in 1904 in Rio Grande do Sul, a southern state in Brazil. The IELB is a conservative, confessional Lutheran Synod that holds the Book of Concord. It started as a mission of the Lutheran Church -...
). As with other Brazilians, there is a significant minority of non-religious people, and Pentecostalism is on the rise. Almost 85% of all Lutherans in Latin America and the Caribbean live in Brazil.
| Country | Lutherans in America |
|---|---|
 United States |
7,504,244 |
 Brazil |
951,466 |
 Canada |
232,904 |
 Argentina |
71,960 |
 Bolivia |
24,400 |
Forced assimilation
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- We most desire that at any cost a German country containing some 20 to 30 million Germans may grow in the twentieth century in Brazil, and that, no matter whether it remains a portion of Brazil or becomes a self-containing state or enters into close relations with our empire.
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- - Gustav von SchmollerGustav von SchmollerGustav von Schmoller was the leader of the "younger" German historical school of economics.-Life:Schmoller was born in Heilbronn. His father was a Württemberg civil servant. Young Schmoller studied Staatswissenschaften at the University of Tübingen...
, German economist(1900).http://www.archive.org/stream/aimsclaimsofgerm19171919kinl/aimsclaimsofgerm19171919kinl_djvu.txthttp://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=ountry+containing+some+20+to+30+million+Germans+may+grow+in&hl=en#sclient=psy&hl=en&prmdo=1&tbm=bks&source=hp&q=%22country+containing+some+20+to+30+million+Germans+may+grow+in+empire+unless&pbx=1&oq=%22country+containing+some+20+to+30+million+Germans+may+grow+in+empire+unless&aq=f&aqi=&aql=undefined&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=12737l15084l8l9l8l1l0l0l0l534l2414l3-1.1.3l5&prmdo=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=c53cfceeac5690&biw=1024&bih=677]
- - Gustav von Schmoller
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- We most desire that at any cost a German country containing some 20 to 30 million Germans may grow in the twentieth century in Brazil, and that, no matter whether it remains a portion of Brazil or becomes a self-containing state or enters into close relations with our empire.
WhenGermans first arrived in Southern Brazil in 1824, they found a country with a climate
Climate
Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods...
, vegetation
Vegetation
Vegetation is a general term for the plant life of a region; it refers to the ground cover provided by plants. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular taxa, life forms, structure, spatial extent, or any other specific botanical or geographic characteristics. It is broader...
and culture very different from those of Germany. Southern Brazil was a land of gauchos, cattle herders who lived, and still live, in the Pampas region of the Southern Cone
Southern Cone
Southern Cone is a geographic region composed of the southernmost areas of South America, south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Although geographically this includes part of Southern and Southeast of Brazil, in terms of political geography the Southern cone has traditionally comprised Argentina,...
. In the following decades, however, waves of German-speaking immigrants arrived, to the point that in many areas of Southern Brazil the vast majority of the inhabitants were Germans and even after three or four generations born in Brazil, these people used to consider themselves Germans.
Between 1937 and 1945 a significant portion of the Brazilian population suffered interference in daily life produced by a "campaign of nationalization". This population - called "alien
Alien (law)
In law, an alien is a person in a country who is not a citizen of that country.-Categorization:Types of "alien" persons are:*An alien who is legally permitted to remain in a country which is foreign to him or her. On specified terms, this kind of alien may be called a legal alien of that country...
" by the Brazilian government - was composed of immigrants and their descendants. Both the Brazilian Empire and the early Republic allowed groups of immigrants to settle in isolated communities, mainly in Southern Brazil, and to some extent in other parts, such as Espírito Santo
Espírito Santo
Espírito Santo is one of the states of southeastern Brazil, often referred to by the abbreviation "ES". Its capital is Vitória and the largest city is Vila Velha. The name of the state means literally "holy spirit" after the Holy Ghost of Christianity...
, in the Southeast. These people had not been assimilated into the majority Brazilian society, a fact that worried the government of President Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Dornelles Vargas served as President of Brazil, first as dictator, from 1930 to 1945, and in a democratically elected term from 1951 until his suicide in 1954. Vargas led Brazil for 18 years, the most for any President, and second in Brazilian history to Emperor Pedro II...
. The army had an important role during this process of forced assimilation of these areas of "foreign colonization" that created so-called "ethnic cysts" in Brazil. German Brazilians saw themselves as part of a pluralist society, so that the Deutschtum conception (of being part of a community with a shared German ancestry) seemed compatible with the fact that they were also Brazilian citizens. However, the Brazilian government only accepted the idea of the jus soli
Jus soli
Jus soli , also known as birthright citizenship, is a right by which nationality or citizenship can be recognized to any individual born in the territory of the related state...
, so that all people born in Brazil should see themselves as Brazilians, and leave other ethnic associations behind. The Brazilian view contrasted with the jus sanguinis
Jus sanguinis
Ius sanguinis is a social policy by which citizenship is not determined by place of birth, but by having a parent who are citizens of the nation...
conception of most German Brazilians of that time, who were still connected to the ancestral homeland.
Vale do Itajaí
Vale do Itajaí also known as Vale Europeu is a mesoregion located in the Northeastern part of the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina. It has about 1.3 million inhabitants and comprises four smaller regions: Blumenau, Itajaí, Ituporanga and Rio do Sul...
, where the population was composed mostly of Germans, Italians and Poles. In the 1930s, the Vale do Itajaí was described as a place of "strange costumes, full of non-national Brazilians, contaminated by ideals of a nation that collapsed Brazil, a place of disintegration of national spirit". During this period of nationalization, the Germans were considered the most "alien", the Italians closest to the Brazilians, and the Poles in an intermediary position, but none of them were seen as unequivocally Brazilian. The fear of secession
Secession
Secession is the act of withdrawing from an organization, union, or especially a political entity. Threats of secession also can be a strategy for achieving more limited goals.-Secession theory:...
was not a novelty in regard to the definition of the Brazilian nation-state: long before 1939, Brazilian nationalists feared the collapse of the South, considering it "too Germanized". Many members of the Brazilian army participated during this process, such as Nogueira:
Nogueira also compared the German Brazilians to "an octopus extending its tentacles" in Southern Brazil. Nogueira used the image of the occupation of the most fertile areas of southern territory by foreigners, who had no intention of being integrated into the country, but had remained segregated since the beginning of their settlement. The record of the first impressions about the city of Blumenau in his book received the subtitle of "One Weird City", arguing that "the German language is spoken without constraints, including in public offices". Silvio Romero (1906) compared German immigration to the Barbarian Invasions which brought about the end of the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
. Writings by different authors against the German settlement in Brazil displayed clear xenophobia
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
against the so-called "German threat". The Portuguese language
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
was presented as a fundamental criterion of nationality and this justified the nationalization of education and the closing of ethnic schools. Most German Brazilians could barely speak Portuguese, and when German was prohibited in the country, they faced many difficulties due to this language barrier.
From this perspective, the human element representative of the "more legitimate" national formation had the task of conforming immigrants and their descendants to the myth of the amalgam of the three races that makes up the Brazilian nation (whites, blacks and Indians).
In the 1930s, Brazil was home to one of the largest German populations outside Germany, with 100,000 German-born people and a community of 1 million people of German descent, whose ancestors had been settling the country since 1824. Brazil also had the largest number of members of the Nazi Party outside of Germany, with 2,822 members. The large number of people with German roots and a notable number of Nazi members were used by the Brazilian government to justify their programs of nationalization. During World War II, in 1942, Nazi Germany attacked Brazilian ships and Brazil declared war against Germany. President Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Dornelles Vargas served as President of Brazil, first as dictator, from 1930 to 1945, and in a democratically elected term from 1951 until his suicide in 1954. Vargas led Brazil for 18 years, the most for any President, and second in Brazilian history to Emperor Pedro II...
initiated a strict program of forced cultural assimilation - Nacionalismo- that worked quite efficiently, if not initially.
He forbade any organised manifestation of German culture
Culture of Germany
German culture began long before the rise of Germany as a nation-state and spanned the entire German-speaking world. From its roots, culture in Germany has been shaped by major intellectual and popular currents in Europe, both religious and secular...
in Brazil. Schools were required to teach exclusively in Portuguese, and the publishing of books, newspapers and magazines in foreign languages (which in practice meant German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and Italian language) was subjected to prior censorship by the Ministry of Justice The use of foreign languages in governmental precincts was forbidden, as well as the use of foreign languages in religious services. Members of the Brazilian army were sent to areas of "foreign colonization" to "monitor" the local population. There are records of arrest or moral coercion motivated by the use of foreign languages.
The Nazi issue
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
in Germany. The Nazi Party soon took to the task of organizing abroad, wherever significant populations of German origin were present. In Brazil the results were not as the party expected. About 3,000 people joined it, making the Brazilian section the numerically most important foreign branch of the Nazi Party; however, the considerable population of German origin in Brazil may have been more a problem than an asset for the German Nazi Party: if on the one hand it raised the hope of interfering in Brazilian internal politics, on the other hand there was a concern not to alienate the Brazilian government, which Germany at the time hoped could be brought to its side, or at least remain in a benevolent neutrality.
In addition there was the issue of the local Brazilian Fascist-like Party, the Brazilian Integralist Action
Brazilian Integralism
Brazilian Integralism was a fascist political movement in Brazil, created on October 1932. Founded and led by Plínio Salgado, a literary figure who was somewhat famous for his participation in the 1922 Modern Art Week, the movement had adopted some characteristics of European mass movements of...
. In contrast to the Nazi Party, the Integralists favoured miscegenation
Miscegenation
Miscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation....
, which they thought was essential to Brazilian national identity; this directly conflicted with the Nazi ideology of racial purity. This was a problem, since the Integralists were able to attract some membership among Brazilians of German ancestry, thus competing with the Nazi organisation; moreover, until 1937, when Vargas imposed a dictatorship, the Integralists, unlike the Nazi Party, were able to participate in elections, and so there was a natural tendency of informal Nazi support for the Integralists.
Support for the Nazi regime in Germany was widespread among Brazilians of German descent, which certainly worried the Brazilian authorities. The racial and nationalist views of the Nazis easily blended into the Deutschtum ideology. However, the Nazis weren't able to capitalise this into a really strong membership, and their local actions, such as proposed boycotts, were resisted by most of the population of German ancestry.
In fact, the fears of the Brazilian authorities regarding the expansion of Nazism in Brazil seem exaggerated in retrospect; however, it should be taken into consideration that in 1938 Germany annexed Austria, and in 1939 it dismembered, then also annexed Czechoslovakia, and that the local sections of the Nazi Party were fully involved in these actions; manipulation of German minorities also played an important role in the internal politics of Poland (Danzig) and Lithuania (Memel). So, while exaggerated, the Brazilian government's worries seem to a certain extent justifiable.
In April 1938, Vargas outlawed the Nazi Party in Brazil (interestingly, the Brazilian parties themselves were outlawed in December 1937). However, in December 1937 the Nazi German Ambassador to Rio de Janeiro, Karl Ritter
Karl Ritter
Karl Ritter was a German diplomat, ambassador to Brazil, a member of the Nazi Party, Special Envoy to the Munich Agreement, a senior official in the Foreign Office during World War II, and convicted war criminal in the Ministries Trial.-Life:Karl Ritter was a graduate in law, and was appointed to...
, was already reporting nationalising actions by the Brazilian government. At that moment, conditions were being imposed for the continued functioning of German schools. Ritter had a problem in that his powers as Ambassador did not enable him to interfere on behalf of Brazilian citizens of German origin. However, in February 1938 Ritter met Vargas, and demanded criticism of Germany and Nazism in the Brazilian press be gagged. As confirmed by diplomatic documents later declassified, the interest of the Embassy was in the Reichsdeutschen, or German citizens, not the Deutschbrasilianer, or Brazilian citizens of German ancestry.
In April, Vargas forbade any political activity by foreigners; in May, the Integralists attempted a coup against Vargas, which further complicated relations between Brazil and Germany. Up to this moment, however, no actions were taken against cultural, religious or sports associations. Measures were intensified in 1939, when the public use of foreign languages was forbidden, including in elementary schools and religious ceremonies (harsh as this is, it is necessary to remember, as René Gertz points out, that about half of Lutheran ministers in Rio Grande do Sul were affiliated with the Nazi Party). The cultural associations had to stop promoting foreign cultures. In 1942, when Brazil entered World War II, further restrictions were put in place, and their enforcement was made stricter. No effort was made to suppress the Lutheran church; the teaching of foreign languages, including German, in high schools and colleges continued, as well as their private use. Publicly speaking foreign languages, including German, was banned under penalty of imprisonment
Imprisonment
Imprisonment is a legal term.The book Termes de la Ley contains the following definition:This passage was approved by Atkin and Duke LJJ in Meering v Grahame White Aviation Co....
; this was especially enforced against the public use of German. Stores owned by Germans were ransacked. Establishments registered in foreign names had to be changed and worship in churches had to be only in Portuguese. During World War II, the Brazilian Expeditionary Force (FEB) enlisted many Germans and people of German descent to fight alongside the Allied
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
forces, which was tragic for many of them, considering that the soldiers were forced to fight against Germany.
There were differences in emphasis during the nationalization campaign; in particular, the interventor (unelected governor) of Rio Grande do Sul, Cordeiro de Farias, was notable for his harshness. At the time of Brazil's declaration of war against Germany, popular riots against citizens of German origin erupted in Rio Grande do Sul, as a response to the brutal sinking of Brazilian merchant ships by German U-boat
U-boat
U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...
s that resulted in more than 600 deaths. When the Army repressed those riots and ensured the physical integrity of the citizens, Cordeiro de Farias offered his resignation, which was rejected, but he was soon sent to Italy as a military commander and replaced Colonel Ernesto Dornelles, a much more moderate leader.
Postwar developments
Since then, the Southern Brazilian German regional culture has been in decline. Some have decried this as a tragic loss for the country while others feel that this means national progress, arguing that assimilation ultimately leads to togetherness. However, German influence can still be seen all across the southern states, be it in architecture, shops, town names or the way of life. Many German schools re-opened during the 1950s and are regarded as some of the best places to educate children.German influence in Brazil
Charcoal
Charcoal is the dark grey residue consisting of carbon, and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood or other substances in the absence of oxygen...
, mechanical devices, etc., as well as good farmers. Many Brazilian towns were built using German architecture.
| Owners of 204 largest industries in Sao Paulo(1962) | |
|---|---|
| Ethnic origin | Percentage |
| Italians | 34,8% |
| Brazilians | 15,7% |
| Portuguese | 11,7% |
| Germans | 10,3% |
| Syrians and Lebanese | 9,0% |
| Russians | 2,9% |
| Austrians | 2,4% |
| Swiss | 2,4% |
| Other europeans | 9,1% |
| Others | 2,0% |
| Curitiba´s Commercial League(1890-1929) | |
|---|---|
| Companies(Ethnic origin) | Percentage |
| Brazilians | 34,7% |
| Germans | 32,0% |
| Italians | 17,2% |
| Syrians and Lebanese | 7,8% |
| Slavic | 5,6% |
| Others | 2,7% |
| Owners of industries in Juiz de Fora(1858-1912) | |
|---|---|
| Ethnic origin | Percentage |
| Germans | 43,1% |
| Brazilians | 29,3% |
| Italians | 21,5% |
| English | 1,5% |
| Others | 3,1% |
According to the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs,the Colégio Visconde de Porto Seguro
Colégio Visconde de Porto Seguro
Colégio Visconde de Porto Seguro is a private bilingual school located in the neighborhood of Morumbi, in São Paulo, Brazil...
,founded in 1872 as Deutsche Schule by the Germans immigrants in São Paulo, is the largest German School worldwide. São Paulo is also home to the largest concentration of German businesses worldwide.
Culture of Brazil
The culture of Brazil presents a very diverse nature reflecting an ethnic and cultural mixing occurred in the colonial period involving mostly Native Americans, Portuguese and Africans...
have been influenced by Germans. Today Brazil hosts Oktoberfest
Oktoberfest
Oktoberfest, or Wiesn, is a 16–18 day beer festival held annually in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, running from late September to the first weekend in October. It is one of the most famous events in Germany and is the world's largest fair, with more than 5 million people attending every year. The...
s in Blumenau, Santa Catarina
Santa Catarina (state)
Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by...
, in Santa Cruz do Sul
Santa Cruz do Sul
Santa Cruz do Sul is a city in central Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The city has approximately 130,000 inhabitants and sits about 150 km from the capital city of the state, Porto Alegre...
and Igrejinha
Igrejinha
Igrejinha is a town located in the Serra Gaúcha of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The city has approximately 31,000 inhabitants and sits about 82 km from the capital city of the state, Porto Alegre.-Oktoberfest:...
, Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...
and in Marechal Cândido Rondon
Marechal Cândido Rondon
Marechal Cândido Rondon is a town and municipality in the state of Paraná in the Southern Region of Brazil.-References:...
, Paraná, along with many other cities. Beer itself is said to have been brought to Brazil by German immigrants, and today it is the country's most popular alcoholic beverage.
German immigrants spread the Protestant faith (especially Lutheranism
Lutheranism
Lutheranism is a major branch of Western Christianity that identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German reformer. Luther's efforts to reform the theology and practice of the church launched the Protestant Reformation...
). The regions heavily settled by Germans still retain a strong German influence.
Food and Beverage
Kuchen
Kuchen
Kuchen , the German word for cake, is used in other languages as the name for several different types of sweet desserts, pastries, and gateaux...
, Sauerkraut
Sauerkraut
Sauerkraut , directly translated from German: "sour cabbage", is finely shredded cabbage that has been fermented by various lactic acid bacteria, including Leuconostoc, Lactobacillus, and Pediococcus. It has a long shelf-life and a distinctive sour flavor, both of which result from the lactic acid...
(known in Portuguese as Chucrute, is also used as derogatory term to designate Germans) , Eisbein
Eisbein
, literally ice leg/bone, is the German name for a culinary dish involving the pickled ham hock, usually boiled.Eisbein is heavily marbled meat covered with a thick layer of fat. The meat is tender and aromatic, but must be cooked or braised for a long time...
, new types of sausage and vegetables are some examples of food introduced in Brazil by the immigrants. In Curitiba, sausage are commonly known as Vina, from the German Wiener(Wiener Würstchen).
The tradition of brewing in Brazil dates back to German immigration in the early nineteenth century. The first breweries date from the 1830s, although the brand Bohemia is claimed to be the first Brazilian beer, with production starting in 1853 in the city of Petrópolis
Petrópolis
Petrópolis , also known as The Imperial City of Brazil, is a town in the state of Rio de Janeiro, about 65 km from the city of Rio de Janeiro....
founded by the German brazilian Henrique Kremer. In 1913 there were 134 breweries only in Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...
. Brahma
Brahma (beer)
Brahma is a Brazilian beer, originally made by the Companhia Cervejaria Brahma which was founded in 1888. The brands are now owned by Anheuser–Busch InBev, formed by a merger between Anheuser–Busch and InBev...
was founded in 1888 in Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
by the Swiss immigrant Joseph Villiger. Antarticta (Companhia Antarctica Paulista
Companhia Antarctica Paulista
Companhia Antarctica Paulista was originally a Brazilian beer brewing company producing the Antarctica beer, that later started to produce sodas such as the Guaraná Antarctica. For several years its main rival on the beer market was Brahma. In 1999 both companies merged to form Ambev.- External...
) was founded in the same year by the Brazilian Joaquim Salles and the German immigrant Louis Bücher in São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
. In 1999 the two brands merged creating AmBev
AmBev
Ambev formally Companhia de Bebidas das Américas is a subsidiary of global brewing company Anheuser-Busch InBev and is the biggest brewery in South America and the fifth in the world...
.
Number of German Brazilians and ethnicity
In the southern states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, Germans were 22,34% and 19,3% respectively of the population in the 1940s and 6,9% for Paraná. Only in the state of Rio Grande do Sul there are approximately between 2.5 million (or or even a third of it´s population ) German descent living there.Pomerode
Pomerode is a Brazilian city in the state of Santa Catarina, in Southern Brazil. It is located in the valley of the Itajaí-Açu river, not very far from the city of Blumenau, one of the largest cities in the state....
, Santa Catarina
Santa Catarina (state)
Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by...
, 90% of the population are Brazilians of German descent, and the main local language is a Pomeranian dialect. It is considered the most "German" city in Brazil. Many towns in Southern Brazil have a majority of German-descended people.
Sometimes, Germans surnames were adapted or changed in Brazil to a more "understandable" writing in Portuguese since many were incomprehensible to brazilians.
| Germans surnames adapted in Brazil | |
|---|---|
| German | Adapted |
| Birnbaum | Pereira |
| Diemer | Dimer or Timer |
| Emmerich | Emerin |
| Frazen | França |
| Greis | Krais |
| Hahn | Hánn |
| Herzenritter | Heizeriter or Aizenrita |
| Jungles | Junckes or Junkes |
| Justin | Justo or Justino |
| Kehrig | Koerich |
| Kuhn | Cunha |
| Lefhaar | Leffa,Lefa or Leva |
| Löwe | Leão |
| Meng | Mengue |
| Meyer | Maia |
| Ostien | Hóstia |
| Paulus | Paulos or Paulo |
| Schaeffer | Schefer |
| Schlitzer | Silistre |
| Weber | Webber or Veber |
| Weingärtner | Vaingärtner |
| Wilvert | Vicente |
| Zimmermann | Simão |
The Lins´s Family
One of the first Germans that arrived in Brazil were the cousins Sebald Linz von Dorndorf and Christoph Linz (or Sebald Lins von Dorndorf and Christoph Lins). They arrived in Brazil in 1570 as landowners. At the time they arrived, they married with the Luso-Brazilian nobility living there and changed their names to a Portuguese´s writing, respectively, Cibaldo Lins and Cristovão Lins, founding the LinsLins
-People:* Ivan Lins, Brazilian singer and composer* Luizianne Lins, Brazilian politician* Paulo Lins, Brazilian writer* Leovegildo Lins da Gama Júnior, Brazilian footballer The surname occurs also in German-speaking countries....
family in Brazil. The surname is original from the surrounding areas around Linz
Linz
Linz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube. The population of the city is , and that of the Greater Linz conurbation is about...
(Austria). The Brazilian family comes from the branch from Ulm
Ulm
Ulm is a city in the federal German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the River Danube. The city, whose population is estimated at 120,000 , forms an urban district of its own and is the administrative seat of the Alb-Donau district. Ulm, founded around 850, is rich in history and...
(Germany).
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=REG&db=patriziat&id=I7997
The first German communities
| Place | Date | Place of origin of the settlers |
|---|---|---|
| Nova Friburgo Nova Friburgo Nova Friburgo is a municipality in the state of Rio de Janeiro in southeastern Brazil. It is located in the northern mountainous region of the state, 136 km from its capital Rio de Janeiro... (RJ) |
1819 | Switzerland Switzerland Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition.... , Rhineland Rhineland Historically, the Rhinelands refers to a loosely-defined region embracing the land on either bank of the River Rhine in central Europe.... , Saxony Saxony The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states.... , Bohemia Bohemia Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague... |
| São Leopoldo São Leopoldo São Leopoldo is an important Brazilian industrial city located in the south state of Rio Grande do Sul. It occupies a total area of 103.9 km² at circa 30 km from the State Capital, Porto Alegre. Climate is sub-tropical, with temperatures varying from 2°C minimum at Winter to more than... (RS) |
1824 | Hunsrück Hunsrück The Hunsrück is a low mountain range in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is bounded by the river valleys of the Moselle , the Nahe , and the Rhine . The Hunsrück is continued by the Taunus mountains on the eastern side of the Rhine. In the north behind the Moselle it is continued by the Eifel... , Saxony, Württemberg Württemberg Württemberg , formerly known as Wirtemberg or Wurtemberg, is an area and a former state in southwestern Germany, including parts of the regions Swabia and Franconia.... , Saxe-Coburg Saxe-Coburg Saxe-Coburg was a duchy held by the Ernestine branch of the Wettin dynasty in today's Bavaria, Germany.After the Division of Erfurt in 1572, Coburg was part of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Eisenach, ruled by the Ernestine duke John Casimir jointly with his brother John Ernest. In 1596... |
| Petrópolis Petrópolis Petrópolis , also known as The Imperial City of Brazil, is a town in the state of Rio de Janeiro, about 65 km from the city of Rio de Janeiro.... (RJ) |
1837 | Kastellaun Kastellaun -Climate:Yearly precipitation in Kastellaun amounts to 755 mm, which falls into the middle third of the precipitation chart for all Germany. At 53% of the German Weather Service’s weather stations, lower figures recorded. The driest month is April. The most rainfall comes in June. In that... , Mosel Mosel Mosel may mean the following:* Moselle , a European river, named Mosel in German* Mosel , a German appellation, formerly known as Mosel-Saar-Ruwer** Mosel wine, wine produced in the region... , Bingen Bingen am Rhein Bingen am Rhein is a town in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.The settlement’s original name was Bingium, a Celtic word that may have meant “hole in the rock”, a description of the shoal behind the Mäuseturm, known as the Binger Loch. Bingen was the starting point for the... , Nassau Nassau, Germany Nassau is a town located in the German Land of Rhineland-Palatinate. It lies in the Lahn River valley between the cities of Bad Ems and Limburg an der Lahn. Nassau is the seat of the Verbandsgemeinde of Nassau. The town is on the German-Dutch holiday road, the Orange Route... , Ingelheim, Wörrstadt Wörrstadt Wörrstadt is a town in the Alzey-Worms district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.- Location :The town lies in Rhenish Hesse on the northwest edge of the Upper Rhine Plain... , Darmstadt Darmstadt Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat... , Rhineland |
| Santa Cruz Santa Cruz do Sul Santa Cruz do Sul is a city in central Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The city has approximately 130,000 inhabitants and sits about 150 km from the capital city of the state, Porto Alegre... (RS) |
1849 | Rhineland, Pomerania Pomerania Pomerania is a historical region on the south shore of the Baltic Sea. Divided between Germany and Poland, it stretches roughly from the Recknitz River near Stralsund in the West, via the Oder River delta near Szczecin, to the mouth of the Vistula River near Gdańsk in the East... , Silesia Silesia Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław... |
| Santo Ângelo Santo Ângelo Santo Ângelo is a city located in northwestern Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil. City population is about 76,304 inhabitants and the total area of the municipality is about 677 km²... (RS) |
1857 | Rhineland, Saxony, Pomerania |
| Nova Petrópolis Nova Petrópolis Nova Petrópolis is a municipality in the Southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. The main town and seat of the municipality is also called Nova Petropolis. It is located in the Serra Gaúcha region, at 29º22'35" South, 51º06'52" West, about 100 km north of Porto Alegre, the state capital city... (RS) |
1859 | Pomerania, Saxony, Bohemia |
| Teutônia Teutônia -See also:*List of municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul-External links:* *... (RS) |
1868 | Westphalia Westphalia Westphalia is a region in Germany, centred on the cities of Arnsberg, Bielefeld, Dortmund, Minden and Münster.Westphalia is roughly the region between the rivers Rhine and Weser, located north and south of the Ruhr River. No exact definition of borders can be given, because the name "Westphalia"... |
| São Lourenço do Sul São Lourenço do Sul São Lourenço do Sul is a Brazilian town in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Its population estimated in 2004 was 44,935 inhabitants. It is located at the west bank of the big lagoon Lagoa dos Patos.... (RS) |
1857 | Pomerania, Rhineland |
| Blumenau Blumenau Blumenau is a city in Vale do Itajaí, state of Santa Catarina, in southern Brazil. It was founded on September 2, 1850 by Dr. Hermann Bruno Otto Blumenau along with 17 German immigrants. A few years later Fritz Müller migrated to Blumenau as well.... (SC) |
1850 | Pomerania, Holstein Holstein Holstein is the region between the rivers Elbe and Eider. It is part of Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost state of Germany.... , Hanover Hanover Hanover or Hannover, on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony , Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, under their title as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg... , Braunschweig Braunschweig Braunschweig , is a city of 247,400 people, located in the federal-state of Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located north of the Harz mountains at the farthest navigable point of the Oker river, which connects to the North Sea via the rivers Aller and Weser.... , Saxony |
| Brusque (SC) | 1860 | Baden Baden Baden is a historical state on the east bank of the Rhine in the southwest of Germany, now the western part of the Baden-Württemberg of Germany.... , Oldenburg Oldenburg Oldenburg is an independent city in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated in the western part of the state between the cities of Bremen and Groningen, Netherlands, at the Hunte river. It has a population of 160,279 which makes it the fourth biggest city in Lower Saxony after Hanover, Braunschweig... , Rhineland, Pomerania, Schleswig-Holstein Schleswig-Holstein Schleswig-Holstein is the northernmost of the sixteen states of Germany, comprising most of the historical duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of Schleswig... , Braunschweig |
| Pomerode Pomerode Pomerode is a Brazilian city in the state of Santa Catarina, in Southern Brazil. It is located in the valley of the Itajaí-Açu river, not very far from the city of Blumenau, one of the largest cities in the state.... (SC) |
1861 | Pomerania |
| Joinville Joinville Joinville is a city in Santa Catarina State, in the Southern Region of Brazil. Joinville is Santa Catarina's largest city. In 2010, its population has reached approximately 520,000, many of whom are of German descent.... (SC) |
1851 | Pomerania, Prussia Prussia Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history... , Oldenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Switzerland |
| Curitiba Curitiba Curitiba is the capital of the Brazilian state of Paraná. It is the largest city with the biggest economy of both Paraná and southern Brazil. The population of Curitiba numbers approximately 1.75 million people and the latest GDP figures for the city surpass US$61 billion according to... (PR) |
1851 | Volga Germans |
| Guarapuava Guarapuava Guarapuava is a city in the mid south of Paraná state in Brazil. It is the largest city in that state by area.Guarapuava is located at 25°23'36" south and 51°27'19" west. The region is known as the centre of the state of Paraná, in the third plateau, also called of the Plateau of Guarapuava... (PR) |
1951 | Swabian Germans; Swabia Swabia Swabia is a cultural, historic and linguistic region in southwestern Germany.-Geography:Like many cultural regions of Europe, Swabia's borders are not clearly defined... |
| Santa Isabel Santa Isabel, Espírito Santo Santa Isabel is a small town, in the municipality of Domingos Martins, state of Espírito Santo, Brazil. Situated 3 km from the capital of that municipality, of same name.-History:... (ES) |
1847 | Hunsrück, Pomerania, Rhineland, Prussia, Saxony |
| Santa Leopoldina Santa Leopoldina, Espírito Santo Santa Leopoldina is the name of a municipality and its capital in central Espírito Santo, Brazil. Its population was 13,303 and its area is 716.44 km²... (ES) |
1857 | Pomerania, Rhineland, Prussia, Saxony, Switzerland, Tirol Tyrol (state) Tyrol is a state or Bundesland, located in the west of Austria. It comprises the Austrian part of the historical region of Tyrol.The state is split into two parts–called North Tyrol and East Tyrol–by a -wide strip of land where the state of Salzburg borders directly on the Italian province of... |
| Santa Maria de Jetibá (ES) | 1857 | Pomerania |
Female models of German descent
Brazilian female models of German descent have achieved fame in the fashion world and in beauty contests. Many are world-class models or supermodelSupermodel
The term supermodel refers to a highly-paid fashion model who usually has a worldwide reputation and often a background in haute couture and commercial modeling. The term became prominent in the popular culture of the 1980s. Supermodels usually work for top fashion designers and labels...
s and seem to be proportionally better represented in these areas than Brazilian models of other ethnic origins. The small cities of the states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul are ideal grounds for talent hunters from all over the world. The best known German Brazilian model is Gisele Bündchen
Gisele Bündchen
Gisele Caroline Bündchen is a Brazilian fashion model, occasional film actress and goodwill ambassador for the UN Environment Programme.In the late 1990s, Bündchen became one of the first in a wave of Brazilian models to find success...
; others include Ana Claudia Michels
Ana Claudia Michels
Ana Cláudia Michels is a Brazilian model of German descent.Michels started modeling in 1997 with the Mega Agency, when she was introduced to the owners by a friend. She has appeared in catalogs for Victoria's Secret and Le Lis Blanc, a noted Brazilian clothing company, as well as Calvin Klein...
, Ana Hickmann
Ana Hickmann
Ana Lúcia Hickmann is a German Brazilian model who has worked for Victoria's Secret, Nivea, L'Oreal, Clairol, and Bloomingdales...
, Mariana Weickert
Mariana Weickert
Mariana Weickert is a Brazilian model of German descent affiliated to Ford Models. She regularly modeled in cities such as Paris, Milan, London and New York, for such high fashion houses such as Alexander McQueen, Sonia Rykiel, Bottega Veneta, Marc Jacobs, Ana Molinari, Narciso Rodrigues,...
, Letícia Birkheuer
Letícia Birkheuer
Letícia Birkheuer is a Brazilian fashion model of German descent. She was discovered while playing volleyball in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil and on 2006 she was the 7th best paid Brazilian model. She is a Sport Club Internacional supporter...
, Raquel Zimmermann
Raquel Zimmermann
Raquel Zimmermann is a Brazilian model of German descent.-Discovery and modeling career:Zimmermann was discovered by a scouting agency in Porto Alegre, Brazil at the age of 14 and made her way to Japan and on to Paris...
, Cintia Dicker
Cintia Dicker
Cintia Dicker is a Brazilian model of German descent.She was born in Campo Bom, Rio Grande do Sul. She has appeared in advertisements for Ann Taylor, Macy's, L’Oréal, American Eagle Outfitters, and Yves Saint Laurent, and in catalogs for Victoria's Secret, Gap, bebe stores, and Lands' End...
, Solange Wilvert
Solange Wilvert
Solange Wilvert is a Brazilian model. Wilvert was discovered during a casting session at her public school in Florianopolis, Brazil. She was only 14 years old at the time, but in only four weeks she had landed a contract in New York City. She has appeared on the catwalk for high designers Chanel,...
, Monique Olsen
Monique Olsen
Monique Grotto Olsen is a Brazilian fashion model. Olsen's agencies include/have been Ford Brazil ; Mega Models - Miami; Women Management; Women Management - Milan; Traffic Models; Premier Model Management; Saturo Japan, INC; and Mega Models Brasil.Olsen has appeared in ad campaigns for D&G,...
, Carol Trentini, Jeísa Chiminazzo
Jeisa Chiminazzo
Jeísa Chiminazzo is a Brazilian model.- Personal life :Chiminazzo grew up in Muçum, RS, Brazil, born to parents Ernani and Ivone of Italian and German descent. She has two sisters, Grace and Jéssica...
and Bruna Erhardt
Bruna Erhardt
Bruna Erhardt is a Brazilian fashion model of German descent. She was born in Tubarão, Santa Catarina, Brazil. She has appeared on the cover of the Brazilian Vogue. Fellow Brazilian models Caroline Trentini and Cintia Dicker are her good friends and roommates in New York City...
.
Winners of the Miss Brazil beauty pageant have included Vera Fischer
Vera Fischer
Vera Lúcia Fischer is a Brazilian actress of long-standing reputation and works in cinema and for the small screen, particularly for telenovelas. A former beauty pageant titleholder, she was crowned Miss Brazil in 1969.-Biography:...
(1969), Mariza Sommer (1974), Ingrid Budag (1975), Eveline Schroeter (1980), Maria Carolina Portella Otto (1990), Leila Cristine Schuster (1993), Thaisa Thomsen (2002), Carina Beduschi
Carina Beduschi
Carina Schlichting Beduschi is a beauty pageant contestant who has represented Brazil at the Miss Universe pageant...
(2005) and Rafaela Zanella
Rafaela Zanella
Rafaela Köhler Zanella is Brazilian beauty pageant titleholder of German descent who represented her country in the Miss Universe 2006 pageant.-Miss Universe Brazil 2006:...
(2006).
The Miss Brazil 2007 pageant broke all records regarding the participation of women of German descent. They were: Jakeline Lemke (state of Espírito Santo
Espírito Santo
Espírito Santo is one of the states of southeastern Brazil, often referred to by the abbreviation "ES". Its capital is Vitória and the largest city is Vila Velha. The name of the state means literally "holy spirit" after the Holy Ghost of Christianity...
), Priscilla Riker (Amazonas), Liandra Schmidt (Goiás
Goiás
Goiás is a state of Brazil, located in the central part of the country. The name Goiás comes from the name of an indigenous community...
), Sabrina Rhoden (São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
) and Manoella Heiderscheidt (Santa Catarina
Santa Catarina (state)
Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by...
).
See also
- Ethnic GermanEthnic GermanEthnic Germans historically also ), also collectively referred to as the German diaspora, refers to people who are of German ethnicity. Many are not born in Europe or in the modern-day state of Germany or hold German citizenship...
- German AmericanGerman AmericanGerman Americans are citizens of the United States of German ancestry and comprise about 51 million people, or 17% of the U.S. population, the country's largest self-reported ancestral group...
- German Canadian
- Brazilian GermanBrazilian GermanBrazilian German is a generic name for German dialects spoken in the southern States of Brazil ....
language - GermansGermansThe Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
- Demography of Brazil
- White BrazilianWhite BrazilianWhite Brazilians make up 48.4% of Brazil's population, or around 92 million people, according to the IBGE's 2008 PNAD . Whites are present in the entire territory of Brazil, although the main concentrations are found in the South and Southeastern parts of the country...
- White Latin AmericanWhite Latin AmericanWhite Latin Americans are the people of Latin America who are white in the racial classification systems used in individual Latin American countries. Persons who are classified as White in one Latin American country may be classified differently in another country...
- German inventors and discoverersGerman inventors and discoverersThis is a list of German inventors and discoverers. The following list comprises people from Germany or German-speaking Europe, also of people of predominantly German heritage, in alphabetical order of the surname. The main section includes existing articles, indicated by blue links, and possibly...
- Riograndenser HunsrückischRiograndenser HunsrückischRiograndenser Hunsrückisch , spoken in parts of Brazil, is a Brazilian West Germanic language derived primarily from the Hunsrückisch dialect of the German Language....
External links
- German Oversee Migration in the Online-Databank HISTAT (toll-free, registration necessary, in German)
- Instituto Brasileiro de Pesquisa Lingüística - IPOL (Blumenau, Santa Catarina)
- Wir Deutschbrasilianer (a German article: "We German-Brazilians" (PDF))
- Topicos (an Internet magazine published both in German and in Portuguese)