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German Brazilian
Germano-Brasileiro  · Deutschbrasilianer

Gisele Bündchen  · Ernesto Geisel  · Vera Fischer  · Arthur Friedenreich  · Lya Luft  · Dunga
Regions with significant populations
Brazil: Mainly Southern Brazil
Languages
Predominantly Portuguese. Minorities speak German and Brazilian German dialects
Religion
Predominantly Catholic and Protestant, some Jewish
Related ethnic groups
White Brazilian, German people

A German Brazilian (German: Deutschbrasilianer, Portuguese: teuto-brasileiro or germano-brasileiro) is a Brazilian person of 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 and Santa Catarina. In the southern states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, Germans were 20% of their population in the 1930s. According to the German Consulate in Porto Alegre, there are 3 million people of German descent living in these two states, and 5 million in the entire Brazil, though another source claims 10% of Brazilians have at least one German ancestor, then the number would be as high as 18 million.

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 an 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 nowadays 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. The majority of them arrived between World War I and World War II.

First German settlement in Brazil

The first German immigrants to settle 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. Southern Brazil, at that time, was a region with a very low population density. Most of its inhabitants were concentrated on the coast and a few in the Pampas. 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 Austrian and encouraged the arrival of German immigrants.

The first communities

Major Schaeffer, a German who was living in Brazil, was sent to Germany in order to bring immigrants. From Rhineland-Palatinate, the Major brought the immigrants and soldiers. 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 had been 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 others 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).

Waves of immigrants

The 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 ones of Brazil, with the lowest levels of unemployment and illiteracy found in the country, and still retain a strong influence from the 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, in a country divided between slaves and their masters.

Urban Germans in Brazil

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.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Brazil also attracted a significant number of German Jews, who settled mostly in São Paulo.

Germans actively participated in the industrialization and development of big cities in Brazil, such as Curitiba and Porto Alegre.

After World War II, the nationalist Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas forbade the use of the German language in Brazil, and German immigration became very low.

Culture

Language

The use of the German language is in decline in Brazil. However, the existence of important German-speaking communities in Brazil, even after almost 200 years of the beginning of the immigration, is an interesting fact. According to Born and Dickgiesser (1989, p. 55) the number of Brazilians of German descent, in 1986, was of 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 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 the feeling that they would never return to Germany, then they created characteristics of the country of origin in Brazil, sharing a national identity. It was also because of the large differences between the German and Portuguese languages, hindering the learning of the national language of Brazil, what was, and remains, a pretext for the use of German dialects. The main German dialect spoken in Brazil is Hunsrückisch, and according to Ammon, who visited German-speaking communities in Southern Brazil in 2004, the Brazilian Hunsrückisch lexicon is still quite similar to that of nowadays Germany, 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. Although the "myth of monolingualism in the country", i.e, that all Brazilians speak only Portuguese, there is the strong presence of German, even today, in Brazil. This myth is effective to hide the country's linguistic minorities, including the indigenous nations and the speakers of languages of immigrants. But it also hides the majority of the Brazilian population that speaks discredit 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, where are spoken today around 200 languages, of which about 170 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 of them 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.

Persecution

The "myth of monolingualism", along with the general idea that "to speak Portuguese" was considered as a "condition to be Brazilian", contributed to mask the presence of minority languages and to create the idea that the German Brazilians were "closed", "thought to be superior", "did not want to mix" and "did not want to learn Portuguese". However, they 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 that they rarely had contact. The fact that they spoke German did not prevent them to see themselves as Brazilians, since they saw themselves as "Brazilians of German culture." Under Getúlio Vargas's government, the use of the German language was repressed with the prohibition of German teaching in schools and the publication of German newspapers (together with Italian and Japanese) during World War II, when Brazil broke off diplomatic relations with Germany (and also with the other Axis Powers, Italy and Japan).

In this context, the monolingualism appeared to solve the problems of learning Portuguese and the language of immigrants as guilty of school failure and difficulties for learning Portuguese. There are recent records of the persecution of German speakers in Brazil. In 1989, the mayor of Santa Maria do Herval, a town in Rio Grande do Sul, down a municipal decree that prohibited the use of German in the classroom of the municipality. The Brazilian education system is set by the failure to deal with students who do not speak Portuguese, who are often ridiculed and segregated.

Religion

Most of the German-Brazilians are Roman Catholics or Lutherans (Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brazil), but with significant Jewish, Mennonite and Adventist German communities. Germans were the first people to establish a Protestant church in Brazil.

The forced assimilation

When Germans 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 Germanic 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 by the Brazilian government as "alien" -- was composed of immigrants and their descendants. Both the Brazilian Empire and the early Republic allowed groups of immigrants to settle isolated communities, mainly in Southern Brazil, and to some extent in other parts, such as Espírito Santo, in the Southeast. These people remained non-assimilated in the major 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 "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 the same ancestry, in this case German) 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 conected 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 of the campaign. However, evidence of greater resistance to "abrasileiramento" were found in those areas considered "redoubt of Germanism", a situation considered of risk to the cultural, racial and territorial integrities of the nation. One of the areas that were considered a "non-patriotic" region was the Vale do Itajaí, where the population was composed mostly by Germans, Italians and Poles. In the 1930s, the Vale do Itajaí appears as a place of "strange costumes, full of non-national Brazilians (on the principle of jus soli), contaminated by ideals of a nation that collapsed Brazil, a place of disintegration of national spirit". During this nationalization context, the Germans were considered the most "alien", the Italians were the closest to the Brazilians, and the Poles occupied an intermediary place, but none of them could bear the unmistakable identity of Brazilian culture in their design and race. The threat of secession is not a novelty in regard to the definition of the 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:

As we can see, the German colonization has deep roots, has developed across the south of Brazil and would have terrifying aspects if the appropriate measures were not adopted, aimed at defending the interests of the sacred homeland and cut any and all possibility of disintegration of our territory"(Nogueira 1947:18).

Nogueira also compared the German Brazilians to "an octopus who extended the 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 to be integrated to the new country, but to be segregated since the beginning of their settlement. The record of the first impressions about the city of Blumenau in the 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 the German immigration to the Barbarian Invasions which culminated at the end of the Roman Empire. Diverse texts of different authors against the German settlement in Brazil showed clear xenophobia (against the so-called "German threat"). The Portuguese language appears as a fundamental criterion of nationality and it justified the nationalization of education and the closing of ethnic schools. Most German Brazilians could barely speak Portuguese, and when the German language was forbidden from being spoken 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 incorporating immigrants and their descendants to the imagined myth of the amalgam of the three races that makes up the nation (the Brazilian people as a result of the mixing of whites, blacks and Indians).

In the 1930s, Brazil was home to one of the largest German populations outside of 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 keep their programs of nationalization. During World War II, in 1942, Brazilian ships were attacked by Nazi Germany and Brazil declared war against Germany. Then, President Getúlio Vargas initiated a strict program of forced cultural assimilation - Nacionalismo- that worked quite efficiently, if not initially. He forbade any manifestation of German culture in Brazil. German schools were closed, houses with German architecture were destroyed and the use of the German language in Brazil was also forbidden. 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.

Since then, the southern Brazilian German regional language/culture has been in decline. Some decried it as a tragic loss for the country while others felt that this meant national progress, saying assimilation would ultimately lead to a feeling of "getting together". 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 where to send children.

German influence in Brazil

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.

Many aspects of Brazil's culture were influenced by Germans. Today Brazil hosts Oktoberfests in Blumenau, in Santa Catarina, Santa Cruz do Sul and Igrejinha, in Rio Grande do Sul and Marechal Cândido Rondon, in Paraná, along many other cities. Beer itself is said to have been brought by German immigrants, and today it is Brazil's most popular alcoholic beverage.

They spread the Protestant faith (especially Lutheranism) and were the first people to cultivate wheat and to raise swine in Brazil. The regions heavily settled by Germans in Brazil still retain a strong German influence.

Number of German Brazilians and ethnicity

In the southern states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, Germans were 20% of their population in the 1930s. According to the German Consulate in Porto Alegre, there are 3 million people of German descent living in these two states, and 5 million in the entire Brazil, though another source claims 10% of Brazilians have at least one German ancestor, then the number would be as high as 18 million.

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 considerated the most "German" city in Brazil. Many towns in Southern Brazil have a majority of German-descended people, such as São Leopoldo, Novo Hamburgo, Nova Petrópolis, São Bento do Sul, Blumenau, Joinville, Santa Isabel, Gramado, Canela, Santa Cruz do Sul, Estância Velha, Ivoti, Dois Irmãos, Morro Reuter, Santa Maria do Herval, Presidente Lucena, Picada Café, Santo Ângelo, Teutônia, Ibirubá, Victor Graeff, Brusque and many others.

German communities

Female models of German origin

Brazilian female models of German origin have achieved fame for their beauty and class in the fashion world and in beauty contests. Many are world-class top models or supermodels 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 is Gisele Bündchen as well as Ana Claudia Michels, Ana Hickmann, Mariana Weickert and 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), 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 Brasil 2007 pageant broke all records regarding the participation of misses of German descent. They were: Jakeline Lemke (state of Espírito Santo), Priscilla Riker (Amazonas), Liandra Schmidt (Goiás), Rafaela Studart (Brasília), Sabrina Rhoden (São Paulo) and Manoella Heiderscheidt (Santa Catarina).

See also

• Ethnic German
• German American
• Brazilian German language
• Germans
• Demography of Brazil
• White Latin American

References

1. I belong to the sixth generation of my family in Brazil.
2. A stern figure whose father immigrated from Germany at the turn of the century
3. Ele (pai) era alemão, nazista, mandava eu ler Hitler e batia muito em mim
4. filho de um imigrante alemão com uma lavadeira negra
5. Gaúcha de Santa Cruz do Sul e descendente de imigrantes alemães
6. of Italian and German descent
7. A Imigração Alemã no Brasil | Brasil | Deutsche Welle | 25.07.2004
8. A imigração alemã no Brasil
9. Bem-vindo/a ao site do Consulado Geral da Alemanha em Porto Alegre
11. "Brasil alemão" comemora 180 anos
12. Projeto Imigração Alemã
13. imigracao II
14. A imigração alemã
15. ^ Políticas lingüísticas e a conservação da língua alemã no Brasil
16. ^ [http://www.ibero-americana.net/files/ejemplo_por.pdf Política lingüística, mitos e concepções lingüísticas em áreas bilíngües de imigrantes (alemães) no Sul do Brasil]
17. http://biblioteca.ibge.gov.br/visualizacao/monografias/GEBIS%20-%20RJ/CD1940/Censo%20Demografico%201940%20VII_Brasil.pdf Census of 1940
18. Os alemães no Brasil: uma síntese.
19. A assimilação dos imigrantes como questão nacional
20. accessed January 23, 2008
21. http://www.outrostempos.uema.br/curso/poder/42.pdf
22. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8138/tde-10072007-113709/
23. A imigração alemã no Brasil
24. Bem-vindo/a ao site do Consulado Geral da Alemanha em Porto Alegre
26. "Brasil alemão" comemora 180 anos
27. As tradições e o abrasileiramento
28. http://www.pmnf.rj.gov.br/historia/index.htm
29. http://fctp.petropolis.rj.gov.br/fctp/modules/xt_conteudo/index.php?id=33

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Related topics	Demographics of Brazil Colonization Slave trade Immigration from Europe Emigration Racism

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)

• German diaspora
• Ethnic groups in Brazil
• Brazilians of German descent
• German minorities