German Brazilians

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## German Brazilians

### Regions with significant populations

Southern region;slightly lesser presence in the Southeastern region

### Languages

Predominantly Portuguese. Great numbers speak Brazilian German dialects as their mother tongue; the largest group with est. 3,000,000 native Riograndenser Hunsrückisch speakers.

### Religions

Roman CatholicismProtestantism

**German Brazilians** (German: *Deutschbrasilianer*, Riograndenser Hunsrückisch: *Deitschbrasiliooner*, Portuguese: *teuto-brasileiros*) refers to Brazilian people of ethnic German ancestry or origin. German Brazilians live mostly in the country's South Region, with lesser but still significant degree in the Southeast Region. German dialects together make up the second most spoken first language in Brazil after Portuguese. A few Brazilian municipalities have Brazilian Hunsrückisch and Germanic East Pomeranian as co-official with Portuguese. They are located in Southern Brazil and Espírito Santo. In the year 2000 Brazilian census 12 million people in Brazil claimed to be of German descent. According to Born and Dickgiesser (1989, p. 55) the number of Brazilians of German descent in 1986 was 3.6 million.

Between 1824 and 1972, about 260,000 Germans settled in Brazil, the fifth largest nationality to immigrate after the Portuguese, the Italians, the Spanish, and the Japanese. The rapid increase in numbers is due to a very high birth rate, the highest in Brazil. In the 19th century the average number of births per German-Brazilian woman was 10.

The vast majority settled in the Southern Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Paraná, as well as in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Less than 5% of Germans settled in Minas Gerais, Pernambuco, and Espírito Santo.

The state mostly heavily affected by German immigration is Santa Catarina, the only state where Germans were the main nationality among immigrants. Germans and Austrians were about 50% of all immigrants settled in Santa Catarina, and between 15–20% in Rio Grande do Sul and Paraná. In the rest of the country, Germans accounted for less than 5% of immigrants.

## Overview

The 19th century was marked by an intense emigration 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 19th 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 decades 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 rates 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.

"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 do Sul. 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.

## 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.

## First German settlement in Brazil

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 Pampas. The interior was covered by forests and sparsely populated by different groups of natives Amerindians. The absence of a unified population in the interior was regarded as a problem by the Brazilian government 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.

### First communities

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 in the early years 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 (Ragamuffin War).

### Waves of immigrants

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.

> "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."
> - Dr. Leyser, a German traveller in South Brazil at the beginning of the 20th century
>
>

## 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.

In 1858, Germans were 15% of Porto Alegre's population, 10% of São Paulo's population for 1860[16] and 60% of immigrants living in Curitiba by the end of the 19th 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. By the beginning of the 20th century, the city was considered the center of the German Brazilian Culture.The city attracted German immigrants until the 1950s. Today, there are 400,000 German Brazilians living within Greater São Paulo.

## References

1. ↑ "Interpretação Sociológica Do Catarinense". Cfh.ufsc.br. Archived from the original on 2014-08-10. https://web.archive.org/web/20140810112719/http://www.cfh.ufsc.br/~simpozio/Catarinense/interpretacao\_sociologica\_catarinense/94sc1324-1370.html. Retrieved 2011-09-19.
2. ↑ "Full text of "The Monroe Doctrine"". Archive.org. https://archive.org/stream/monroedoctrine00edgiuoft/monroedoctrine00edgiuoft\_djvu.txt. Retrieved 2015-08-12.