Thomas Davatz

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Thomas Davatz (born April 23, 1815 in Fanas ; † February 6, 1888 in Landquart ) was a Swiss teacher who, in 1855, led a group of Swiss emigrants, which were also joined by some Germans, with their families to the coffee plantations of São Paulo. In their European homeland there was great hardship due to poor harvests. The emigration propaganda had an easy time. At the same time, the slave trade was sanctioned internationally and in the province of São Paulo, led by Senator Nicolau Pereira de Campos Vergueiro, European workers were sought instead of African slaves and new employment relationships were tried out. Davatz fought violently for the rights of the colonists. His report from 1858 had consequences for German and Swiss emigration policy and was used as an important source by Brazilian and European historical research and was translated into Portuguese.

biography

Thomas Davatz was the oldest child of Christian and Margreth Davatz, née Janett from Fideris. The family lived from farming on a small estate with a little more than half a hectare. Together with his younger sister Luzia, he grew up in Fanas, Canton of Graubünden, and attended the village school there. At a young age he had a breast ailment. After a few substitutions as a village teacher in Fideris, he attended the seminar for poor teachers in Beuggen near Säckingen on the recommendation of the Fideris pastor , where he trained as a teacher. Here a formative relationship developed with the director Christian Heinrich Zeller and his family. As a result, he served as a teacher in Fanas, Fideris and Malans . Later he took over the housefather position at the Freienstein rescue facility (Zurich), which he soon had to give up because of a breast disease. At times he served as vice-president of the Fanas school board and was a member of the district court as well as an actuary of the local council and a member of the poor commission. In 1854 he decided to emigrate to America. His original idea was to settle in the USA. As a result of the government's positive official propaganda, he finally chose Brazil. He came to the country in July 1855 and led a group of compatriots hired by Senator Nicolau Pereira de Campos Vergueiro's colonization firm. These settlers were taken to the province of São Paulo , today's state of São Paulo , on the Ibicaba estate , which belonged to Senator Vergueiro and where he had coffee grown. In 1857 Davatz returned to his homeland with his family. In Landquart he was responsible for the administrative post of the railway station and the associated postal service from 1858. After the separation of rail and post, he served in Landquart as a postman and telegraph operator from 1863 to 1884. Then he took over the post of salt administrator from Landquart.

Time in brazil

Davatz was received decently and was able to settle here. He was advised to learn Portuguese as soon as possible so that he could take on the post of colony administrator. He also taught and as a layman led Protestant celebrations such as B. funerals or read sermons. The living and working conditions of the settlers, however, differed significantly from the propaganda that attracted them. Before the trip, Davatz had been commissioned by the Swiss authorities to write a report on the working and living conditions on the colony. After about a year he sent the promised report, and did so in secret, to circumvent the censorship of his correspondence. He reported that the settlers had been deceived by the government's brilliant promises and that they were subjected to a slave-like regime. The report sparked a scandal and trouble in Europe with the Brazilian landlords who demanded explanations. Fearing that their leader and protector might be punished or imprisoned, the settlers gathered to defend him. To this end, they concluded an agreement that obliged everyone to fight in solidarity and non-violently for their rights and to jointly pay for possible costs. On December 24, 1856, they surrounded the estate headquarters. This confrontation became known as the Ibicaba Uprising . Davatz stayed on the estate until the beginning of March 1857. Then he withdrew to Rio de Janeiro alone, from where he returned to Europe with his family in the same year.

The case reached the Brazilian imperial authorities and raised concerns that it could shake the government's colonial projects. Two Swiss ambassadors, Theodor Heusser and Johann Jakob von Tschudi , visited the colony in 1861 to review the situation. They wrote their own report, which confirmed what Davatz had reported, and reached a consular convention, which the conditions of the Swiss colonists in Ibicaba, but also German and Austrian settlers in other estates (for example in the states of Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo) should improve.

Reports

In 1858 Davatz published a report entitled The Treatment of the Colonists in the Province of São Paulo in Brazil and Their Uprising Against Their Oppressors. A call for emergency and help to the authorities and philanthropists of the countries and states to which the colonists belonged . In it he presented his experiences with the clear intention of combating the emigration movement that was triggered in his homeland. The author deeply regretted having emigrated and felt responsible for the unfortunate fate he had inflicted on his friends, all the more since he had been one of the great advocates of the trip. On the basis of these reports, a severe campaign against emigration was organized in Europe, and the Prussian government forbade the emigration of his subjects to Brazil in 1859.

reception

Davatz's report on the treatment of the colonists has little literary value, but is considered one of the most important documents of the German-Swiss colonization in Brazil. Yan de Almeida Prado owned the only known copy in Brazil, whose text Mário de Andrade studied and who wrote two articles in the 1930s: he analyzed it from a political perspective and compared it with the national situation in his country at the time. He judged Davatz's report as "one of the most interesting pieces of information about Senator Vergueiro's attempt to colonize his estate with Germans and Swiss." Ilka Cohen says:

«By repeating the author's allegations, Mario de Andrade sparked a completely negative view of the colonization system introduced by the São Paulo landlords in the past century, a view that contradicted the official view of the elite, against which he politically spoke out . Not only did Davatz provide a mere description of the picturesque Brazil that was expected of a foreigner, but he also went into such sensitive subjects as oppression, the encroachments of the powerful, the reactions of the oppressed, subjects which the national reading public would certainly and largely uncomfortable were unknown. The importance of the text was emphasized again later when, in a poll published by Rumo magazine in 1933, Mário de Andrade confirmed his admiration for the work, which is one of the 20 titles to be read to To understand Brazil. "

Rubens Borba de Morães, director of the Municipal Library of São Paulo, entrusted the outstanding historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda with the translation of Davatz's report into Portuguese and encouraged him to write a historical foreword for contextualization. The translation appeared in 1951 under the neutral title Memórias de um colono no Brasil (Memories of a colonist in Brazil). The result represented a milestone in the history of colonization in São Paulo. It served as the basis for a series of further research and opened up a new area of ​​research: the study of the colonial partnership system between the large landowners and the free and employed workers, a system that was set up to gradually replace slave labor. Idealistically and promisingly, the system envisaged the creation of production centers that would serve as a rural school for the colonists and provide them with the first funds for future economic independence. However, the implementation of this system failed. In the words of de Holanda: This system ...

[...] «became more deserving of censorship because of the abuses it served than because of the principles on which it is based [...] As pessimistic as our judgment of the partnership regime as it was conceived by Vergueiro may be, one thing is certain: This regime in particular made it possible for the landlords in São Paulo to allow free work without experiencing the crises that this transition would have triggered in other regions of Brazil. With Thomas Davatz's book, published today in Brazilian translation, the future historian will have an essential element in the study of agricultural work in São Paulo during the Empire. It is useless to insist too much on the controversial intent in which it was written: to take sides, but also in good faith. It is the expression and extension of the life of a poor settler lost in a world hostile to his aspirations. In this sense, Davatz's memories should be cherished in their just worth. "

The fate of the Swiss colonists under the leadership of Thomas Davatz inspired the Swiss writer Eveline Hasler to write her historical novel Ibicaba. Paradise in the mind , the first edition of which appeared in 1985.

Fonts

See also

Web links

Wikisource: Thomas Davatz  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martin Bundi: Thomas Davatz. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  2. ^ Ilka Stern Cohen: Thomas Davatz revisitado: reflexões sobre a imigração germânica no século XIX. In: Revista de História. No. 144. 2001, pp. 183, 185 , accessed on August 30, 2020 (Portuguese).
  3. ↑ Sylvester Davatz: Thomas Davatz. Bitter coffee - a Graubünden teacher in Brazil. In: Eva Dietrich, Roman Rossfeld and Béatrice Ziegler (eds.): The dream of happiness. Swiss emigration to Brazilian coffee plantations 1852-1888 . here + now, Baden 2003, ISBN 3-906419-61-4 , p. 23-25 .
  4. ↑ Thomas Davatz: Description of a journey from the Tardis Bridge in the Canton of Graubünden, Switzerland, to Ybicaba, Province of S. Paulo, Brazil. (PDF) With a foreword and afterword by Sylvester Davatz. In: Bündner monthly newspaper: magazine for Bündner history. Regional studies and building culture. Association for Bündner Kulturforschung, 1997, p. 267 , accessed on August 30, 2020 .
  5. ↑ unknown: Obituary in the Free Rätier from February 12, 1888. (PDF) In: Bündner Monthly: Journal for Bündner Geschichte, Landeskunde and Baukultur. Association for Bündner Kulturforschung, 1997, p. 301 , accessed on August 30, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Sylvester Davatz: Thomas Davatz. Bitter coffee - a Graubünden teacher in Brazil. In: Eva Dietrich, Roman Rossfeld and Béatrice Ziegler (eds.): The dream of happiness. Swiss emigration to Brazilian coffee plantations 1852-1888 . here + now, Baden 2003, ISBN 3-906419-61-4 , p. 22-40 (26-27) .
  7. ^ Ilka Stern Cohen: Thomas Davatz revisitado: reflexões sobre a imigração germânica no século XIX. In: Revista de História. No. 144. 2001, p. 10000 , accessed on August 30, 2020 (Portuguese).
  8. ^ A b c Moisés Stahl: Memórias de um colono e um prefácio (Thomas Davatz e Sergio Buarque), na tentativa de entender um sistema. In: Anais Eletrônicos da XXIV Semana de História: Pensando o Brasil no Centenário de Caio Prado Júnior. 24-27 / 09/2007. UNESP, 2007, accessed December 9, 2019 (Portuguese).
  9. ↑ unknown: Obituary in the Free Rätier from February 12, 1888. (PDF) In: Bündner Monthly: Journal for Bündner Geschichte, Landeskunde and Baukultur. Association for Bündner Kulturforschung, 1997, pp. 301-302 , accessed on August 30, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Thomas Davatz: Supplement No. 2: Instructions for Mr. Thomas Davatz, the teacher when he moved to St. Paulo in Brazil, for the purpose of reporting on the situation there. In: Thomas Davatz: The treatment of the colonists in the province of St. Paulo in Brazil and their uprising against their oppressors. An emergency and help call to the authorities and philanthropists of the countries to which the colonists belonged. 1858, pp. 221-226 , accessed August 30, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Thomas Davatz: Supplement No. 3: Agreement of December 22nd, 1856. In: Thomas Davatz: The treatment of the colonists in the province of St. Paulo in Brazil and their uprising against their oppressors. Print by Leonh. Hitz, 1858, accessed September 1, 2020 .
  12. ↑ a b c d e f Cohen, Ilka Stern: Thomas Davatz revisitado: reflexões sobre a imigração germânica no século XIX. In: Revista de História . No. 144 , 2001, p. 182-211 (Portuguese).
  13. ↑ Veronika Feller-Vest: Johann Jakob von Tschudi. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  14. ^ Paul-Emile Schazmann: Johann Jakob Tschudi. With a foreword by Eugène Pittard. In: Yearbook of the Historical Association of the Canton of Glarus. 1956, Retrieved December 10, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Thomas Davatz: The treatment of the colonists in the province of St. Paulo in Brazil and their uprising against their oppressors. Print by Leonh. Hitz (Chur), 1858, accessed March 8, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Moraes, Rubens Borba de: [Apresentação] . In: Davatz, Thomas: Memórias de um colono no Brasil. Livraria Martins Editora, 1951, p. 3 (Portuguese).
  17. ^ Sérgio Buarque de Holanda : Prefácio do Tradutor. In: Davatz, Thomas: Memórias de um colono no Brasil . Livraria Martins Editora, 1951, p. 5-35 (Portuguese).
  18. ↑ Eveline Hasler: Ibicaba. Paradise in the mind. Novel . 5th edition. Nagel & Kimche, Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-312-00114-5 .
personal data
SURNAME Davatz, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss emigrants to Brazil
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1815
PLACE OF BIRTH Fanas
DATE OF DEATH February 6, 1888
Place of death Landquart GR
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