German minority in Chile

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The Germans in Chile (also German-Chileans or Chile-Germans , Spanish chileno-alemanes ) or the descendants, especially German, but also Austrian and Swiss immigrants , have played a recognizable role in the economic and political since the mid-19th century to the present day and cultural life of the country, especially in the so-called Little South .

Even if the number of immigrants was far lower than, for example, Argentina or Brazil, the cultural and economic influence in Chile is much more evident. Around 500,000 Chileans are of German descent, and German is still the mother tongue of around 40,000 today. Their main settlement area are the present-day regions of Araucanía , Los Ríos and Los Lagos in the Lesser South of Chile.

The importance of German immigration for Chile is controversial. According to some authors, the German-Chileans have a relevant role in the development of the Chilean nation played, while others are of the opinion that German immigrants would never in Chilean society integrated and culturally demarcated until today.

"German-Chileans" and "Chile-Germans"

The criterion for belonging to the German-Chileans or Chile-Germans is not a nationality , but a purely linguistic one . The German ancestors came from various regions of the German-speaking area in Central Europe. Therefore, the descendants of Austrians and German-speaking Swiss are counted among this minority .

The terms “Chile-Germans” and “German-Chileans” usually refer to different groups that differ from one another in terms of their degree of integration . The term "Chile-Germans" is mostly used for Germans abroad who emigrated to Chile themselves and who usually still have their old citizenship. “German Chileans”, on the other hand, are Chileans of German origin who have Chilean citizenship - sometimes in addition to German or Austrian citizenship - and whose ancestors have lived in Chile for several generations. Many of them only learned German as a foreign language.

history

Chile at the time of Valdivia

Germans in the Spanish colony of the 16th century

The first historical mention of a German in Chile goes back to the founding days of the colony, when from Nuremberg originating conquistador Bartolomé Flores "little flowers" should have been called, originally, "Blum" and, in 1541 as a companion Pedro de Valdivia in the founding capital Santiago took part and made great fortune there as an encomendero . He took the daughter of a powerful local cacique as his wife and ruled their lands. Among his possessions were among the vineyards near the sea, later on which the city Viña del Mar was created. His daughter married Pedro Lisperguer , also from Germany , born as Peter Birling in Worms , a former page at the court of Charles V , who had come to Chile in 1557 with the Spanish reinforcements under García Hurtado de Mendoza and became mayor of Santiago in 1572. Both were possibly descendants of Jewish converts , who at that time often sought refuge in the colonies from the increasing persecution in Spain, as there was no organized inquisition here until 1570 . Some authors also state that another of Valdivias' companions, Juan Bohón , captain and founder of La Serena , was of German origin, as his name is said to have originally been Flemish ("Boon").

Basically, during the Spanish colonial foreigners to enter the for was viceroy of Peru belonging Captaincy General of Chile denied, so until the 19th century up to special cases no travel or emigration to Chile from German-speaking countries were possible.

Opening of the country after independence in 1818

The bay of Valparaíso 1830

With independence from Spain in 1818, European merchants and commercial travelers increasingly found their way to Chile. The center of the German merchants was Valparaíso . It was there in 1838 that the German Association of Valparaíso was also the first institution in the country founded by Germans.

Even then Chile claimed an area up to Cape Horn . The actually controlled territory ended in the south at the Río Bío Bío . To the south of it was the land of the Araucans or Mapuche , which the Spaniards had not been able to conquer permanently. Further south, only the city of Valdivia and the island of Chiloé existed as exclaves of the Chilean territory .

In order to prevent European powers like France or Great Britain from taking possession of the almost unpopulated land claimed by Chile, the Chilean government planned the settlement of colonists south of the territory of the Mapuche in the later provinces of Valdivia and Llanquihue. The law to control immigration ( Ley de inmigración selectiva ), enacted on November 18, 1845, permitted immigration and settlement on the northern and southern borders of what was then Chile, north of Copiapó and south of the Río Bío Bío . Catholic Europeans of middle and higher education were intended as immigrants.

Even before the Chilean government took the first concrete steps towards colonization in 1848, Bernhard Eunom Philippi, in collaboration with his brother, the biologist Rudolph Amandus Philippi , on his own initiative, succeeded in winning nine Hessian families of craftsmen to emigrate to Chile. In 1845 he bought the Hacienda Bellavista near La Unión in the province of Valdivia . There he brought German settlers whom his brother had recruited in Hesse. On the brig Catalina , which belonged to the Prussian consul in Valparaíso Ferdinand Flindt, came the blacksmiths Aubel and Ruch, the carpenter Bachmann, the mill builder Ihde, the carpenter Holstein, the brandy distiller Bachmann, the shoemaker Henkel, the gardener Jäger and the Schäfer Krämer and their families in southern Chile. All immigrants came from the city of Rotenburg an der Fulda or the Rotenburg office and were recruited through the master builder Althaus, who was friends with Philippi .

At the beginning of 1846, Bernhard Philippi accompanied the then director of Valparaíso, Salvador Sanfuentes , while exploring the province of Valdivia. The following year, Sanfuentes was Minister of Justice and Education in Santiago. On the basis of the knowledge gained from the joint trip and influenced by Philippi's ideas, Sanfuentes presented the government with a colonization project for the Little South . Philippi took part in government deliberations, and his reports had a decisive influence on government decisions. In June 1847, President Manuel Bulnes made Prieto Philippi his adviser.

Officially funded immigration to the Little South from 1848

Landscape in Llanquihue Province at the time of colonization. Drawing by Vicente Pérez Rosales
House of a Chilean Worker in the Land of a German Immigrant (1921)

With the failed German Revolution of 1848/49 , Philippi saw the chance to win German emigrants as colonists for Chile and to implement his colonization ideas for southern Chile. He was appointed colonization commissioner in August 1848 and was sent to Germany to recruit colonists who were to be settled around Lake Llanquihue .

Philippi's order was to select 150 to 200 Catholic farming or artisan families, as well as two Catholic priests, two teachers and a doctor. The colonists should take Chilean citizenship and renounce their current citizenship. On behalf of the Chilean government, he offered the emigrants payment for the crossing. Each father of a family should receive 10 to 15 cuadras (equivalent to about 15 to 23 hectares ) of land and tax exemption for twelve years. The Catholic priests were to be paid by the government for eight years. Those who wanted to come to Chile at their own expense could buy land from the government at auction and receive six years of tax exemption.

Once in Germany, Philippi began to publish newspaper articles promoting the advantages of Chile. However, the Catholic bishops opposed him and advised their believers against emigrating. At first, Philippi only managed to recruit a few Catholic traders and craftsmen in Kassel who wanted to escape the turmoil of the revolution and state repression in Germany and were able to travel to Chile at their own expense. There were 34 people who arrived in Valdivia in January 1850 .

Without waiting for a response to his request to the Chilean government to expand his powers, he organized the emigration of another group of 32 Protestants in November 1849, which reached Valdivia in June 1850. Philippi succeeded in bringing almost 600 German emigrants to the south of Chile by May 1851. In addition, almost all of them corresponded to the profile of the well-trained, efficient farmer or craftsman specified by the Chilean government, most of them even paid for their own passage. The start of the colonization of the south of Chile with German immigrants was successful, but, contrary to what had been planned, very few of the colonists were Catholic. In October 1850, the Chilean government appointed the entrepreneur Vicente Pérez Rosales as the new colonization commissioner.

As the representative of the first large, closed German immigrant group to Chile, Carl Anwandter made the following pledge to the Chilean immigration agent in 1851:

“We will be as honest and hardworking Chileans as only the best of them can be. Having entered the ranks of our new compatriots, we will know how to defend our adoptive fatherland against any foreign attack with the determination and energy of a man who defends his fatherland, his family and his interests. "

- Carl Anwandter

The loyalty of the German immigrants to their new homeland, expressed in the so-called Anwandter pledge , while at the same time sticking to their own traditions, has remained formative for the German-Chileans to the present day.

The focus of early German settlement was in the area around Lake Llanquihue and the city of Osorno , which at that time was still densely forested and completely undeveloped. In 1854 the oldest German school in South America was founded in Osorno . Around 6000 German families had settled in this area by the mid-1870s. The only closed German language settlement in Chile exists there to this day. The Universidad Austral de Chile operates an open-air museum in Frutillar on Lake Llanquihue , the Museo Colonial Alemán .

Puerto Montt 1862 - ten years after it was founded by German immigrants

  • House in the typical style of the German immigrants

  • Church in Puerto Varas

  • Agriculture on Llanquihue Lake

Valdivia as the center of German immigration

Valdivia late 19th century

The old provincial capital Valdivia in particular benefited from the immigration of Germans through population growth and economic upturn. Carl Anwandter founded Chile's first brewery here in 1851 , in 1852 the voluntary fire service company Germania , which still exists today, and in 1858 the German School - the Instituto Alemán Carlos Anwandter on Isla Teja , which is named after him today .

In Valdivia, the first steel works in Chile, industries of wagon construction, wood processing, leather production and shipyards were built. By the end of the 19th century, Valdivia had become the third largest industrial location in the country.

The Swedish botanist Carl Skottsberg , who visited the city in 1907 as part of an expedition to Patagonia, described Valdivia as a German city:

“Valdivia, situated at some distance from the coast, on the Calle-calle river, is a German town. Everywhere you meet German faces, German signboards and placards alongside the Spanish. There is a large German school, a church and various clubs , large shoe factories, and, of course, breweries ... "

“Valdivia, some distance from the coast on the Calle-Calle river, is a German city. Everywhere you come across German faces, German signs and notices next to the Spanish ones. There is a large German school, a church and numerous clubs, large shoe factories and, of course, breweries ... "

- Carl Skottsberg

The city lost its status as an industrial metropolis only partially in 1909 due to a major fire and then finally due to the devastating earthquake of 1960 . But even after the destruction in 1909 and 1960, the German influence in the city is still evident today.

  • Houses of German immigrants in Valdivia

  • Casa Anwandter

  • Museo Rudolfo A. Philippi

  • Hotel Schuster

Adoption of Prussian traditions in the Chilean army

"Emilio" Körner as a Chilean general

The strong German community was a decisive factor in bringing German military advisors into the country to modernize the Chilean army in 1885 after the successful Salpetre War . The Prussian artillery captain Emil Körner rose to general in the Chilean civil war of 1891 and became inspector general of the Chilean army in 1900. He was instrumental in reshaping the Chilean army in the Prussian style . Prussian traditions have been partially preserved in the Chilean army to this day. The Chileans have long been known colloquially as "the Prussians of South America".

Expansion of immigration to the whole country

German settlers clearing the Aysen region (around 1930)

After the Mapuche were forcibly subjugated in 1883, their previous territory south of the Río Bío Bío, which had interrupted the land connection between central Chile and the south, was opened to colonization for immigrants from Europe. Many Germans also settled in so-called Chilean Switzerland and the area around Temuco . In 1884, 48 German immigrant families founded the community of San Luis de Contulmo . In 1894 the city of Villa Alemana was founded in the center of the country , where many Germans settled.

Similarly, a continued gradual internal migration one of the descendants of the first immigrants to the cities. Young German-Chileans went to Santiago to study. In 1896 they founded the Araucania fraternity, the first German student union in Latin America.

After the railway line between Santiago and Puerto Montt was completed in 1912 and the German settlement area was finally connected to the Chilean central regions, there was a greater exchange of population between the two regions and thus an increased cultural rapprochement.

The poet Pablo Neruda , who grew up in Temuco at the beginning of the 20th century , reports in his memoirs about the prosperity of the Germans living there:

"Todo pasaba con el tiempo y todo el mundo quedaba tan pobre como antes. Sólo los alemanes mantenían esa irreductible conservación de sus bienes, que los caracterizaba en la frontera. »

“Everything [the wealth] passed with time, and everyone was as poor as before. Only the Germans persevered in maintaining their belongings, which was characteristic of them in the border region. "

- Pablo Neruda

In the 1930s, more than 1000 people of German origin joined the NSDAP / AO in Chile, which was founded in 1931 .

The takeover of power by the NSDAP in Germany led to another wave of immigration. After 1933 many political refugees and German Jews left Germany and looked for a new home. Due to the existing German-speaking community, Chile was also a destination for many emigrants during this time. Between 1933 and 1941, 15,000 Jews from Germany emigrated to Chile.

After the end of the Second World War , it was the National Socialists who found refuge in South America. Many expellees from the eastern regions of the German Reich also left Germany in the 1940s and 1950s and came to Chile. At the beginning of the 1960s, the lay preacher Paul Schäfer emigrated to Chile with around 200 sect members and founded the Colonia Dignidad at Parral , where numerous human rights violations occurred.

After the military coup led by Augusto Pinochet in 1973, numerous opposition members left the country. Many found refuge in Germany - both in the Federal Republic and in the GDR . Quite a few founded families in Germany and returned to Chile with them after the end of the military dictatorship in 1990.

Todays situation

Chile

German language

Today the German language is still used by up to 35,000 people in Chile. This makes it the language with the third most speakers in Chile after Spanish and Mapudungun .

However, the proportion of German speakers has been decreasing for decades. In particular, the increase in mixed-language marriages is weakening German language skills in the next generation. Children of German-speaking fathers and Spanish-speaking mothers speak Spanish as their mother tongue and often only learn German as a foreign language at best. One reason for the increase in mixed marriages is the declining importance of denominations in public life, which makes marriages between the mostly Catholic Chileans and the often Protestant German-Chileans easier. The Catholics among the German immigrants assimilated themselves far more strongly to the likewise Catholic majority population than the Protestants in the 19th century. Sometimes Germany's foreign school policy is also identified as the cause of the dwindling knowledge of German.

A variety of German has developed around Lake Llanquihue . The so-called Launa German is influenced by numerous Spanish interferences . Conversely, several German words have found their way into everyday Chilean language as foreign words , e.g. B. Cake .

German and Swiss schools

There are 22 German schools in Chile , which together are attended by around 15,000 students. Of these schools, 21 currently receive financial and personal support of varying degrees from the German Federal Administration Office . Lessons are offered in German at four schools, the others only teach German as the first foreign language.

There is also a bilingual Swiss school in Santiago .

In 1988, the German Schools, together with the German Chilean Federation (DCB) and the Association of German-speaking Teachers in Chile (VdLiCh), with the support of the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, founded a college of education under Chilean law, the German Teacher Training Institute Wilhelm von Humboldt . There, bilingual teachers and primary school teachers are trained for the German schools in Chile. Since 1995 the LBI has also been the regional training center for the German Schools in Chile.

Association

Crudo , a typical German-Chilean dish

The German immigrants founded a large number of associations in their new home . There is a Club Alemán in almost every town in the Little South . The Protestants among the immigrants founded their own parishes and associated schools in what is otherwise a purely Catholic Chile. The first volunteer fire brigades were also founded by Germans.

The German-Chilean Federation (DCB), a kind of umbrella organization of German associations, tries to promote the cohesion of the German-speaking minority by preserving the German language and culture. With the weekly Cóndor, the DCB publishes the German-language newspaper with the highest circulation in Chile.

A total of eight student associations of German tradition, including five fraternities (Viña del Mar, Santiago (2), Concepción and Valdivia) and three girls' associations , are committed to preserving the German language.

  • The Kunstmann brewery in Valdivia still brews according to the German Purity Law

  • The building of the Second Volunteer Fire Brigade Company in Osorno

  • School camp 'Refugio Otto Urban Baude' of the German School Osorno in Antillanca

  • Fuente Alemana in Santiago, a fountain donated by the German community

Well-known Chileans of German, Austrian and Swiss origin

President Eduardo Frei Montalva was the son of a Swiss and a Chilean

See also

literature

About history

  • Karl Appl: History of the Protestant Churches in Chile. Erlanger Verlag for Mission and Ecumenism, Neuendettelsau 2006, ISBN 3-87214-616-5 .
  • Jean-Pierre Blancpain: Les Allemands au Chili (1816-1945). Böhlau, Cologne 1974, ISBN 3-412-01674-8 .
  • Christel Converse: The Germans in Chile. In: Hartmut Fröschle (Ed.): The Germans in Latin America. Fate and achievement. Erdmann, Tübingen 1979, ISBN 3-7711-0293-6 , pp. 301–372 (therein pp. 369–372: time table).
  • Karl Ilg: Pioneers in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Venezuela. The folklore of the German-speaking settlers hiked through the mountains, jungle and steppe. Tyrolia-Verlag, Innsbruck 1976, ISBN 3-7022-1233-7 .
  • Gerardo J. Ojeda Ebert: German immigration and development of the Chilean nation (1846–1920). Fink, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-7705-2239-7 .
  • Max Matter: Song and Popular Culture. Yearbook of the German Folk Song Archive. Special volume, year 53: Popular song in Latin America. Waxmann, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8309-2075-5 .
  • Fritz Mybes: The history of the Lutheran churches in Chile that arose from the German immigration. From the beginnings to 1975. Archive of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, Düsseldorf 1993, ISBN 3-930250-00-4 .
  • Katharina Tietze de Soto: German immigration to the Chilean province of Concepción, 1870–1930 . Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-89354-162-4 .
  • Sergio Villalobos: Breve historia de Chile. 19th edition. Editorial Universitaria, Santiago de Chile 2003, ISBN 956-11-1138-1 , p. 147 ff.
  • Irmtrud Wojak: Exile in Chile. German-Jewish and political emigration during National Socialism 1933–1945. Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-926893-25-7 .

To the present

  • Kerstin Hein: Hybrid identities. Handicraft biographies in the tension between Latin America and Europe. transcript Verlag, 2006.
  • Karoline Kovacs: German in Argentina and in Chile: A current inventory of the use of the German language in Chile and Argentina. Thesis. University of Vienna, Vienna 2009. othes.univie.ac.at (PDF; 6.1 MB).
  • Christine Singer: On the special position of the German minority in Chile. German emigrants between myth and reality. Master thesis. University of Konstanz, Konstanz 1998 ( kops.ub.uni-konstanz.de ).
  • Ulrike Ziebur: The sociolinguistic situation of Chileans of German descent . In: Linguistics online . tape 7 , no. 3 , 2000, doi : 10.13092 / lo.7.987 ( bop.unibe.ch [accessed on April 13, 2020]).
  • Why is Bonn doing so little for us? The Chile-Germans between nationalism and revolution . In: Der Spiegel . No. 38 , 1971 ( online ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alemanes en Chile: entre el pasado colono y el presente empresarial , Deutsche Welle of March 31, 2011, accessed on December 17, 2011.
  2. ↑ German Abroad ( memento of October 29, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) on bpb.de, accessed on August 20, 2014.
  3. ↑ Oliver Zöllner: Generating Samples of Diasporic Minority Populations: A Chilean Example. In: Targeting International Audiences: Current and Future Approaches to International Broadcasting Research (CIBAR Proceedings, Vol. 3; English)
  4. ↑ Kerstin Hein: Hybrid Identities. Handicraft biographies in the tension between Latin America and Europe. transcript Verlag, 2006, p. 130.
  5. ↑ Christine Singer: On the special position of the German minority in Chile. German emigrants between myth and reality. Master's thesis in history at the University of Konstanz, Konstanz 1998, p. 23.
  6. ^ Kurt Schobert: Social and cultural integration using the example of German immigration and German-Chileans in southern Chile. Würzburg, University, Diss., 1983, p. 191 f.
  7. ↑ Gerd Wunder : Bartolomé Flores, an early American driver from Nuremberg. In: Communications from the Association for the History of the City of Nuremberg, Vol. 48 (1958), pp. 115–124.
  8. ↑ Carlos Valenzuela Solís de Ovando: Mujeres de Chile. Andújar, Santiago de Chile 1995, p. 21.
  9. ↑ Gerd Wunder:  Lisperguer, Pedro. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 688 ( digitized version ).
  10. ↑ Beatriz Lorenzo Gómez de la Serna: La emigración española a Chile. Las dos Orillas, Santiago de Chile 2008, p. 23.
  11. ↑ Estuardo Núñez: Tradiciones Hispano americanas. Biblioteca Ayacucho , Caracas 1979, ISBN 84-660-0029-1 , p. 156.
  12. ↑ Virgilio Figueroa: Diccionario histórico, biográfico y bibliográfico de Chile . tape IV . Impr. Y Litogr. La Ilustración, Santiago de Chile 1931 ( Memoria Chilena - Documents [accessed November 29, 2008]). P. 505.
  13. ↑ Rudolph Amandus Philippi: The province of Valdivia and the German settlements there and in the territory of Llanquihue. In: August Heinrich Petermann (Hrsg.): Mittheilungen from Justus Perthes' Geographischer Anstalt about important new researches on the whole area of ​​geography (Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen) . Justus Perthes, Gotha 1860, p. 125.
  14. ↑ Angela Pooch: From Rotenburg to Chile - the beginning . (= Around the Alheimer. Volume 25). History Association Rotenburg an der Fulda, 2004.
  15. ↑ Barros Arana: Un decenio de la historia de Chile . Volume 2, Santiago de Chile 1906, p. 180.
  16. ↑ Barros Arana: Un decenio de la historia de Chile . Volume 2. Santiago de Chile 1906, pp. 23, 180, 526f.
  17. ↑ Barros Arana: Un decenio de la historia de Chile . Volume 2. Santiago de Chile 1906, p. 528.
  18. ↑ Barros Arana: Un decenio de la historia de Chile . Volume 2. Santiago de Chile 1906, p. 529.
  19. ↑ Barros Arana: Un decenio de la historia de Chile. Volume 2. Santiago de Chile 1906, p. 531.
  20. ↑ quoted from the speech ( memento of February 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) by Federal President Johannes Rau on the occasion of the award of an honorary doctorate at the Universidad Austral de Chile , November 25, 2003, Valdivia.
  21. ^ Carl Skottsberg: The Wilds of Patagonia. A Narrative of the Swedish Expedition to Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego and the Falkland Islands in 1907–1909. Edward Arnold, London 1911, p. 124 f.
  22. ↑ Stefan Rinke: A Pickelhaube doesn't make Prussia: Prussian-German military advisers, 'military ethos' and modernization in Chile, 1886–1973. In: Sandra Carreras (Ed.): Prussia and Latin America: In the area of ​​tension between Commerz, power and culture. LIT-Verlag, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-6306-9 , pp. 259-284.
  23. ↑ Kerstin Hein: Hybrid Identities. Handicraft biographies in the tension between Latin America and Europe. transcript Verlag, 2006, p. 124.
  24. ↑ Pablo Neruda: Confieso que he vivido: memorias. Pehuén Editores Limitada, 2005, ISBN 956-16-0396-9 , p. 17 ( books.google.de ).
  25. ^ Mario Matus: Tradición y adaptación: vivencia de los Sefaradíes en Chile. Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades. Department of Ciencias Históricas. Comunidad Israelita Sefaradí de Chile Editores. Santiago de Chile 1993, p. 67.
  26. ^ Languages ​​of Chile . Country report by Ethnologue (Zsfg.), Accessed on August 21, 2016.
  27. ↑ Kerstin Hein: Hybrid Identities. Handicraft biographies in the tension between Latin America and Europe. transcript Verlag, 2006, p. 132.
  28. ^ German schools. ( Memento from January 30, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) German Embassy Santiago de Chile