German minority in Mexico

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As German Mexicans are German-speaking or German origin referred to in Mexico live.

Alexander von Humboldt

Alexander von Humboldt stayed in Mexico for around 50 weeks from his arrival in Acapulco on March 22, 1803 to his departure in Veracruz on March 7, 1804 . However, his stay took place as part of an extensive research trip and he had no intention of settling permanently in Mexico. Nevertheless, his services to Mexico are of such extraordinary importance that the German schools in Mexico City and Puebla , among others , were named after him.

immigrant

The first targeted immigration of German-speaking families took place after the seizure of power in April 1864 by the emperor Maximilian von Habsburg , who was extremely unpopular with the Mexican people and who thereby sought to consolidate his position. After Moritz von Hippel, who was already living in Mexico and originally from Silesia , was appointed director of the German colonies in Yucatán , he traveled to his old home to encourage German families to move to Mexico. Although there were considerable reservations about this adventure in Germany, von Hippel managed to win a total of 443 people for his project. Most of them were impoverished farmers, unemployed artists or unemployed workers who moved to Yucatán with their entire families. The first group consisted of 224 people of all ages and reached the port city of Sisal on a ship coming from Hamburg on October 25, 1865. The group found their new home in the small Mayan village of Santa Elena. Another 219 settlers arrived in Sisal on July 15, 1866. A small part of them also landed in Santa Elena, while the much larger part of this second group was directed to Pustunich - another small Mayan village located around 16 kilometers east of Santa Elena. The two villages became known together under the term Villa Carlota (after the Empress Charlotte , wife of Emperor Maximilian).

Mennonites in the Chihuahua and Durango regions

As early as autumn 1866 there was a great deal of dissatisfaction among the German settlers, which triggered the first wave of return trips. After the fall of the emperor and his shooting in June 1867, the German settlers were branded as collaborators of the "enemy" and were accordingly attacked. If possible, they traveled back to Germany or emigrated to the USA . Some stayed in Mexico, especially those who had married a local.

A second wave of industrial immigration took place during the late 19th century when German-speaking families settled mainly in Mexico City and Puebla. In 1934 there were already around 20,000 Germans living in the country, the "Association of German Reich Citizens in Mexico" had around 7,000 members at that time. The majority of the German residents in Mexico worked in trade and industry.

As in many other Latin American countries, Low German Mennonites settled in the Chihuahua and Durango regions . Many people still speak this Plautdietsch today .

Well-known German-speaking immigrants in Mexico

  • Axel Bierbaum , fitness trainer (has lived in Mexico for more than a decade)
  • Mariana Frenk-Westheim , writer (Born in Hamburg , she came to Mexico in 1930, took on Mexican citizenship in 1935 and died in Mexico City in 2004 at the age of 106).
  • Erich Fromm , psychoanalyst (came to Mexico in 1950, founded the Instituto Mexicano de Psicoanálisis and stayed until around 1965)
  • Mathias Goeritz , painter and sculptor (the native of Danzig emigrated to Mexico in 1949, where he died in Mexico City in 1990.)
  • Alfons Goldschmidt , economist (lived alternately in Russia and Mexico since the 1920s , where he died in Cuernavaca in 1940. )
  • Karl Wilhelm Kahlo , businessman and photographer ( Frida Kahlo's father emigrated to Mexico around 1890, where he purchased a plot of land in Coyoacán on which he later built the famous Blue House, which is now the Frida Kahlo Museum .)
  • Paul Kirchhoff , anthropologist (lived in Mexico since the 1930s, where he died in Mexico City in 1972.)
  • Teobert painter , architect and researcher (first came to Mexico in 1865 in the wake of Emperor Maximilian. Although he left the country after Maximilian's execution, he kept returning to Mexico and died in Mérida in 1917. )
  • Maximilian I (Mexico) , Emperor of Mexico (came to Mexico in 1864, was executed in Querétaro in 1867 )
  • Franz Mayer , businessman and art collector (lived in Mexico from 1905 until his death in 1975 and left an impressive collection to posterity, which can be viewed in the Museo Franz Mayer , which opened in 1986. )
  • Ernst Pauler , soccer goalkeeper and coach (the Austrian won the Mexican championship both as a player and as a coach and eventually settled in Orizaba , where he died in 1959.)
  • Otto Rühle , politician and writer (lived in Mexico since 1935, where he worked as a consultant at the Mexican Ministry of Education and died of heart failure in 1943.)
  • Alice Rühle-Gerstel , psychologist and writer (wife of Otto Rühle, who followed her husband to Mexico in 1936 and took her own life on the day he died.)
  • B. Traven , writer (came to Mexico in 1926, probably died 1969)

refugees

During the First and Second World Wars, there were two major waves of settlement. Above all, German-speaking Jews and left-wing people from Germany and Austria , who were able to flee Europe from 1939–1942 with the help of the Mexican consul in Marseille Gilberto Bosques , found a new home in Mexico .

Well-known German-speaking refugees in Mexico

  • Alexander Abusch , journalist, writer and politician (lived in Mexico from 1941 to 1946)
  • Ruth Deutsch Lechuga , anthropologist (the native Viennese came to Mexico in 1939, where she lived and died in Mexico City in 2004)
  • Bruno Frei , journalist and writer (the direct descendant of Heinrich Heine lived in Mexico from 1941 to 1947)
  • Walter Janka , publisher (came to Mexico in 1941, managed the El libro libre publishing house there , took over the management of the KPD group in Mexico in 1946 and returned to Germany in 1947)
  • Leo Katz , writer ( Katz , who worked in Mexico under the pseudonym Joel Amos, lived in Mexico from 1940 to 1946)
  • Friedrich Katz , anthropologist and historian (came to Mexico in 1940, where he graduated from the French School in 1945. He later relocated to the USA, where he devoted himself to Mexican history for decades and held the chair of Mexican history at the 1992-2002 University of Chicago .)
  • Otto Katz , agent and journalist (exiled to Mexico in 1940 and returned to Czechoslovakia in 1946 )
  • Egon Erwin Kisch , journalist and writer (lived in Mexico from 1939 to 1946)
  • Paul Merker , politician (lived in Mexico from 1942 to 1946)
  • Hannes Meyer , architect (the Basel native lived in Mexico since 1939 and returned to Switzerland in 1949 )
  • Wolfgang Paalen , painter (came to Mexico at the invitation of Frida Kahlo and left the country in 1949 to return in 1954. In 1959, he committed suicide in Taxco .)
  • Marie Pappenheim , writer and sex pedagogue (the Austrian lived in Mexico from 1940 to 1947)
  • Gustav Regulator , writer and journalist (came to Mexico in 1940, took on Mexican citizenship and remained lifelong connected to the country to which he kept returning)
  • Ludwig Renn , writer (lived in Mexico from approx. 1941 to 1947)
  • Walter Reuter , photographer and filmmaker (emigrated to Mexico in 1942 and died there in 2005)
  • Marcel Rubin , composer and conductor (lived in Mexico from 1942 to 1947)
  • Anna Seghers , writer (lived in Mexico from 1941 to 1947)
  • Kurt Stern , writer (1942-1946)
  • Bodo Uhse , writer (lived in Mexico from 1940 to 1948)
  • Paul Westheim , art critic and writer (came to Mexico in 1941 and met his future wife Mariana Frenk-Westheim here in 1942, so that he stayed in Mexico and took on Mexican citizenship in 1954. He died in Berlin in 1963 while traveling abroad ).

German culture

Cervecería del Pacífico

German culture has been preserved in many areas and cities, for example the Oktoberfest is celebrated in many cities . From an economic point of view, the Germans achieved great fame among the rest of Mexico for their cheese production and beer brewing.

Breweries

The first Mexican brewery , the name of which was retained for posterity, was La Pila Seca, founded in Mexico City in 1845 by the Swiss Bernhard Bolgard . Probably in the same year , Friedrich Herzog from Bavaria founded the La Candelaria brewery . Some of the breweries still operating today also have German origins.

For example, the German brewer Wilhelm Hasse founded the Cervecería Guillermo Hasse y Compañia in Orizaba in 1894 , which was renamed the Cervecería Moctezuma in 1896 and since the merger with the Cervecería Cuauhtémoc based in Monterrey has operated as Cervecería Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma .

The Cervecería del Pacífico , founded in March 1900 by the three German master brewers Jorge Claussen, Germán Evers and Emilio Philippy in Mazatlán , which has been part of the Grupo Modelo since 1954 , has kept its original name to this day .

Soccer

Between 1915 and 1933, the German community in Mexico also had a soccer team , which under the name FV Germania participated in the games for the Mexican soccer championship and was able to set quite a few scent brands.

In the first season of 1915/16, for example, their striker Karl Mues was one of the league's attractions due to his shooting power. A few years later Kurt Friedrich's goal scorer, who was signed from Switzerland before the start of the 1922/23 season, became the top scorer in the Mexican league.

In terms of success, the team of FV Germania recorded a championship title in the unofficial Mexicana league (1921) as well as a runner-up in the officially recognized tournaments (1923) and participation in the cup final . The latter was lost 3-1 to Club Necaxa in 1933 , in which the Austrian Ernst Pauler was in goal.

In the 1993/94 season, the Swiss goalkeeper Jörg Stiel completed a one-year guest appearance at the then first division club Toros Neza . Between 1995 and 1998, the German defender Uwe Wolf was one season each with Necaxa, Puebla and most recently with the second division Venados de Yucatán .

Furthermore, the German fitness trainer Axel Bierbaum , who is considered to be one of the best in his field in Mexico, has been with various top division clubs for more than a decade.

Todays situation

Today around 200,000 people in Mexico have German roots. The number of German speakers fluctuates between 60,000 and 90,000 people, depending on estimates.

In 2010, 678 Germans officially emigrated to Mexico.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ German Embassy Mexico City: Alexander von Humboldt ( Memento from January 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on April 8, 2019
  2. ↑ Alma Durán-Merk: Only German elite for Yucatan? New results on migration research during the Second Mexican Empire (English; lecture from January 2008; PDF; 653 kB)
  3. ↑ Das Kluge Alphabet , Volume 2, Propylaen Verlag, 1935, p. 347.
  4. ^ German Embassy Mexico City: Political Exile in Mexico ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on April 8, 2019
  5. ^ Gustav Regulator & Mexico - The Land of Contradictions ( Memento from September 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Emigration to Mexico - Current (accessed on February 28, 2012)