Geo von Lengerke

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Geo von Lengerke, around 1870

Georg Ernst Heinrich "Geo" von Lengerke (born August 31, 1827 in Dohnsen , Duchy of Braunschweig , † July 4, 1882 in Zapatoca , Departamento de Santander , Colombia ) was a German engineer , large landowner and businessman .

Life

Georg von Lengerke was the second youngest of seven children of the merchant and landowner Johann Abraham von Lengerke (1775–1831) and his wife Emilie, geb. Lutterloh (1796-1888). Highly gifted in mathematics and technology, he studied at the Collegium Carolinum in Braunschweig , the forerunner of the Ducal Polytechnic School , and became an engineer. In 1852 he left Germany. He never disclosed the reasons for this. One explanation is that he killed his adversary in a duel with the saber in an honor trade because of a woman and had to flee.

He emigrated to Colombia, where he called himself Geo von Lengerke from then on , and settled in the state of Santander . He was one of the first to recognize the potential of the cultivation of cinchona trees in this region. The trade in cinchona ( quinine ) made him rich. He invested his fortune in the reclamation of fallow land, which the Colombian state transferred to him in 1862 or which he had previously bought. His property extended over 12,000 hectares. In the vicinity of Betulia he created the hacienda Montebello, which soon became a center of social life between Bucaramanga and the Río Magdalena , regardless of the fact that Lengerke was a Lutheran and free thinker in the midst of Catholic and conservative aristocratic families was. He grew tobacco, cocoa and coffee and introduced machines and new methods, some of which he had developed himself, to process the harvests. In addition, he ran the trading business with imported goods in Bucaramanga. In order to develop the region, he had a network of roads built and numerous bridges built over rivers and gorges - this is where his training as an engineer benefited. Some of its bridges are still in use today.

After the end of the cinchona bark economy, Lengerke was no longer able to earn the costs of his farms. Although not impoverished (as it was said in older depictions), but in - for him - modest circumstances, he died in 1882 and was buried in Zapatoca with great public participation. His tombstone can still be seen today.

Afterlife

His life was similar to that of a feudal lord . He was also considered a womanizer , and reports of the brutal expulsion of the Indians , especially the Yariguies , from his area of ​​influence give him an ambivalent testimony. In today's Santander Department in Colombia, Geo von Lengerke, known as “the bridge builder”, is nevertheless a popular hero. There are many rumors and legends about his life and his ideas, which seem eccentric to his contemporaries.

The novel "La otra raya del tigre" by the Colombian writer Pedro Gómez Valderrama (1923–1992) set him a literary monument.

Works

  • Geo von Lengerke: Palabras del dialecto de los indios del Opone. Palabras indias dictadas por un Indio de la tríbu de Carare . In: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie , Wiegandt, Hempel & Parey (Berlin), vol. 10 (1878).

literature

(in order of appearance)

  • Luis Serrano Gómez: Teatro . Imprenta del Departamento, Bucaramanga 1948. (three dramas, including Lengerke ).
  • Horacio Rodriquez Plata: La Inmigración Alemana al Estado Soberano de Santander en el Siglo XIX. Repercusiones Socio-Económicas de un Proceso de Transculturación . Editorial Kelly, Bogotá 1968.
  • Manuel Alberto Garnica Martínez: Guarapo, champaña y vino blanco. Presencia alemana en Santander en el siglo XIX . In: Boletín Cultural y Bibliográfico , Santafé de Bogotá, vol. 29 (1992).
  • Alberto Escovar: La cicatriz de Lengerke . In: Alberto Escovar, María Soledad Reyna (eds.): Barichara 300 años de historia y patrimonio. Editores Talleres de D'Vinni, Bogotá 2005. ISBN 958-33-8181-0 . Pp. 103-129.
  • Humberto Triana y Antorveza: Juan María Céspedes y Geo von Lengerke y sus contactos con los indígenas Opones y Carares . In: Boletin de la Academia Colombiana (Bogota) vol. 57, no. 235/236 (January / June 2007), pp. 110-121.
  • Álvaro Pablo Ortiz: Geo Von Lengerke: Constructor de Caminos . Universidad Industrial de Santander - División de Publicaciones. Bucaramanga 2008. ISBN 978-958-818799-0 .
  • Juan Esteban Constaín Croce (ed.): 200 años de la presencia alemana en Colombia . Editorial Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá 2012. ISBN 978-958-738258-7 .

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Álvaro Pablo Ortiz: Geo Von Lengerke . Bucaramanga 2008, pp. 44 and 208.
  2. ↑ Álvaro Pablo Ortiz: Geo Von Lengerke . Bucaramanga 2008, pp. 52 and 68.
  3. ↑ Álvaro Pablo Ortiz: Geo Von Lengerke . Bucaramanga 2008, p. 107.
  4. ↑ Álvaro Pablo Ortiz: Geo Von Lengerke . Bucaramanga 2008, p. 79.
  5. ↑ Álvaro Pablo Ortiz: Geo Von Lengerke . Bucaramanga 2008, pp. 128-133.
  6. ↑ Examples in: Zapatoca no ha cambiado - Una crónica zapatoca  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed February 13, 2013.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.encolombia.com  
personal data
SURNAME Lengerke, Geo of
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lengerke, Georg Ernst Heinrich von (birth name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German engineer, landowner and businessman
DATE OF BIRTH August 31, 1827
PLACE OF BIRTH Dohnsen , Duchy of Braunschweig
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 1882
Place of death Zapatoca , Departamento de Santander , Colombia