Hermann Blumenau
Hermann Bruno Otto Blumenau (born December 26, 1819 in Hasselfelde ; † October 30, 1899 in Braunschweig ) was a German pharmacist and founder of the city of Blumenau named after him in the state of Santa Catarina in Brazil .
life and work
He was the sixth child of a forest official. After training as a pharmacist between 1836 and 1840, he first worked in Hasselfelde and Erfurt. From 1844 to 1846 he was enrolled at the University of Erlangen , where he obtained his doctorate in chemistry.
Through contacts with the natural scientist Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius , with Alexander von Humboldt and the Brazilian Consul General, he began to be interested in emigrating to Brazil, which he initially traveled for two years after completing his studies.
In 1846, Blumenau went to Brazil on behalf of the Hamburg-based "Society for the Promotion of Emigration to the Southern Provinces of Brazil" to locate land for the purpose of settlement. After the company dissolved in 1847, Blumenau returned to Germany in 1848. He returned to Santa Catarina in 1850 and on September 2nd of the same year founded the colony "Blumenau" with a total of 17 German colonists (mostly craftsmen, only two farmers) in the valley of the Itajaí- Açu River. In 1852 he sold a further eleven properties to German colonists. In that year, the important biologist Johann Friedrich Theodor Müller was one of the residents of the young colony, who finally settled in Blumenau from 1865. The colony itself had great difficulties, so that in 1854 Blumenau undertook a trip to Rio de Janeiro and looked for contacts in Germany in order to obtain support there to prevent the failure of his project. In letters he complained that German authorities were often critical of the emigration of able-bodied people and did not support such undertakings.
In 1859, Blumenau decided to hand the colony over to the Brazilian crown. The contract for the transfer of the colony was signed on January 13, 1860 . With the takeover of the colony by the Brazilian Empire , Blumenau was appointed the first director (port. Diretor ) of the colony. In 1880 the colony was named a city (município) and Blumenau its first mayor (port. Prefeito ).
In 1884 he went back to Germany and settled in Braunschweig, where he died in 1899 and was buried in the main cemetery in Braunschweig . In 1974 his bones were exhumed and transferred to Blumenau, where a mausoleum was built for him.
literature
- Horst-Rüdiger Jarck , Günter Scheel (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon. 19th and 20th centuries , Hannover 1996, pp. 69–70
- Hans Roemer: Blumenau, Hermann Bruno Otto. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 327 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Wilhelm Wolkenhauer: Blumenau, Hermann . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 47, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1903, p. 23 f.
- Vesper, Reinhold: The greatest German colonial achievement on foreign soil ! . In: The Thuringian Flag. Monthly magazine for the Central German homeland. Issue 8, Jena 1938, pp. 277-279.
Remarks
- ↑ A few years later, the " Colonization Association of 1849 in Hamburg " settled.
Radio documentation
- Thomas Gaevert : In the foreign homeland - history and visions of Hermann Blumenau , Südwestrundfunk 2004, first broadcast: March 3, 2004 on SWR2
Web links
- Literature by and about Hermann Blumenau in the catalog of the German National Library
- In the foreign homeland - history and visions of Hermann Blumenau
- Blumenau Society eV
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Blumenau, Hermann |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Blumenau, Hermann Bruno Otto |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German founder of the colony |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 26, 1819 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hasselfelde |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 30, 1899 |
| Place of death | Braunschweig |