Lauro Müller (politician)

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Lauro Müller (between 1912 and 1917)

Lauro Severiano Müller (born November 8, 1863 in Itajaí ; † July 30, 1926 in Rio de Janeiro ) was a Brazilian politician , diplomat and son of German emigrants from Greimersburg .

Life

Lauro Müller was a son of Peter Müller (1815–1880) who, together with his father Johann Müller, had emigrated from Greimersburg near Cochem to Brazil around 1830 . Their destination was São Pedro de Alcântara , a colony in the south of the province of Santa Catarina , which had only been founded the year before on March 1, 1829. Here his father met Anna Michels, who had also emigrated from Kehrig in the Eifel, and married her. Lauro, who was brought up by his father republican, first received instruction from private teachers before in the city Niterói in today's state of Rio de Janeiro , the school Liceu de Humanidades de Niterói visited. In 1882 he entered the military school Escola Militar da Praia Vermelha to pursue a military career, the focus of which was on studying military engineering with his final doctorate. There he was influenced by the positivism of Benjamin Constant (1836-1891), who taught there.

After completing his studies, Lauro Müller joined the main activists of the republican movement around Marshal Manuel Deodoro da Fonseca and Benjamin Constant. Fonseca's anti-monarchist movement finally carried out a military coup, as a result of which Emperor Pedro II had to abdicate on November 15, 1889. When da Fonsecas moved into Rio de Janeiro, Lauro Müller, just 26 years old, rode by his side and was celebrated by the masses as a bearer of hope. In gratitude appointed him da Fonseca after his election as the first President of Brazil to the governor of the new state of Santa Catarina . Müller was one of the signatories of the Brazilian constitution of 1891 .

In 1902 he was appointed Brazilian Minister of Transport as the successor to Antônio Augusto da Silva and, in this role, had extensive modernization and renovation work carried out in Rio de Janeiro. New traffic axes with wide boulevards such as Avenida Central, now Avenida Rio Branco , were built in the city and the expansion of the port began. In addition to further measures to improve the infrastructure of Brazil, Müller had very early on the idea of ​​relocating the country's capital from Rio de Janeiro to a central region. For this idea, which was incorporated into the Brazilian constitution in 1891, an area of ​​14,400 square kilometers was demarcated as early as 1893. The foundation stone for the construction of the new capital, Brasília, took place on September 7, 1922. Although Müller had become a successful politician, from a purely formal point of view he remained a member of the military and was promoted to the rank of general in 1912 .

Also in 1912, Müller was appointed Foreign Minister of Brazil to succeed José Maria da Silva Paranhos Júnior - an office he held until 1917, when he was succeeded by Nilo Peçanha . The appointment of the German-born Müller as foreign minister was not shared with joy everywhere, especially in the United States , his appointment was viewed with some skepticism. The background to this was on the one hand the emerging efforts of the German Empire in world politics and its possible request for territorial expansion in Latin America and on the other hand the fear of an overly strong neighboring country on the home continent, since they did not want to tolerate foreign powers . Lauro Müller's greatest political achievement as foreign minister was the establishment of the ABC-Bund, a political-economic unification federation between the countries Argentina , Brazil and Chile . Although he had advocated Brazil's neutrality, after the United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917 , he had to resign on May 8, 1917.

On the contrary, Müller, who demonstrably had no anti-American stance, cultivated good contacts with well-known personalities in the United States. He counted u. a. to the sponsors of the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition, which from 1913 to 1914 under the direction of the former US President Theodore Roosevelt and the engineer Cândido Rondon the course of the river Rio da Dúvida ( River of Doubt ), later renamed Rio Roosevelt , in the Explored the Amazon basin .

Honors

Bronze monument in Florianópolis (2014)

Müller was a member of the Academia Brasileira de Letras ( Brazilian Academy of Literature ) from 1912 to 1926 and had earned a high reputation in his political career. He received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University . The town of Lauro Müller was named after him, and several squares and streets were named after him. During a visit to Japan , Lauro Müller received the award of an honorary samurai and in 1964 Brazil issued a postage stamp with a photo of Müller to mark his special appreciation.

family

Lauro Müller was married to Luzia Henriqueta Ferreira de Andrade, a daughter of Antônio Pedro de Andrade (Portuguese from Madeira) from Rio de Janeiro, since May 11, 1893. Both had three children together, Laura born on February 12, 1894, Lauro born on April 3, 1896 and Antônio Pedro born on May 30, 1898.

literature

Web links

Commons : Lauro Müller  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Lauro Müller, Brazilian statesman and intellectual, son of an immigrant from Greimersburg, by Gregor Brand, In: eifelzeitung.de , accessed on July 9, 2019
  2. ↑ P. 36 of the digitized version on Commons.
  3. ↑ Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg, Between Anden and Amazonas, 1st edition, ISBN 978-3-84609-940-7, Salzwasser Verlag GmbH, Paderborn 2014, reprint from 1915, Lauro Müller p. 10 , accessed on July 8, 2019
  4. ↑ The First World War in Central and South America, 1911 appointment of the German-born Brazilian Lauro Müller causes irritation in Washington, at: amerika21.de , accessed on July 9, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Müller, Lauro
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Müller, Lauro Severiano (full name); Müller, Lorenz Severiano
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Brazilian politician
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1863
PLACE OF BIRTH Itajaí
DATE OF DEATH July 30, 1926
Place of death Rio de Janeiro