Tyrol (Espírito Santo)

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Colonia Tirol , officially Portuguese Colônia Tirol de Santa Leopoldina , is an approx. 10 km² scattered settlement founded by Tyrolean emigrants in the state of Espírito Santo in Brazil .

location

It belongs to the municipality of Santa Leopoldina and lies around 70 km inland from the port city of Vitória on the Atlantic Ocean. The journey from Vitória was not easy in 2010 either and took two hours. German-speaking Europeans use the term (Dorf) Tirol in Brazil . The settlement consists of a few dozen farms, has a few hundred inhabitants and is located in a hilly to mountainous area at 600 to 800 m above sea level.

history

The settlement was founded in 1859 in the province of Espírito Santo by immigrants who came from the Stubai Valley and Upper Inn Valley (today in the Austrian part of Tyrol ). The Brazilian Empress Leopoldine von Habsburg († 1826) had given the Tyroleans and other Austrians hope for a better life in South America during her reign.

The first time of construction was very arduous. Over time, however, the coffee and banana trade became very profitable, so that at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, prosperity came about. A church was built, a band was founded, and more. The drop in coffee prices then brought economic decline with it. During the Second World War , the anti-German attitude in Latin America resulted in the prohibition of German teaching. It was not until after 1960 that Innsbruck university professor Karl Ilg founded a private school, in which German classes were again offered in 1997. Since the end of the 20th century there has been economic aid from Austria and South Tyrol . There was a distant relationship between the Catholic Tyrolean settlers and the Protestant northern Germans, who had also settled in Santa Leopoldina.

language

The Tyrolean settlers retained their dialect for several generations thanks to the Jesuits' German lessons . At the end of the 20th century there were only a few people who could still speak the ancestral language. A participant in a travel group from Tyrol who visited Colonia in 2010 reported that there had recently been no German lessons. The German dialect now (2011) no longer has any respect among children and young people; they find it more attractive to speak portuguese . Today's residents of Colonia Tirol have ancestors of different language groups and are sometimes dark-skinned.

particularities

The place must not be confused with Puerto Tirol in the north of Argentina, which is also sometimes referred to as Colonia Tirol . The colony has the Cemitério do Comunidade de Tirol cemetery .

Sources and literature

Coordinates: 20 ° 11 ′  S , 40 ° 34 ′  W