Walterio Meyer Rusca

Walterio Meyer Rusca

Walterio Meyer Rusca , as he called himself according to Chilean naming law ( Meyer is the family name of his father, Rusca the maiden name of his mother), or Walter Leo Meyer , as he was officially called in his native Switzerland (born April 11, 1882 in Zurich ; † 14 January. 1969 in Osorno ) was in Chile active engineer of Swiss descent, versatile sponsor of the Chilean region of Los Lagos , nonfiction author, farmer and Swiss honorary vice-consul .

Origin and professional work

Walter Meyer, a citizen of Winkel and from 1886 also of Zurich, was born in Zurich as the third of eight children of the businessman Johannes (Jean) Meyer and his wife Emilie, born Rusca. From 1901 to 1905 he trained as a civil engineer at the Federal Polytechnic and began his professional career at Locher & Cie , where for two years he was responsible for calculations in connection with the construction of the Simplon Tunnel . He then took a job at the German company Philipp Holzmann , which built the railway line from Los Vilos to Copiapo and its branch line from Hualañe to Llico in Chile, South America .

When the construction of the railway line from Osorno to Puerto Montt was due in 1909 , Meyer moved to Chile, joined the Chilean Directorate for Public Buildings and was in charge of the construction of the section from Sagllúe to Los Pellines until 1913 . At the same time he worked as an appraiser for the Caja de Crédito Hipotecario (a mortgage bank) and similar institutes. In the 1920s he ran a joint engineering and architecture office in Osorno with his brother, who had also emigrated, the architect Hermann Meyer (1892–1987). For many years he surveyed the agricultural properties of southern Chile, as required by the land registry law (Ley de la Propiedad Austral) , and for ten years he also carried out surveys on behalf of the city of Osorno.

In 1921 Meyer married Paula Eggers Schott (1898–2002), who came from a well-to-do German-Chilean family, and after the death of her parents she brought the Mulpulmo estate (Fundo) east of Osorno into the marriage.

Outside work

Monument to Walterio Meyer Rusca at the Termas de Aguas Calientes in the Puyehue National Park

Social and scientific activity

In addition to his professional activities, Meyer worked as a restless promoter of his adopted home Osorno and the Los Lagos region . He was the founder and president of Club Andino Osorno ( Andean Club Osorno) and founder and president of the Comité Pro Adelanto de Osorno, an association promoting the city.

One of his most significant initiatives was the construction of the first old people's home in Osorno and the development of the hot springs in the Puyehue National Park for the general public. In the latter place he had a covered swimming pool and a large number of simple holiday houses built (Termas de Aguas Calientes) . In addition, he arranged for the then Plaza Matthei to be planted, which was given to the city of Osorno by the Swiss colony for its four hundredth birthday and has since been called Plaza Suiza , and he initiated the Concurso de Huertos Obreros (Workers Garden Competition). His wife Paula was also president of the local Red Cross for many years .

For many years, Meyer acted as the contact person for the Swiss resident in Chile and those traveling to Chile, serving as Swiss Honorary Vice Consul for the southern provinces of Chile from 1941 to 1953 . Every summer he made himself available to botanists, geologists and other travelers to guide them through the wider area of ​​Osorno, the « Chilean Switzerland ». Among these was the Swiss geologist Arnold Heim , whose photographs of Chile are now online in the ETH Zurich Image Archive.

In addition to his hobbies of flora and geology , Meyer also dealt with the regional language of southern Chile. He was particularly interested in the etymology of the autochthonous place and field names, as these are often based on the geological properties of the respective region. Partly in collaboration with Ernesto Wilhelm de Moesbach, he wrote three lexicographical works: the first is a list of words and terms of the southern Chilean colloquial language, the second, published several times, deals with the personal names of the Indian Huilliche , and the third, also printed repeatedly, explains the local names of Indian origin in the «Little South» of Chile.

Publications (selection)

Of his publications, Meyer himself describes the following as his most important:

• Con ojos abiertos sobre las tres Américas. Diario de viaje. [Padre Las Casas] 1946.
• Chilean Switzerland. Santiago de Chile 1950.
• El hombre y la tierra. Padre Las Casas, 1950, 2nd edition, ibid. 1960.
• Voces indígenas del lenguaje popular sureño. 550 chilenismos. Padre Las Casas, 1951, 2nd edition, ibid. 1952.
• [together with Ernesto Wilhelm de Moesbach:] Los huilliches a través de sus apellidos. Estudio etimológico de los patronímicos aborígines surenõs. Osorno 1952, 5th edition Santiago 1988.
• [together with Ernesto Wilhelm de Moesbach:] Diccionario geográfico-etimológico indígena de las provincias Valdivia, Osorno y Llanquihue. Padre Las Casas, 1955, 6th edition, Santiago de Chile 1982.
• Cómo un suizo ve Chile. Padre Las Casas 1960.

Honors

Meyer became a corresponding member of the Chilean Academy of Natural Sciences (Academía chilena de Ciencias Naturales) in 1956 , and in 1959 he was awarded the Bernardo O'Higgins medal 1st class by the Chilean government "in recognition of his work in public, non-profit and scientific fields" .

In Osorno-Rahue, Calle Walterio Meyer was named after him, and a school located between Osorno and Puyehue was named Escuela Walterio Meyer Rusca .

swell

• Sintesis de datos personales y labor de don Walterio Meyer Rusca. Private printing. Osorno 1959.
• [untitled, in the section From the life of G. E. P. members. ] In: GEP Bulletin No. 68, March 1960, pp. 55 f.
• † Walterio Meyer Rusca. Obituary in: Schweizerische Bauzeitung 87 (1969), p. 122 f., With portrait ( digitized ).
• Walterio Meyer Rusca. Letters to my parents, written in Switzerland, April 9th, 1904– February 24th, 1907. Private printing. Edited by Peter Schmid. Santiago de Chile 2006. - The edition of Meyer's diary entries and other letters announced in 2009 has not yet been completed.
• ¿Quién era Walterio Meyer? In: El Vaca nudo of January 5, 2009, accessed on November 4, 2015 (partly inaccurate).
• Walterio Meyer Rusca in the Dodis databaseof diplomatic documents of Switzerland .

Web links

• Publications by and about Walterio Meyer Rusca in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library

photos

All pictures by Arnold Heim, now owned by the ETH Library:

• Walter Meyer on his Fundo.
• The house on Mulpulmo.
• Walter and Paula Meyer.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Citizens' Register of the City of Zurich 1926. Edited by the civil registry office of the City of Zurich, Citizen Register Department. from Müller, Werder & Cie. 1927, p. 1186, no. 344 and proceeding therefrom.
2. ↑ See Guillermo Sáez Eickhoff: Plaza Matthei: el regalo de los suizos a los 400 años de Osorno. In: El Austra de Osorno, April 9, 2017.
3. ↑ ETH library image archive
4. ↑ ^{a b c} GEP Bulletin No. 68, March 1960, p. 55 f.
5. ↑ Memoria de Gestión 2009, p. 22 f. ( Memento of the original from December 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed November 4, 2015.