Wilhelm Cordier

Wilhelm Alfred Cordier (born December 19, 1913 in Strasbourg ( Alsace ), † February 19, 1982 in El Maitén (Prov. Chubut , Argentina )) (also Willi / Willy Cordier , Guillermo Alfredo Cordier ) was the founder and head of a small sect-like Faith community that arose around 1950 in Pforzheim and emigrated to South America from 1954 to 1958.

Life

Willi Cordier, son of Protestant parents from Württemberg , grew up in Esslingen am Neckar . After graduating from secondary school there, he did an apprenticeship as a businessman and worked in Esslingen and, after 1937, as an export salesman in Wuppertal . In Esslingen and Wuppertal he was active in the YMCA and was active in the Confessing Church . At the same time he was also a member of the HJ , SA and from May 1937 in the NSDAP , where he declared his resignation at the party court at the end of 1937.

In 1939 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and joined the infantry . He was initially in Norway and was transferred as a sergeant to the military administration in Paris in September 1940 . At the end of 1943 he was assigned to the army anti-aircraft defense and from July 1944 was stationed at the mouth of the Scheldt . In October he was used in the fighting there, was wounded and was sent to the hospital.

In March 1940, Willi Cordier married in Esslingen. After his recovery he worked there in various positions and was involved as a youth leader, evangelist and preacher in the Württemberg YMCA. In May 1947, the YMCA Pforzheim hired him as a secretary. He should especially take care of the young returnees from war and captivity, who were often left with nothing in the city that was destroyed by an air raid on February 23, 1945 .

Willi Cordier's preaching was increasingly shaped by criticism of the churches , which he accused of striving for power and maintaining unbiblical traditions. At the beginning of November 1948 he resigned from the Evangelical Church . In 1949 he was largely followed by the circle he had now gathered around him - many young women and men - while most of the old YMCA members held back. At the end of 1949 the Cordier group split off from the CVJM Pforzheim.

The "Cordians"

The circle around Willi Cordier was soon referred to in Pforzheim as the "Cordians". It consisted of 120 to 130 people, mostly 20 to 35 year old men and women from Pforzheim and the surrounding area. They met in changing pubs or apartments and cultivated a close community while isolating themselves from their previous environment, even from their relatives.

Cordier radicalized further from 1950. The starting point was his literal and legal view of the biblical texts. As Jesus had asked his disciples to do , he asked his followers to turn away from the world and lead a monastic life in self-abasement, poverty and orientation towards the soon-awaited return of Christ . Many Cordians gave up their previous professional positions and instead worked as unskilled workers or - for women - as domestic and nursing assistants. The masses of leaflets and open letters attacked the church, which propagated a self-made religion and was under the rule of the devil .

The emigration

The expectation of the imminent "downfall" was decisive for the Cordians to decide to emigrate from Germany in fulfillment of Rev 18.4  LUT . Following an advertisement, they contacted the Falkland Islands Company , which initially offered a few men five-year contracts. In July 1954 Cordier left with his family, which now included four daughters, and a small group for the Falkland Islands , where they were employed in Goose Green with agricultural and auxiliary work. The Falkland Islands' colonial government, which was also looking for workers, signed three-year contracts in 1955 with 24 men for road construction and other work in the capital, Stanley , who left in mid-1955. A total of 53 people from the community emigrated to the Falkland Islands from 1954 to 1956, along with women and children.

The approval for the arrival of the remaining 50 or so Cordians willing to leave was delayed, however, mainly because the colonial government lacked the willingness of the Cordians to integrate into the general population. This and the alleged religious influence on the Cordian children at school were the reason for Cordier to break the employment contracts with the Falkland Islands Company at the end of 1957 in order to look for another settlement option for his community on the mainland.

In May 1958, Willi Cordier used community money to buy a run-down estancia of 7,500 hectares in the Patagonian shrub steppe near Paso Flores ( Río Negro province , Argentina ), a small settlement at a ferry crossing over the Río Limay . In September 1958 the last Cordian troop left Pforzheim with 38 people. The road construction crew worked in Stanley until August 1959 and then moved to Paso Flores. 9 people had already returned to Germany from the Falkland Islands , and 7 people also returned from Paso Flores at the first opportunity, so that the colony comprised around 70 people at the end of 1959. In April 1963, 73 people from the community belonged to the Colonia Paso Flores.

The Cordian colonies

The estancia with sheep breeding as the main source of income was slowly restored. The early Christian community of property was achieved in the colony . Everything was done manually or with draft animals, without the help of machines, motors, electricity, etc., because Cordier rejected “technology” as the devil's work . Around 1963, a small vegetable farm was bought in Bariloche , and from 1965, 220 km further south, in El Bolsón , an outpost was maintained where the Cordians managed the estates of absent landowners.

Over the years, more people have returned to Germany or started their own businesses. In the end, only about half of the emigrants stayed in the Cordian colonies permanently. In 1971 in Paso Flores the community split. It was about the economic as well as the spiritual orientation of the colony and, above all, about the role of Cordier, who had previously determined alone. Cordier had to give up all managerial functions in Paso Flores and from then on stayed completely in El Bolsón, together with about 12 to 14 of his supporters. In 1972 they bought a small farm in Cholila (Prov. Chubut ). Around 1981 there were also clashes in this colony and Cordier settled back in El Bolsón a few months before his death with some loyal followers. He died in the hospital in El Maitén and is buried in Cholila. The Cordian colony in Cholila went extinct in 2005.

The Colonia Paso Flores experienced an economic boom after Cordier's dogmatic prohibitions had been abandoned. Around 1986, part of the estancia was expropriated because it was supposed to sink together with the Paso Flores settlement in a lake created by the damming of the Río Limay . The colony was able to survive through the acquisition of a neighboring estancia and has since covered 13,000 hectares. The estancia, now known as El Manantial de Paso Flores, was rebuilt a few kilometers from the Piedra del Águila reservoir , with tourism as a second pillar alongside the Aligned livestock and agriculture. In 2003 the estancia was taken over by the Norwegian denomination, The Christian Congregation , which the remaining former Cordians had joined around 1990. Since then, the facilities have also been used as a conference and holiday center. In 2008, the congregation celebrated the arrival of its first members in Argentina 50 years ago. On this occasion, "Rio Negro" reported in detail in its "diario" (edition of May 24th, continued on May 31st, 2008) on "La comunidad de alemanes de Paso Flores".

literature

• Siegfried Kleinheins, Berthold Rath: Pforzheim's lost sons and daughters. Willi Cordier, the "Cordians" and their exodus to Falkland and Patagonia. Materials on City History 23, edited by City Archives Pforzheim - Institute for City History. Regional culture publishing house, Ubstadt-Weiher 2011, ISBN 978-3-89735-694-8 .
• Karlheinz Olsinger: German Contract Labor in the Falkland Islands (1954–1959). In: Falkland Islands Journal 9 / II (2008), pp. 70–80.
• Jürgen Schukar: The Bible - a "handbook of business administration". Emigrants from Pforzheim in the Patagonian steppe. In: The community (BWGZ). Municipal journal of the Baden-Württemberg Municipal Council (1993). No. 7/1993, pp. 191-195.
• Kurt Hutten: seers, brooders, enthusiasts. Quell-Verlag, Stuttgart, 12th edition 1982, pp. 291-293 ( The circle around Willy Cordier ).
• Guillermo Alfredo Cordier: The Holy No. German letter. Private print, El Bolsón 1966.
• Wolfgang Büscher : Germany, a journey. Rowohlt, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-87134-529-6 , pp. 223-233.
• Helene Kirschler-Nessler: As a Settler in Patagonia, 1967-1997. BoD, Norderstedt 2002, ISBN 3-8311-3863-X . ( Digitized versionhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3DvYlkXYAvwrUC~IA%3D~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3D~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D )

Web links

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Cordier in the catalog of the German National Library
• "Paso Flores" cuenta el pasado de una colonia ( Memento of October 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (Spanish)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ [1]
2. ↑ [2]