German Brazilian - Overview

Overview

The 19th century was marked by an intense emigration of Europeans to different parts of the world, which led to a process of Europeanisation of these areas. Between 1816 and 1850, 5 million people left Europe; between 1850 and 1880 another 22 million people emigrated. Between 1846 and 1932, 60 million Europeans emigrated. Many Germans left the German states after the failed revolutions of 1848. Between 1878 and 1892, another 7 million Germans left Germany; after the 1870s Germany was one of the countries from which the largest numbers of people emigrated, the vast majority to the United States. From 1820 to 1840, Germans represented 21.4% of all European immigrants entering the USA; 32.2% in the following two decades; and at the end of the 19th century they were the largest immigrant group (21.9%) in the US.

German immigration to Brazil was small compared to the numbers who went to the United States, and also compared to immigration of other nationalities, such as Portuguese, Italians and Spaniards, who together made up over 80% of the immigrants to Brazil during the period of greatest immigration by Europeans. Germans appeared in fourth place among immigrants to Brazil, but dropped to fifth place when Japanese immigration increased after 1908.

Even though the immigration of Germans to Brazil was small, it had a notable impact on the ethnic composition of the country, particularly of the Southern Brazilian population. Different factors led to this large influence. First of all, German immigration to Brazil is an old phenomenon which started as early as 1824, many decades before the beginning of the immigration of other European ethnic groups to Brazil. For example, the first significant groups of Italians to immigrate to Brazil only arrived in 1875, many decades after the arrival of the first Germans. When the settlement of other Europeans in Brazil began, the Germans had already been living there for many generations. Another factor was the high birth rates among German Brazilians. Research has found that between 1826 and 1828 a first-generation German Brazilian woman had an average of 8.5 children, and the second generation had an average of 10.4 children per woman. Birth rates among German Brazilian women were higher than those of other Brazilian women, resulting in faster growth of the population of German origin than of the population of non-German origin and a rapid increase in the population of German origin in the country.

In the book The Monroe Doctrine by T B Edgington is said:

The natural increase of the German population in southern Brazil is marvelous. As a rule they rear from ten to fifteen children in each family. Blumenau, a colony which was settled by the Germans over fifty years ago, more than doubles itself every ten years. Southern Brazil is now called ‘Greater Germany’, and the Germans exercise there a commercial and financial supremacy.

Even though the population of German descent makes up a small minority in Brazil, they represent a very large percentage of the population of the South. Jean Roche estimated that people of German descent made up 13.3% of the population in Rio Grande do Sul in 1890, and that they had increased to 21.6% of the population in 1950. By 1920, the vast majority of the population of German descent was Brazilian-born. The Census of 1920 revealed that foreigners constituted only 3% of the population of the old German communities of São Leopoldo, Estrela, Montenegro and Bom Retiro. São Leopoldo, then with 46,482 inhabitants, had only 1,159 foreigners. In the new German communities the proportion of foreigners was larger, for example in Ijuí (15%) and Erechim (25%), indicating they were newer destinations of immigrants in the state. The Census of 1940 revealed that virtually all the population of German descent was native-born.

The occupation of vast areas in Southern Brazil by people of German origin had a visible and important influence in the region. The descendants of German immigrants preserved their language and customs more than any other immigrant group in Brazil, creating a paradox of identity between German and Brazilian. In the Brazilian tradition, citizenship is inherent in the place of birth (Brazilians are all people born in Brazil). In the German tradition, citizenship is passed down to descendants (Germans are all people with German blood). Thus, Germans considered that a person could be legally a Brazilian citizen, but due to ancestry be still part of the German people. Thus, terms such as fatherland, (Vaterland), mother country (Mutterland), homeland (Heimat), guest country (Gastland) and several others came to be used by a few German Brazilians, denoting the contrast between being a Brazilian citizen and still having the feeling of belonging to the German people. This led to the creation of some Germanism (Deutschtum) in Brazil, influenced by Pan-Germanism.

Only a minority of German Brazilians were Germanists. Most German Brazilians did not consider it important to be connected to Germany through associations or political parties. Despite attempts by Germanists to attract the population of German origin in churches or schools, few of them followed these ideas. This was evident in the failure of the Nazi Party when trying to attract a following among German Brazilians. The 1920s were the decade of peak German immigration to Brazil, some 75,000 people (24,000 in 1924 alone). They were fleeing the consequences of World War I and, therefore, it was considered a transitory immigration. Joining the Nazi Party would give them an advantage if they returned to Germany. However, very few German Brazilians were interested: fewer than 5,000 joined, out of a population at that time of about 100,000 German immigrants and nearly 1 million German descendants. This shows that the connection between German Brazilians and Germany was not as strong as believed. The connection was mostly focused on language and culture, while racist ideas and so-called German racial superiority had few adherents among German Brazilians, although there are reports that a minority did hold such views. German Brazilians were not completely unified in their political ideology; research shows that they voted for a variety of candidates in elections. There was no "vote from the Germans", but different ideas within the community.

The idea of a perigo alemão ("German threat") emerged in Brazil in the late 19th century, the fear of what a “confederacy of German Brazilians” could mean for Brazil and its integration. In fact, that fear seems to have been exaggerated given that German Brazilians did not form a united group and most of them seemed not to be interested in getting involved in political issues (given the failure of the Nazi Party in Brazil) or in racist or separatist groups that could represent a real problem for Brazil. Nonetheless, the conservation of the German language among German Brazilians, the isolation of the population in rural areas in Southern Brazil and the small but notorious number of people who were seduced by Germanist ideas seemed to be a problem in the eyes of the Brazilian Government. As a result, policies were implemented to force these people to assimilate. Both the Germanism followed by a few Germans in Brazil and the assimilationist ideology of the Brazilian government were racist. The first was based on the idea of the superiority of the German people, and that they should keep themselves separate from other ethnic groups. The second was based on the idea that whites should mix with non-whites, in order to cause a whitening of the Brazilian population that would culminate in the disappearance of the “inferior non-white races”. The Brazilian process of forced assimilation, like any other aggressive policy against immigrants, brought more problems than solutions, but it weakened the learning of the German language. In the following decades, many of the German Brazilians left the isolated areas where they used to live and migrated to urban centers. Like other immigrants in the Brazilian cities, they found themselves in the minority there and as a consequence adopted Portuguese instead of German and their sense of German identity, already weakened due to the forced assimilation of the past decades, was replaced by a Brazilian identity shared with Brazilians from other ethnic backgrounds.