Bicentennial of the German Immigration to Brazil

Dramatards, today marks the 200th anniversary of the founding of the São Leopoldo colony in Rio Grande do Sul, it was the first German settlement in Brazil. There are those who argue it was "Nova Friburgo" in RJ but those were swiss, not krauts. It was named that way because of Empress Leopoldina of Habsburg, wife of Emperor Pedro I, she and her doctor Anton von Schaeffer sponsored the creation of German settlements in the scarcely populated Southern Provinces, the founding of São Leopoldo marked the beginning of a migration wave which lasted for a century. Some of my ancestors, including my eldest matrilineal ancestor were São Leopoldo settlers who arrived in the 1820s.

I learned a lot about the first colonies on this book.

The book details how Brazilian government agents lead by Schaeffer would trick rural krauts to sell their homes and move to Brazil which they claim was this beautiful wonderland with schools and hospitals and where they could get rich with ease

There are also letters from the settlers, before being shipped to Porto Alegre they made a stop in Rio de Janeiro to sign the paperwork for country entrance, some settlers detail their first encounters with BIPOCs, in letters to her mother in law a settler wrote: "there are people here with the skin as black as coal who walk almost naked in the street and whom the Brazilians sell at the market as if they were horses".

Pic related is from the Blumenau Oktoberfest in Santa Catarina btw.

Nowadays kraut descendants make around 1/5 of the populations of RS and SC and under 10% of Paraná, that's where most immigrant towns were located.

Pic from Nova Petrópolis in RS

Pomerode SC

!macacos !historychads

@IraniumDonGER ping the germs!

There were also settlements in Espiritu Santo, a state north of Rio de Janeiro