Argentina
Although several Germans participated in Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition, spending the winter of 1520 in Patagonia, the earliest documented German interest in the La Plata region was connected with trade.
Once Emperor Charles V granted overseas travel and trade privileges to his subjects in Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, two large German companies, Fugger and Welser, established trade routes to the new Spanish colonies in South America. One of the fourteen ships commanded by Pedro de Mendoza in 1534 had been outfitted by the Augsburg trading company of Welser and other German businessmen. Among the 150 German and Dutch crewmen was Ulrich (Utz) Schmidel from Straubing. In 1567, he published a description of this trip and his twenty-year sojourn in Wahrhafftige Historien einer Wunderbaren Schiffart (True Stories from a Marvelous Journey). This book included an account of the founding of the fortress Puerto de Nuestra Senora Santa Maria del Buen Aire. Thus Schmidel became the first historian of Argentina.In the colonial era, following the abdication of Charles V and the partition of his empire, few Germans except for Jesuit missionaries arrived in the region. From 1616, 117 German Jesuit padres arrived, leaving a lasting impact on the Indian missions of the Upper Parana and the Rio Paraguay. The first important missionary was Tyrolean Anton Klemens Sepp von Seppen- burg (1655—1733), who brought a variety of musical instruments to South America and for forty-three years gained high renown teaching music in several Indian mission communities. His Reissbeschrei- bung (Description of his Journey, 1696) and mission reports are valuable sources for historians. The missionaries Florian Baucke (Paucke) and Martin Dobrizhoffer served among the Mokobian and Abipone tribes in the Chaco for many years. Baucke, a Silesian, became a teacher and modernizer.
He introduced the nomadic people to the advantages of: a settled lifestyle, stone houses, planted fields, and cultivated yerba mate (the special herb tea of that region). A careful observer, he wrote an illustrated report—first published in 1829 as Reise in die Missionen (Journey to the Missions)—a humorous description full of anecdotal material and ethnographic details. Do- brizhoffer’s Historia de Abiponibus (History of the Abipones, 1784) is another valuable ethnological description. The Styrian Matthias Strobel (1696—1769) became the highest-ranking German Jesuit and superior of the entire Guarani missions. Denounced as the “viceroy of the missions” by the opposition to the Jesuits, he, Baucke, and Dobrizhoffer were expelled along with their order after 1767.With Ibero-American independence after 1810, more Germans arrived, especially businesspeople, but the antirevolutionist policy of the major European countries united in the the Holy Alliance prevented diplomatic recognition of Argentina by the German states. This delayed the development of profitable relations, while an Argentine government commission actively recruited immigrants in central Europe. In 1826, the first major contingent of 200 Germans arrived after great difficulties. They were assigned to settle Chacarita de los Colegiales, where they founded the first colony at the Rio de la Plata. Caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas (1829—1832, 1835—1852) discouraged immigration until he was removed from power by a coalition force of Argentine unitarians and federalist dissidents with the help of Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay. The Brazilian contingent of the coalition included 250 German veterans of the War of Schleswig-Holstein (referred to as “Brum- mers”). At times, their military efforts were decisive.
Afterward, Argentina opened its doors to European immigration. Considering Germans model immigrants, Argentina’s future president, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, personally promoted emigration in Germany.
After some hesitation, German and Austrian immigration resumed, leaving a lasting impact on Argentine society. However, Argentina attracted immigrants along with natural scientists who explored the flora, fauna, and geography of the country. Naturalist Hermann Burmeister, a disciple of Alexander von Humboldt, traveled through Brazil and Argentina in the 1850s and produced a large number of zoological, paleontological, and botanical studies. During the 1860s, he reorganized the Museo Publico in Buenos Aires and established the School of Natural Sciences at the University of Cordoba, for which he recruited many German scholars (e.g., the mineralogist Adolf Stelzner from the famous Freiberg mining academy and the chemist Max Siewert from the University of Halle).Starting in the 1870s, several waves of immigrants from German-speaking countries arrived in Argentina. They escaped crises in Europe, including the Anti-Socialist Laws, the German Empire’s authoritarianism, the results of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, and the Great Depression. They included Germans, Austrians, ethnic Germans from the Balkans and eastern Europe, and citizens from the former German colonies in Africa and the Pacific Islands. Among the immigrants were significant numbers of Teuto-Brazilians who, since the mid-nineteenth century, had been moving westward in search of land. The numerically largest group consisted of Volga Germans, who arrived by way of Brazil. In 1940, about 130,000 Volga Germans lived in the country. Currently, the estimate is 300,000 to 350,000, with 40 percent still speaking German.
During the 1860s and 1870s, the first German newspapers were founded in Buenos Aires. German associations and clubs dominated the social, economic, and religious life in the small German colony of Argentina’s capital. Germans founded mutual aid societies, sickness-insurance funds, a hospital, and an orphanage. German schools, singing societies (Gesangvereine), gymnastic groups (Turnvereine), and cooperatives were established.
In 1869, Leopold Bohm founded Argentina’s first kindergarten according to the ideas of Friedrich Froebel. The Socialist association Vorwarts (Progress) was created in 1882.German businesses became interested in economic contacts with Argentina in the last third of the nineteenth century. Siemens and Allgemeine Elektricitats- Gesellschaft (AEG, General Electricity Company) invested into the electronic industry and quickly occupied a leading position in this sector. The Argentine army restructured itself to model the Prussian German army. German military instructors taught at the War Academy of Argentina. German armaments (Krupp cannons, Mauser rifles, etc.) were imported by the Buenos Aires government. Germany and Argentina entered into a close cooperation in the development of an air force, which continues even today.
Under the presidency of Hipolito Yrigoyen (1916-1922, 1928-1930), who was largely influenced by the Saxon philosopher Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781-1832), Argentina remained neutral during World War I. Nevertheless, the British naval blockade prevented trade between Argentina and Germany. After Germany’s defeat and because of restrictions imposed on immigration to the United States, Argentina became a preferred country for Germans who wanted to escape the economic and political chaos at home. About 30,000 Germans left for Argentina during the 1920s. They settled mostly in Buenos Aires and the region of Misiones. In 1937 about 10,000 Germans lived in Misiones; by 1941 about 39,000 German-speaking settlers were living in the territory (about 20 percent of the population).
After Germany lost World War I, the German Argentine community was as polarized as the population of the Weimar Republic. The two German newspapers, the liberal Argentinisches Tageblatt (Argentine Daily News) and the conservative Deutsche La Plata Zeitung (German La Plata Newspaper), were forums for heated debates between left- and right-wing Germans.
The Socialist association Vorwarts turned even more Marxist, favoring world revolution. Long before 1933, National Socialism divided and polarized the German population of Argentina. While a large number of Germans joined the National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community), a smaller segment was rigorously excluded from this new German community. The immigration of about 30,000 to 40,000 German Jews to Argentina from 1933 to 1939 increased tensions between both camps. In relation to its overall population (13 million in 1931), Argentina accepted per capita more Jewish refugees than any other country in the world besides Palestine. Among the Jewish refugees were many intellectuals, scientists, entrepreneurs, and artists who quickly found places in Argentina’s economy and culture. Jewish emigres aligned themselves with Socialist and liberal Germans to attack the conservative and National Socialist German majority in Argentina. They supported the Argentinisches Tageblatt and created new weekly and monthly publications such as Das andere Deutschland (The Other Germany) and Die Judische Wochen- schau (The Jewish Weekly). However, the Argentine branch of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP) foreign organization possessed, with its 2,000 members, an enormous influence among the German population in the country. It dominated nearly all of the German social, cultural, and religious associations and clubs.The outbreak of World War II reduced contacts between Argentina and Germany to an absolute minimum. Buenos Aires became the hub of German espionage activities in South America. Several Germans volunteered to be spies for their former home country. Throughout the war, Argentina remained neutral. Argentina was the last country in the world that declared war against Germany on March 27, 1945, after the United States threatened Argentina’s exclusion from the United Nations. Afterward, all property of Germans and German organizations in 1945—1946 was confiscated.
While the Argentine Germans reorganized their lives after the end of the war, Argentina experienced an enormous influx of German refugees from central Europe. Despite the ban on German emigration imposed by the Allies, about 30,000 to 40,000 German refugees came to Argentina during the presidency of Juan D. Peron (1946-1955). Some of the German scientists, technicians, and armament experts were brought into the country in secret. They quickly found employment in Argentina’s armaments industry, where they developed rockets and a jet fighter. At the University of Tucuman alone about thirty German professors were hired during the 1950s. Others found employment in Mendoza, La Plata, and Buenos Aires. The German migration largely contributed to the modernization of Argentina’s economy, as well as its sciences.Post-World War II German migration changed the structure of Argentina’s German society tremendously. Among the refugees were about 50 to 100 internationally warranted war criminals such as Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, and Josef Schwammberger. They were in hiding from jurists, journalists, and secret services. Further, Argentina attracted many Germans who wanted to escape the reeducation system in occupied Germany and continued to believe in National Socialism. They founded extreme right-wing journals such as Der Weg (The Path) and La Plata Ruf (La Plata Call). In 1952 Argentina reestablished diplomatic relations with West Germany, and Peron supported the process by returning confiscated German property. Relations between both countries remained strong despite fallouts over violations of basic human rights during the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983 and especially during the Falklands War with Great Britain in 1982. On the level of cultural relations, the Institucion Cultural Argentino-Germana (German-Argentine Cultural Institution) (founded in 1922) and the Goethe Institut Buenos Aires (founded in 1966) support and further cultural exchange and mutual understanding. Today, there are about eighteen German schools in Argentina. The oldest German school is the Goethe school, which has been in existence for more than 100 years.
After immigration came to an end in the 1950s, assimilation increased. Today, there are still about 250,000 German-speaking people in Argentina.
Holger M. Meding
See also Brummer; Burmeister, Carl Hermann Conrad; Dobrizhoffer, Martin; Eichmann, Karl Adolf; Humboldt, Alexander von; Latin America, German Military Advisers in; Latin America, Nazis in; Schmidel, Ulrich
References and Further Reading
Hoffmann, Werner. “Die Deutschen in Argentinien.” Die Deutschen in Lateinamerika: Schicksal und Leistung. Ed. Hartmut Froschle. Tubingen/Basel: Erdmann, 1979, 40-145.
Lutge, Wilhelm, Werner Hoffmann, Karl Wilhelm Korner, and Karl Klingenfuβ. Deutsche in Argentinien, 1520—1980. Buenos Aires: Alemann SRL, 1981.
Meding, Holger M. Flucht vor Nurnberg? Deutsche und osterreichische Einwanderung in Argentinien, 1945-1955. Cologne: Bohlau, 1992.
Newton, Ronald C. The “Nazi Menace” in Argentina, 1931-1945. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.
Saint Sauveur-Henn, Anne. Un siecle d,emigration allemande vers l,Argentine, 1853-1945. Cologne: Bohlau, 1995.
Zago, Manrique, ed. Presencia alemana en la Argentina—Deutsche Prasenz in Argentinien. Buenos Aires: Zago, 1992.