Chile

During the middle of the nineteenth cen­tury, the Chilean government made a de­liberate effort to recruit German immi­grants to settle the sparsely populated south. Those settlers, together with indi­vidual urban dwellers (mostly businesspeo­ple and professionals) who immigrated to Chile during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the descendants of both groups, constituted approximately 30,000 German-speaking residents by the mid­twentieth century.

Conquered by Spain in the sixteenth century, Chile declared its formal inde­pendence in 1818. During the colonial era, very few Germans entered. Bartholome Flores (variously called Barthel Blumlein or Bartholomaus Blu- men), a literate carpenter from Nurem­berg in Spanish service, became alderman, legal counsel, and in 1549 treasurer in Santiago. Beginning in the early seven­teenth century, German Jesuits and mem­bers of other religious orders entered the country. Prior to and shortly after Chile’s declaration of independence, a trickle of German merchants settled in the urban areas, and by 1822 the first German trad­ing company had been established in Val­paraiso. Systematic immigration by Ger­mans began around the mid-nineteenth century. Approximately 10,000 to 11,000 Germans entered Chile between 1850 and 1900. Half of those were married, and families with five or more children were not uncommon.

Looking to Europe and North Amer­ica, South Americans observed economic development based on healthy agriculture and rapid industrialization from the efforts of skilled and trained European farmers and artisans. This led the Argentine Juan Bautista Alberdi to utter his popular apho­rism “to govern is to populate.” The Chileans Benjamin Vicuna Mackenna and Vicente Perez Rosales became instrumental in promoting liberal immigration policies and colonization projects beginning in the 1840s. Earlier, Bernhard Eunom Philippi (Bernardo Philippi), while in Prussian em­ploy, collected flora and fauna, mapped Chile’s south, and participated in the Chilean expedition to win the Straits of Magellan. He gained military honors, served temporarily as governor of that re­gion, and proposed colonization of Chile’s south by Germans to the Chilean govern­ment after exploring the densely forested areas of Llanquihue. Eventually appointed to Germany as official agent for immigra­tion to Chile between 1848 and 1852, he recruited mostly from around Hesse Cas­sel, his home region. These settlers, on land purchased in and around Valdivia, were soon joined by groups from throughout Germany, arriving from Silesia, Wurttem­berg, Westphalia, Brandenburg, Saxony, Hanover, and Hamburg. German Bohemi­ans settled Nuevo Braunau.

In 1852, the Chilean Vicente Perez Rosales was sent to Germany as consul general, where he recruited additional colonists, especially among the middle class. He considered families more stable than single men and included the latter only if they were members of families. The first recruited and subsidized group consisted of 180—200 Catholic families who had agreed to pay their own way in exchange for a promise of land around Lake Llanquihue; loans and tax exemp­tions; and aid for German priests, teach­ers, and doctors to keep settlements ho­mogeneous.

A few smaller mixed groups, financed by the Chilean government, had been set­tled on the Chiloe Peninsula in 1895, but many of the Germans left by 1903 and, to­gether with additional Germans and Euro­peans from throughout South America, es­tablished Huefel-Comuy at the edge of the Frontera between 1905 and 1912. In 1924 new colonization laws were passed, and the government settled Catholic Bavarians in Penaflor and several other small settle­ments. A private group of 230 from Sieg­burg an der Lahn bought land east of Par­ral in 1961. The Colonia Dignidad contributed to economic development of the area and assisted the indigenous popu­lation with modern farming. After the ini­tial establishment of immigrant settlements in the south, the Germans and their de­scendants spread and by 1895 were found throughout Chile. After 1910 the purchase of land became more difficult.

In agriculture and trades, German immigrants and their descendants con­tributed to economic development. Ibero- Chilean preference for land in central Chile had facilitated German settlements in the south, where the landscapes resem­bled those of their homeland. In Chile as in most of South America, where huge but uncultivated landholdings and land­less peasants were the rule, the German settlers introduced the concept of family farms. Agriculture flourished in the Lake District, and by 1932 the biggest farms belonged to families with German names in Valdivia, Puerto Montt, and Puerto Varas. The immigrants had brought lim­ited financial assets but made up for that with human capital. Most of the farmers concentrated on beef cattle and dairy herds, followed later by hogs, and by 1924-1925 they produced 75 percent of Chilean butter, much meat, and enough hides to supply all of Valdivia’s tanneries (Converse 1979, 317).

For the most part, the immigrants were literate and skilled. Prior to emigra­tion, many had prepared themselves for their new lives in Chile by learning addi­tional trades. The raw materials produced by farmers as well as the forests provided for the growth of industries: leather goods, shoe factories, lumber, sawmills and paper mills, grain mills, and breweries. Candles and, after the importation of bees, honey were often produced by women immi­grants. Many of the goods had previously been imported at high prices. Finally, the raising of cattle and hogs resulted in the es­tablishment of slaughterhouses and the production of meat products such as hams and sausages for exports.

German entrepreneurs flourished in many communities, especially in the hotel and restaurant business and machine and repair shops. Many of Chile’s pharmacies and pharmaceutical businesses were run by German immigrants and their descen­dants. A long list of companies and mer­chant houses established in the late nine­teenth and early twentieth centuries by German immigrants and their descendants were later joined by German branch firms.

During the two world wars, Allied statutory or black lists interrupted German Chilean, German, and other Axis businesses by imposing trade embargoes. In response, the German Chamber of Commerce (now Camara Chileno Alemana de Comercio e Industria) was established in 1916. After its temporary demise during World War II, it received its juridical persona or legal recog­nition in 1950, once again furthering Ger­man and Chilean trade.

The establishment of schools became imperative for the German settlers, who were aware that literacy contributed to the success of such small minority groups. In the absence of sufficient Chilean schools, particularly in the isolated areas of Chile’s south and the Frontera region, the immi­grants established fifty-two schools, which

were primarily secular but included a few religious schools. Although they were fi­nanced primarily by German Chileans they were, with interruptions during the two world wars, subsidized by Germany with teachers and books.

Beginning in the early 1930s, German Chilean youth became targets of Nazi prop­aganda. With the active encouragement of teachers from Germany, most of the secular schools adopted Nazi curricula, and exist­ing youth groups were modeled after the Hitler Youth. After 1938, the Chilean gov­ernment insisted on compliance with state requirements (e.g., 85 percent of the teach­ers had to be Chilean citizens). A proposed Chilean law to establish Spanish as the only primary language, however, was defeated as being unconstitutional. In the 1970s, en­couraged by resumed bonds with Germany and aid, the schools became socially respon­sive toward indigenous cultures and the dis­advantaged. Still today, German private schools are renowned for providing an ex­cellent multilingual education.

German was spoken almost exclusively in the isolated lake communities, but in mixed communities most Germans soon became bilingual, often mixing German and Spanish.

In the south only a few German news­papers, except for some local and religious papers, succeeded between 1886 and 1928. Most news was spread by word of mouth. In urban central Chile, Valparaiso, and Santiago, the Deutsche Zeitung fuer Chile (German Newspaper for Chile) succeeded three earlier papers, including the first Ger­man paper in Valparaiso in 1870, and was published until diplomatic relations be­tween Chile and Germany were severed in 1943. In 1938, the Deutsch-Chilenische Bund (DCB) or Liga Chilena-Alemana (German Chilean Association) began pub­lication of Condor, combining its publica­tion with several existing smaller papers, in the attempt to distance the German Chilean community from National Social­ist Germany. For a while after1943, Con­dor faced difficulties, but it expanded and still publishes today as a weekly German- language paper.

Of about 20,000 to 30,000 German­speaking people living in Chile in the mid- 1930s, approximately 60 percent were Protestant and 40 percent were Catholic. In part because of resistance by German bishops, Chile’s demand for only Catholic immigrants soon changed. Although Chile permitted religious freedom, Protestant churches could not build towers or install bells. Catholic immigrants were served by priests and members of religious orders, in­cluding many German-speaking monks.

American aid helped build the first German Protestant church in Osorno in 1863. By the 1930s, local congregations had established about fifteen German Protestant congregations. Because of Ger­man subsidies and pastors sent by Ger­many, those Protestant congregations fell under the influence of the Foreign Office for Church Affairs of the Reich during the 1930s. After 1960 and the establishment of the Chilean Synod, the Protestants once again cooperated with the Protestant Church in Germany, this time in an ecu­menical movement that emphasized social responsibility. Only one congregation in the south temporarily broke away in protest against such liberal changes. On the other hand, German Catholics were con­sidered part of the Chilean Roman Catholic Church and participated in its ac­tivities from the time of their arrival in Chile. Communities established specific associations to support schools, churches, and hospitals. German freemasons helped establish the German Hospital in Val­paraiso in 1877, and Hamburg merchants founded a hospital in Concepcion in 1897. In 1907 Puerto Varas established a hospital with German doctors and Mallinckrodt nuns and nurses. The large, modern Ger­man Hospital Aleman in Santiago opened in 1917, followed by additional hospitals throughout Chile, including in Colonia Dignidad. The statutes of the hospitals re­quired that members of all confessions, na­tionalities, and both genders be served. Self-help organizations assisted widows, or­phans, and stranded seamen and estab­lished voluntary insurance funds. Germans and other European immigrants organized voluntary fire departments, which had been almost unknown in South America.

Purely social, cultural, and recreational organizations were abundant. Almost all communities, rural and urban, had a local German club (Deutscher Verein), which provided gemutliche, or congenial ambi­ence for social and cultural events. Some of the elegant urban clubs had libraries and dining facilities for business meetings as well as social or official meetings with Chileans. Women’s clubs were involved in cultural and charitable activities, including the support of nursing homes. Singing clubs and choral and instrumental groups were common in most communities. Ath­letic and sports clubs, including gymnas­tics, soccer, rowing, hiking, bowling, and marksmanship, abounded.

German Chilean graduates of Chilean universities in Santiago, Valparaiso, and Concepcion founded fraternities to help maintain the German language. In the late 1930s, the members of the oldest and probably the most liberal pro-German but anti-Nazi fraternity, the Burschenschaft Araucania, became instrumental in pre­venting the worst excesses of Nazi influ­ence and preserving traditional German Chilean institutions. After World War II, the fraternities concentrated on the young and Chile’s social problems.

The Liga Chilena Alemana (German Chilean Association) had been created as an umbrella organization in 1916 in re­sponse to Allied propaganda and blacklists, to protect German Chilean institutions, es­pecially the schools, to lobby for Chilean neutrality, and to protect the interests of German citizens. Nazi infiltration and ide­ology held the Liga and many of its mem­ber associations captive between the early 1930s and May 1938. Then, prudent Ger­man Chileans excluded German citizens and extricated the Liga, schools, organiza­tions, and especially youth groups from Nazi control. After Chile’s diplomatic break with Germany in 1943, the Spanish language was adopted for Liga protocols, and the bylaws were changed to conform to Chilean law. Nowadays, Liga still sup­ports the German schools and promotes German Chilean cultural institutions and programs in an effort to preserve the posi­tive vestiges of German culture.

Although German immigrants were not required to serve in the military, some German colonists and descendants did serve in the militia. Mostly they provided medical help in the Valparaiso German

Hospital during the 1891 Civil War. In that war, the German captain Emil Korner, hired in 1885 by the Chilean government to train the Chilean military, led troops of the winning Congressionalists, the faction German Chileans had not favored. He was promoted to general chief of staff and re­turned to Germany in 1910. During both world wars, some young German Chileans joined German citizens who left to serve in the German military, although it was illegal for the Chilean-born to do so.

Chile’s tolerance not only promised but facilitated naturalization, while permit­ting dual citizenship. Naturalized German Chileans entered the civil service as munic­ipal administrators (i.e., Puerto Montt and La Union), educators (e.g., Valdivia), and mining engineers. Before the turn of the century, German Chileans were elected as mayors (i.e., Valparaiso and Osorno), al­dermen (twelve of fifteen in Puerto Montt, four of ten in Osorno), and councilmen (Valparaiso and La Serena). By 1890, sev­eral sons of immigrants held seats in the Chilean congress. Although he was not a citizen, Bernhard Philippi was appointed governor of Magellan. After 1898, a few noncitizens were permitted to enter the civil service and hold municipal offices in special cases.

Christel Converse

See also German Migration to Latin

America (1918-1933); German-Speaking Migration to the Americas; Philippi, Bernhard Eunom; Printing and Publishing

References and Further Reading

Blancpain, Jean-Pierre. Les Allemands au Chili: 1816-1945. Cologne: Bohlau Verlag, 1974.

Converse, Christel. “Die Deutschen in Chile.” In Die Deutschen in Lateinamerika. Ed. Hartmut Froschle. Tubingen: Erdmann Verlag, 1979, 301-372.

------. “Culture and Nationalism among the German-Chileans in the 1930s.” MACLAS: Latin American Essays, no. 4 (April 1990): 117-124.

Converse, Christel Krause. “The German Immigrants and Their Descendants in Nineteenth-Century South America.” MA thesis, DePaul University, 1974.

------. “The Rise and Fall of Nazi Influence among the German-Chileans.” PhD diss., Georgetown University, 1990.

Tenenbaum, Barbara, ed. Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, vol. 1, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1996.

Young, George F W. Germans in Chile: Immigration and Colonization, 1849-1914. New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1974.