Panama
In 1521 Charles V, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and king of Spain, granted the city charter and also assigned a coat of arms to Panama City as the first European settlement on the Pacific Ocean.
During the Habsburg era (1516—1700), Panama’s economy flourished due to the Spanish system of trade (carrera de Indias) and the famous Portobello fairs. Panama’s wealth also attracted the attention of foreign states to the isthmian region and even induced Elector Friedrich III of Brandenburg in 1688 to issue a trade and colonization license for the “Kingdom of Darien” to the Brandenburgisch-Amerikan- ische Kompagnie (Brandenburg-American Trade Company). However, the daring enterprise was never realized.The viceroyalty of Peru was supplied largely by way of Panama, and German missionaries and specialists took that route as well. The widely renowned Jacobo Wal- burger, SJ, who served as a missionary in Darien during the 1740s, stood out among those who remained in this region. A study proposing an interoceanic canal through the Isthmus of Panama, published by the Prussian scholar Alexander von Humboldt in 1811, awakened public awareness and discussions within scientific circles about the feasibility of a canal route. Even Johann Wolfgang von Goethe predicted that the project could be achieved within fifty years.
After gaining its independence from Spain, Panama in 1826 wanted to become a pais hansedtico; that is, it planned to become an American trade center, only loosely associated with Colombia and using the Hanseatic cities of the German League as models. Colombia, however, refused to give up its geographically advantageous province. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the German scholars Moritz Wagner, a geographer from Bayreuth, and Karl Theodor Sapper, a Bavarian ethnologist and geographer, explored Panama’s interior.
The German Empire, favorably viewing Panama’s independence from Colombia on November 3, 1903, promptly recognized the new republic on November 30. Germany became the model for the new Panamanian school system. Recruited in Germany, several of the teachers became school administrators, and the newly established secondary school, Es- cuela de Artes y Oficios, was profoundly influenced by Germans. The pedagogue Ricardo Neumann, director of the Insti- tuto Nacional for many years and inspector general of secondary schools, became one of the outstanding figures in Panamanian education.German and U.S. interests in Panama clashed early. When a Berlin company planned to build a narrow-gauge railroad in the Darien region in 1911 to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the U.S. government intervened and brought the construction to a halt, although the Panamanian parliament already had agreed and the first investments had already taken place. The United States did not tolerate economic undertakings of a competing power near the canal. Panama joined the United States immediately after its entry into World War I in April 1917. The United States, fearing German military air strikes, increased the defenses of the Canal Zone. German citizens in Panama were interned and sent to the United States.
The German colony in Panama recovered only slowly from the wartime repression. Only fourteen Germans lived in Panama City and Colon in 1922. At the end of 1924, forty to fifty Germans from the Rhineland, recruited by the Porras government for the purpose of agricultural development, arrived in Panama. After failing to provide sufficient settlement land near Capira, the government settled the remaining Germans in Boquete, in the climatically more advantageous Chiriquι province,
where eventually several of them became successful farmers with coffee and fruit plantations. On the other hand, the settlement of a sect of Germans and Swiss, who had withdrawn to the isolated Cotito in Chiriquι where they intended to live as vegetarians in keeping with nature, ended catastrophically.
Their refusal to obey the authorities led to a police action that resulted in the massacre of twelve individuals.German college teachers contributed considerably to the Universidad de Panama starting from its founding in 1935. Among those were scholars who had to leave Nazi Germany. In 1937 three German professors established the Centro de Investiga- ciones Sociales, Economicas y Jurιdicas de la Universidad National de Panama (Center for Social, Economic and Juridical Research of the National University of Panama). Several of the center’s scientists attained international renown; for example, Franz Borkenau, sociologist of the Frankfurt School, and Richard Behrendt, economist in the United States and director of the Institute of Sociology at the Free University of Berlin. Erich Graetz later became dean of the science faculty of the University of Panama.
Diplomatic relations between Germany and Panama were interrupted by World War II. Panama once again joined the United States a few hours after its declaration of war against Germany. Once again the U.S. administration feared a German attack on the canal, resulting, as in 1917, in the internment of German citizens in U.S. camps. Although Panama never became a direct target, German submarines sank seventy-six ships flying the Panamanian flag. Diplomatic relations, mostly without conflicts, between Germany and Panama were reestablished in 1953. In 1969 and 1977 Arnulfo Arias and General Omar Torrijos, two prominent political figures in Panama, visited the Federal Republic of Germany.
Holger M. Meding
See also Frankfurt School; Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, and the United States; Sapper Family
References and Further Reading
Cuestas, Carlos H. Cotito. Cronica de un crimen olvidado. Panama City: Carlos H. Cuestas, 1993.
Meding, Holger. Panama. Staat und Nation im Wandel (1903—1941). Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Bohlau, 2002.
Porcell, Nestor. Los docentes europeos y la formation de la Universidad de Panam4. Panama City: Universidad de Panama, 1991.