Von-Der-Heydt’sches Reskript (Heydt Edict)

After the ban on the importation of slaves in 1850, the parceria system was to supply Brazil’s coffee plantations with European labor. It was a combination of promotion for immigration with contractual conditions of employment.

The owners of coffee plantations, or fazendeiros, signed contracts with workers recruited in Europe that assured financing of their passage to the harbor of Santos and provisions until the first harvest. After their arrival the immigrants thus recruited worked under a sharecropping arrangement. The colonists had to give part of the value of their crop (often half) to the fazendeiro, until they had paid back their debts, plus interest. This sharecrop system, the parceria, did not represent free wage labor but instead was an attempt to employ labor in an indentured working relationship designed to create indebtedness. This questionable type of colonization and reports about the new settlers’ helplessness against the all-powerful fazen- deiros, who dominated and manipulated both state and law to their advantage, provided the background for German restrictions on emigration to Brazil.

As news of the mistreatment of the German colonists in Brazil accumulated, they were debated in the Prussian parliament. In 1859 Robert Ave-Lallemant, a physician from Lubeck, returning from Brazil, reported about the horrible conditions of the German colonists at the Mu- cury River in Minas Gerais, who had been deprived of their rights and were exploited by lack of sufficient nourishment and medical care as well as rising indebtedness. Ave-Lallemant spoke of “human butchery” and labeled any further immigration to Brazil as “unsafe and dangerous.” Prussian authorities reacted immediately. On November 3, 1859, an edict was issued that revoked all concessions permitting recruitment granted previously and forbade all further recruitment for emigration to Brazil.

Baron August von der Heydt was Prussian minister for trade and industry. Because emigration was handled by his department, the edict soon became known as the von-der-Heydt'sches Rescript (Heydt edict).

After the establishment of the German Reich (1871), the edict became a national guideline that was not changed even after the conditions of German settlers in Brazil improved. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck was a firm opponent of emigration and when petitioned to revoke the edict answered sharply: “A German who leaves his fatherland behind like an old coat, is not a German in my eyes and I lose interest in him as a compatriot” (Sudhaus 1940, 159). The edict was finally revoked in 1895 for the three southern states (Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Parana), but not for the rest of Brazil. It severely curtailed recruiters’ opportunities throughout Germany, while Brazil’s image suffered considerable damage with the consequence that German Brazilian relations cooled off. While German immigration into Brazil continued and even increased after the edict was issued, it decreased in relation to immigration from other nations. Thereafter, Brazilian recruiters preferred to seek out potential immigrants in other European regions; for example, in northern Italy or the Mediterranean areas of Austria.

Holger M. Meding

See also Ave-Lallemant, Robert Christian Berthold; Brazil

References and Further Reading

Bendocchi Alves, Debora. Das Brasilienbild der deutschen Auswanderungswerbung im 19. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Berlin, 2000.

Brunn, Gerhard. Deutschland und Brasilien (1889-1914). Cologne, Vienna: Bohlau, 1971.

Sudhaus, Fritz. Deutschland und die Auswanderung nach Brasilien im 19. Jahrhundert. Hamburg: Hans Christian Verlag, 1940.

Waibel, Leo Heinrich b. February 22, 1888; Kutzbrunn, Baden d. September 4, 1951; Heidelberg, Baden-Wurttemberg

German geographer who was exiled to the United States in 1939 and engaged in geographical and economic investigations of South America. He influenced regional economic planning in Brazil.

Waibel first studied zoology and botany at the University of Halle an der Saale, and he then switched subjects and trained as a geographer with Albrecht Penck in Berlin as well as at Alfred Hettner in Heidelberg. At first Waibel appeared to be developing into a specialist on Africa. Immediately after receiving his doctorate in 1911, he had the opportunity to accompany his fellow Hett- ner student, Franz Thorbecke, professor of geography at the University of Cologne, on an expedition to Cameroon. In 1913 he toured southwest Africa together with Fritz Jaeger, another Hettner student. They were surprised there by the outbreak of World War I and were held in custody until 1919. However, they were not greatly hindered in conducting their research expeditions. In 1920 Waibel completed his second dissertation (Habilitation) on “Winterregen in Sudwestafrika” (Winter Rains in Southwest Africa). After a brief stint as an assistant to Albrecht Penck in Berlin, he was appointed chair of the Geography Department at the University of Kiel in 1922. He remained there until 1929. Waibel then accepted the chairmanship of the Geography Department at the University of Bonn. Because he did not wish to separate from his Jewish wife, he was forced into compulsory retirement in 1937 and left Germany for the United States two years later. He worked until 1945 (as well as in 1950 and 1951) at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. In 1946 he was commissioned by the Conselho Nacional de Geografia in Rio de Janeiro for five years of research projects in agricultural colonization and developmental opportunities in Brazil.

Waibel developed the important concept of Wirtschaftsformation (economic formation) in the course of his analysis of observations made on a trip to Mexico in 1925 and 1926 (Die Sierra Madre de Chiapas, 1927). As an analogy to the concept of Vegetationsformation (formation of vegetation), which he used earlier, Waibel was able to demonstrate the connection between the physiognomic and functional factors of the economic region.

With the

example of the Sierra Madre of Chiapas he showed how and why, in terms of space, the pasture farming of the Creoles, the peasant farming mountain settlements of the Indians, and the modern plantation economy were distinctly different. The terminology he introduced achieved recognition and is still widely used in agricultural geography, to which he made a significant contribution with his work Probleme der Landwirtschaftsgeographie (Problems of Agricultural Geography, 1933). Waibel’s focus on regional spaces influenced the agricultural and economic policies of the Brazilian government. During the 1930s, he developed guidelines for Brazil’s future regional planning that had a lasting effect on Brazil’s economic development. His proposals resulted in basic changes in the economic methods and distribution of the country’s population, based on a new appraisal of the agricultural potential of the campos (fields) and the resulting conception for the layout of colonization areas.

Ute Wardenga

Von-Der-Heydt’sches Reskript (Heydt Edict)

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