Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Bernardo Philippi, Initiator of German Colonization in Chile

1971; Duke University Press; Volume: 51; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-51.3.478

1527-1900

George F. W. Young,

International Relations in Latin America

HE GERMAN-SPEAKING POPULATION of the south central provinces of Chile has aroused both national pride on account of its economic vigor, and concern because of its persistence as a foreign enclave. Its origin dates back to the middle decades of the nineteenth century (1849-74) when the Chilean government actively recruited some 4,ooo Germans,1 mostly village artisans and agriculturalists, to immigrate and colonize the then nearly unoccupied backwater provinces of Valdivia and Chiloe.2 That the government was attracted to the idea of German immigration, then unprecedented in Chile,3 was due mainly to the vision and perseverance of a young German merchant-marine officer, a foreigner utterly without political influence or social connections when first he came to Chile. This same man was responsible for the actual recruiting of many of the immigrants in Germany. Though he ranks with Hermann Blumenau as one of the prime movers of German colonization in South America,4 to date his work is little known outside Chile's German community.