German Migration to Brazil
Introduction
Literature during the 19th century played a role that today is performed by the internet, as well as media itself or other streaming services. In a time where literacy was generally increasing, many books, mainly those related to trips and adventures, caught the attention of the average european workman through the idealization of a world overseas, especially on the region of the tropics, on the distant south-american lands. One would call it Paradise, the others chose to name it Eldorado. Hyperbolic names destined for the same phenomenon, officially baptized as Brazil.
Not by accident, many texts from Germany, on the other side of the map, about its own perspective, began to take place on newspapers and literature circles. “Jedem Sein Paradies” (a paradise for each one) and “Die Auswander nach Brasilien” (the immigrants to Brazil), written by Otto Grellert and Amalia Schoppe respectively, pictured with pure verity the immigrant’s expectations before leaving their homes to chace the cure to their “Brazilian Fever”. The discovery that the promised land, the coveted Eden, was as unholy as their homeland itself. But between the (almost) fictional tales about the emigration, one by Peter Rotmann is inevitably highlighted.
The ending of the story of the couple is uncertain, but it’s a delightful example of the common feelings held by the emigrants, as well as their hope and agony directed to the land “in which one does not have to work” thanks to its fertility.
What differentiates this fiction, however, can be found between the lines: the poem was not originally written in Hochdeutsch, the standard language. Rottmann’s steady fountain pen immortalized in the lines of the poem Der Abschied (The Goodbye) from the anthology “Hunsrückischer Mundart”, the dialect spoken on the region of Hunsruck, the hunsruckisch.
The region, which holds a complicated name, but a sonorous pronunciation, is dear to most german descendents in Brazil for it was the homeland to their ancestor for many year, and also the land they ended up leaving behind in the middle of the 19th century.
A query, however, still hovers above this area of uneven relief in the german southwest: What happened so that thousands of workers, craftsmen and entire families, generally called “migrants”, abandoned their mother land and went after a terrestrial paradise hidden under the tropics in the so called Brazil? On the other side, the migrants ask themselves, what happened to those who stayed?
Inspired by these questions, while making good use of the scholarship provided to me by the Blickwechsel conquest, and with the help of my host father, I decided to go on an adventure through the small villages of the region to find those ancestors — the descendents of Liesekett — which were left on this side of the map after the painful Goodbye.
The Beginning
Since I was younger, a bit of Germany has always followed me. It was right there on my surname, of which the pronunciation was considered complicated by all portuguese speakers: Reitz. I learned about the origins of my family and about that curious last name through the stories my dad used to tell and the books by the priest Paulino Reitz about the german colonization on the south of Brazil (Alto Biguaçu e Frutos da Imigração). Just like my surname, I have always been chased by the doubt of what was happening overseas, on the land which was to me only a fable to that point.
We had the sources. We knew, thanks to the internet, the location of the small village from which my family had come. — Which made me theorize about it even more. Hirschfeld was the name of the town. I just had to get there.
In 2019, I was gifted the Blickwechsel scholarship, offered by the Goethe institute and YFU. Along with the chance of integrating with the german culture, I found the opportunity to dig deep into my roots.
It was decided between me and my host family: During fall break, my host father, Klaus, and I would go from our village in Lower Saxony to the countryside of Rhineland-Palatinate. Klaus appear to be interested for that story that was about to be clarified for one particular reason: He went on a similar trip to Poland year ago to look for clues about his ancestors.
From my sources, I brought copies categorically organized of the book Frutos da Imigração, since the original was resting on my shelf at home, yellowish and brittle by the hands of time. The copies were placed on my briefcase in order of relevance, there were our map, the time line, or maybe a mixture between the two.
I gathered the documents, we took a train in Luneburg and glided through the irregular and nearly alive ground of Hunsruck, surrounded by wineries, which by that time I had only seen on the pictures of Edgar Reitz. After almost two centuries since their diaspora, it came to my mind that, due to some visual preservation, my great-grandfather Johann Reitz would recognize the land he left behind along with his wife and his seven children, besides the paved autobahns going up the hills and the giant windmills stuck in the relief.
Such relief, not by chance, named the entire mountain region. Hoher Rücken, which in German means something like high coasts in reference to its hills, throughout the years, became the “exotic and delightful name Hunsrück” to the inhabitants, in the words of Raulino Reitz. It is outlined by the rivers Rhine to the east, Nahe in the south, Saar to the west, and the Moselle, meandering like an artery, the north.
For a long time the region found itself in a litigious ping-pong. Until the year 1871, when united under Bismarck’s iron fist, Germany was an abstract concept. a colorful puzzle misplaced by a supposed linguistic unit, but without political homogeneity, capital or even a common currency. A heap of kingdoms that could barely agree to a common administration. The figure of the german citizen itself was a character that encompassed, as until today, a palette of customs, dialects and varied origins.
The area Hunsrück started to be inhabited urbanly since the ancient history, during the rise of the Roman Empire. In the Middle Age, it immersed itself under the countless kingdoms, episcopates, duchies and counties — such as the Archbishopric of Tevere and the Palatinate County — almost archipelagos of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1792, Napoleon’s army violently shakes the european geography and takes up a good portion of the german territory, pushing its border to the Rhine. At that time thousands of Germans, mainly Rhinelanders, were forced to become turncoats and passed on to the French overnight, composing the Great Napoleonic Nation.
The passage of the French General is remembered as a period of extreme disgust for in history. With the euphemism of Rheinbund (Confederation of the Rhine) the lands to the left of the river was actually a French satellite state. Not only did thousands of Rhinelanders had to join the Napoleonic armies in their belligerence, french became the official and administrative language and taxes should be paid to them. In 1813 the Nationalist attacks by the Liberation War gained strength and started claiming those ancient lands — giving birth to the proto-nationalist motto “Der Rhein, Deutschlands Strom, aber nicht Deutschlands Grenze ”(The Rhine, a German river, but not a German border). Only in 1815 the land on the left bank of the river was finally regained, being adopted by Prussia and baptized as the Province of Rhine or the Rhinelander Prussia.
However,The scenario changed little after Napoleon took French leave. Lack of food, looting, widespread poverty, trails of destruction, piles of corpses and the spread of diseases, especially typhus, were still protagonists in the following years. It is in this period that emigration begins to be seen as a way out of all the problems of the old homeland.
One of the most likely reasons for the immigration fever in the second half of the century was a measure introduced almost a hundred years earlier, in 1717: the birth of public education.
With the unprecedented school mandatory instituted by Frederico Guilherme I of Prussia, the drop in illiteracy became noticeable in Hunsrück, being a portion of it Prussian, it was no different. If today one can obtain informations from abroad by internet and television, at that time knowledge from overseas was acquired in reading circles — present in the cities and larger villages — where adventure and travel books were shared. The impact of these books was so massive that the cameraman Edgar Reitz, whose work Die andere Heimat revolves precisely around this theme, dared to declare that whoever knew how to read, wanted to migrate. It is not by chance that many emigrants sold everything they had, idealizing Brazil as the earthly paradise, without imagining the journey they would face to reach the sad tropics. I lay down the copies of the sheets I brought with me on the table of our holiday apartment, where Klaus and I would settle for the next few days. Among the pages, there were also excerpts that would be useful for research, family trees and Raulino Reitz’s reports. The next day we would go to Hirschfeld early.
The village
When I was little I had the habit to idealize that place, which I could barely pronounce the name of and could only explore through a computer screen. Other than the virtual location, little was known. But that didn’t matter a lot to me, the village of Hirschfeld (Morro do Cervo) with its little over 250 inhabitants was my family’s birthplace and just for that I imediatly idealized it.
The records show that since 1675 its presence in the region has been documented. A few generations passed before Johann Reitz decided to abandon the land and migrate with his family to Brazil. He sold his property and went to Dunkirk in France to board a ship chartered by the Delrue Immigration House. A few years later, one of his brothers, Peter Reitz, took the same course and launched himself into the sea. The others, according to the written tradition, stayed in their homeland.
One of the points that perhaps connected these two links of the family, those that went and those that stayed was, besides the name, religion: in a Protestant majority place, my family was Catholic. It was decided that we would first check out at the church. (On the way between our accommodation and the destination I couldn’t help noticing many surnames that are very common in Santa Catarina on advertising boards, such as Becker, Müller, Petry, Kistner, Koch, etc…)
Not much information in the Catholic Church: since it was a small village, there wasn’t a single a priest dwelling there. We went to the centennial Protestant Church, unfortunately also closed.
Klaus, remembering his search for his family in Poland, suggested something to me: to ask the dead. He told me that in his experience the closest to a relative that he could find was a broken headstone in the cemetery with the three letters from the middle of his surname.
In the list of those killed in the wars there was no mention of the name Reitz, nor among the headstones. I remembered that in Raulino Reitz’s visit there wasn’t anyone with the surname in the surrounding and that the closest parentage he could find was with the Müllers. Indeed it was written on a tombstone with flowers: Leo Müller. We just had to find out if their descendants still lived in the village.
For many years Klaus had worked as a police investigator, so he decided to use his detective knowledge and unravel that mystery. Interviewing residents, who kept the melodic accent in the region, we found out that the one we were looking for still lived in the village. We took the address and went there.
The encounter
We knocked on the door with apparent nervousness. I had for a long time prepared for that moment, and I was about to experience it. The door began to open.
An old man greeted us. We introduced ourselves and said that we were looking for the Müllers. He widely opened his eyes and asked us to wait. Shortly after we were inside. He took us to the kitchen, where his wife and two granddaughters were. “The young man came from Brazil looking for relatives ” he introduced, “ he has the name Reitz too ”. The Lady opened a smile and we sat together in the living room.
In 1846, on a cinematic journey, Johann Reitz decided yo emigrate to Brazil with his wife and seven children. He probably let himself be seduced by the utopian description of the subtropical lands and ended up selling his 12 hectares property (bigger than the average properties of the simple villagers) to the second older brother, and went first to Cologne and, finally, to Dunkirk, in France. The trip organized by Delrue House e Co.was actually a struggle- nine months at sea, aboard the Eridano ship, until finally reaching Rio de Janeiro. Not only was the duration remarkable, but the comfort and sanitary conditions were also unhealthy. Many immigrants could not complete the trip due to numerous diseases on board and had to be buried at sea. Legend has it that one of the Reitz couple’s daughters was buried in the Atlantic.
When anchoring in Brazil, the situation barely improved. The immigrants were abandoned to their own luck, without knowing the local language or where they should go. Living in shacks at the beach, they became beggers for a few months until finally, with the help of a German who already lived in Brazil, they managed to contact Emperor Dom Pedro II. With the situation nearing its end, they sailed to the city of Desterro, on the island of Santa Catarina, and finally settled down, in 1847, in their new homeland: a colony in the interior of São Pedro de Alcântara. In Hirschfeld, however, life remained the same. Johann Jakob had bought the land from his brother and, as tradition dictates, left it always to the firstborn. Emgrand Ströher had inherited from Leo Müller, whose ancestry went all the way to Margarethe Reitz, the granddaughter of Johann Jakob. A complex family web, which preserved a relationship still alive between the two of us. To my surprise, she had a copy of the same work that fascinated me when I was younger, Frutos de Imigração, a religious guide to the history of our family. More than that, the document, yellowed by time, had on the first page a autograph and dedication from the “prophet” himself, Father Raulino Reitz, to Leo Müller. Leo Müller, Herzliche Grüsse von P. Raulino Reitz, (Leo Müller, Greeting from F. Raulino Reitz). I carefully traced my ancestry in the fragile book from 1963 and looked for those names that were common between us in some point in the past. Emgrand glided through the book and fingered a photo. “Here it’s me during Father Reitz’s first visit ”he spoke with his kind Hunsrik accent about a photo from 1956. He confessed, however, that he never managed to read the book, apart from the introduction written in German, and the genealogical records, which were a compilation of names.
I mentioned that a month earlier it was celebrated the centenary of Raulino Reitz and that his native land, Antonio Carlos, had raised a simple statue in his honor. From that point we stopped talking about history and we began to discuss about how the family was doing since the secular separation. There was something symbolic about it, a distant contact was finally reestablished, but it behaved like a relationship between two people that know each other but haven’t met in a long time. They showed us family photos, their children, their grandchildren. They told us about their connection with Brazil and their trip to the yellow-green land. We promise to return for a last visit the following night, in which I met the son of the Ströher couple, who coincidentally was going to travel to Brazil at the end of the month with his musical group Hunsrücker Bloosmusik.
During our official Goodbye I promised them a gift for my next visit: translating that book, which had been sleeping on the shelf for years, to German, so that they could finally read and appreciate it.
There is a tenuous line that joins us with the past. Although thin, without this line we would be just dust. It was never an exaggeration to say that we are inevitably our History, and forgetting it means losing a part of who we are. I must first say thank you to my family for always turning my head to the past and making me look at it fondly. Secondly, to my host family for participating so actively in making my dream come true. Also, to the Ströher for cultivating their ties with the past and the distant kinship with affection. To he Goethe Institut and Blickwechsel for providing a very symbolic achievement in my life and in those of many other young people. To Professor Elaine for helping me since that research was just a dream. Finally, to Father Raulino Reitz, to whom I owe the sacred preservation of a crystallized past. Although the name Reitz has dissolved over the years in the small village of Hirschfeld, there is a symbology around it that still roams the hills of Hunsrück and carries the vital engine of history. As long as it exists, that name will continue, here and there, immortal.
Thanks to my friend Elisa Colombo for the translation