At the time of the first German settlements in 1824-25, Brazil was an Empire, divided into Provinces, administered by their presidents, who were assigned by an act of the Emperor. One of these provinces was the Province of Rio Grande do Sul. The western borders of such province were rather volatile during that period and the years to come. This would affect directly some German immigrants who went to settle in those unpopulated areas.
Rio de Janeiro is no doubt the best known of the Brazilian states, because of its capital also called Rio de Janeiro. The city of Petrópolis ("The Imperial City") is located in the mountains, one hour and half by car from Rio de Janeiro. It was home to the Emperor Dom Pedro II in 1889, when Brazil was declared a Republic. The city of Rio de Janeiro was capital of Brazil until 1961. The state is known for its beautiful beaches.
The state of São Paulo is southwest of Rio de Janeiro. The state has a coastline and a port called Santos. The city of São Paulo is one of the chief cities of the entire country and of the world (more than 12 million inhabitants in the Metropolitan Area). It is Brazil's financial heart nowadays. The section of São Paulo called Santo Amaro has many German descendants.
The state of Paraná is immediately south of São Paulo, with a smaller coastline and the ports of Paranaguá and Antonina. The state capital is Curitiba, located 100 km from the coast. It is known for its cleanness and higher standards of living, in terms of ecology. The city of Ponta Grossa is slightly to the northwest, 80 km from Curitiba. Both Curitiba and Ponta Grossa hold a lot of German descendants, together with Italians, Poles and Ukrainians.
The next state to the south is the short, wide state of Santa Catarina which has its coastal capital at Florianópolis, located on the beautiful Santa Catarina island. Florianopolis is a Portuguese colony. The German settlements occurred to the northwest of the state capital. Cities like Joinville, Blumenau, Jaraguá do Sul, São Bento, Itajaí and smaller ones surrounding them have a great number of German descendants. Blumenau has a huge Oktober Fest that attracts over a million Brazilians.
The southernmost state of Brazil is Rio Grande do Sul immediately south of Santa Catarina, bordered in the west by Argentina and south by Uruguay. The Sinos River Valley cities are the cradle of the German immigration to Brazil: São Leopoldo, Novo Hamburgo, Taquara, Dois Irmãos, Estancia Velha, Ivoti and many others.
These are the main regions of German settlement in Brazil.
During the 1820s, the official religion and the only acceptable one under the Imperial Constitution was the Roman Catholic Church. As many of the German settlers belonged to Protestant churches, this posed a problem in the provinces, considering that the immigrants had been promised religious freedom.
Dioceses and Archdioceses:
Some Brazilian states received higher inflows of Germans than others. Such was the case in Rio Grande do Sul, where the first "wave" of immigrants was settled in the 1820s. In 1827, a group of Germans migrated to Brazil from the region of Trier. This was the first official German migration to Brazil. Part of this group (mainly Catholic married men) came to the farm called "Fazenda Guarei," which is today a small town in the state of São Paulo called Guarei. These Germans are considered the founders of Guarei.
A second "wave" went to Santa Catarina in the 1850s, but also to Rio de Janeiro, in smaller number, mainly to a city called Petropolis, where the Emperor Dom Pedro II's summer house (nowadays the Imperial Museum) was located. Other German immigration waves occurred in the 1890s, as well as after the First and Second World War. The latter emigres were not necessarily only refugees, but also people who were tired of the war. They had different destinations: to the states of Sao Paulo, to Paraná, and to the other Brazilian states.
In the mid-to-late-19th century, many German-Russians migrated to the state of Paraná, more specifically, to near Ponta Grossa city, in Campos Gerais region (a savannah). After a failure in wheat cultivation, many re-emigrated to Argentina or the USA.
On August 12, 1950, five hundred Donauschwaben families were invited to immigrate to the region of Entre Rios (Portuguese for between the rivers) in the highlands (1200 meters altitude) of the state of Paraná. The first settlers arrived at the port of Santos, Brazil in June of 1951, settling in Entre Rios with the intent of growing wheat. The area was not prepared for cultivation, there were no buildings at all, nor were settlers exactly welcomed. Rattlesnakes roamed the country. Every couple was assigned 15 hectares of land, with an additional 8 for each son or 4 for each daughter, and a house of either 72 or 42 square meters depending on family size. House and land were assigned on a loan basis; repayment to occur in about ten years time.
The first church was erected in 1957-8. The chief town is Vitoria, others in order of their founding are Jordaozinho, Cochoeire, Socorro and Samambaia. The towns were named for the previous owners of the land, which the settlers were helped to purchase by the Swiss charitable organization Europahilfe.
During the 1960's, many of the settlers returned to Germany or Austria. Forty-two families left in 1963 alone. As of 1992, only about 5% of the original houses still remained, the rest having been replaced by more permanent structures. About 2,000 of the settlers and their descendants still make their homes here, continuing to speak the donauschwäbische dialect.
Paraná and Sao Paulo have also seen a large number of German immigrants. Through the years, the descendants of these immigrants have spread out to other Brazilian regions, yet the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná are known for their concentrations of German descendants, while in other states there are rather "pockets" of them in cities such as Sao Paulo (capital of Sao Paulo state) and Petrópolis (Rio de Janeiro state).
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