PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

German emigrants became the focus of attention for German proponents of colonialism in the nineteenth century. German emigrants in southern Brazil especially were supposed to stimulate German trade as well as secure German prestige and influence. After World War I, German colonial discourses about Brazil continued under different circumstances and in a slightly new constellation of actors. Private societies, ecclesiastical institutions and scientific actors continued to preserve Deutschtum in Brazil, but instead of constructing the Germans in Brazil as civilizing pioneers, as they did before 1918, they co-opted them into a wider conception of the German Volksgemeinschaft that was constructed as a community of victims. The loss of the war led to this discourse, which covered not only Brazil, but also other regions in the world with German-speaking communities, and above all eastern Europe. The image of the misjudged German fitted well to the Brazilian context, where German-speaking persons were nationalized and in some cases persecuted during the war. However, the immigrants not only adopted these ideas but also criticized and changed them by elaborating new German-Brazilian identities.