A Lost Homeland, a Reinvented Homeland: Diaspora and the ‘Culture of Memory’ in the Colony of Danube Swabians of Entre Rios by
Méri Frotscher, Marcos Nestor and Beatriz Anselmo Olinto, 14 August 2015
III. The Old and the New Homeland in Commemorative Narratives
A moment of major investment in the construction of collective memory in Entre Rios was the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the establishment of the colony in 1971. During that year, as the historian Marcos Nestor Stein has indicated, the local elites organized the publication of a book, created a local history museum, and inaugurated a monument. All these genres of the ‘culture of memory’ represent commemorative narratives of setting up a new homeland in Brazil. They also represent an attempt to impose an imaginary coherence on the experience of dispersal and fragmentation; a characteristic, according to Stuart Hall, of all forced diasporas.47 The
textual, visual and museographic narratives sought to draw a link between the colonization of south-eastern Europe and the colonization of Entre Rios. The Danube Swabians were represented as modern farmers who contributed to the progress of Brazil and, at the same time, were able to maintain their cultural identity by preserving language, customs and traditions. According to these narratives, Flucht und Vertreibung did not rupture a trait characteristic of Danube Swabians, namely, dedication to colonizing work
and the ability to transform spaces in large agricultural areas.
This is the keynote of various dedications contained at the beginning of the commemorative book, Suábios no Paraná (Swabians in Paraná). The Secretary of State in Baden-Württemberg for Persecuted Refugees and War Wounded writes, for example: ‘Like their ancestors after the wars against the Turks, these settlers also had to start again and build a new homeland from nothing’.48 During
a meeting for Danube Swabians ( Heimattreffen ) in 1954, the state of Baden-Württemberg had assumed the ‘sponsorship’ ( Patenschaft ) of the Danube-Swabian refugees who had been driven there at the end of the Second World War. Ten years later, the city of
Sindelfingen became godmother-city of the Danube Swabians who came from Yugoslavia.49 In
the previously mentioned message from the Secretary of State in Baden-Württemberg, the Haus der Donauschwaben in Sindelfingen is described as the ‘cultural centre and spiritual homeland for all of the Danube Swabians around the world’.50
Another dedication in the book, from the mayor of Sindelfingen, refers to Germany as the ‘Motherland’ of the Danube Swabians of Entre Rios.51 A
few years before the festivities, the Agrária cooperative had also approached the authorities of the German Federal Republic in order to obtain funds from its programme aimed at helping development in Third World countries ( Entwicklungshilfe ). Between 1967 and 1968 the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) donated significant amounts of chemical fertilizers and agricultural machinery, and also financial assistance for the construction of a secondary school ( Gymnasium ).
On a temporary basis, a German teacher was also provided for the school, and teaching assistants for the kindergarten.52 Through
its policy of Entwicklungshilfe, the BRD was hoping for increasing demand for German industrial products in the developing countries that they subsidized.
While representatives of the German government described their country as the ‘Motherland’ of the Danube Swabians, the Austrian consul referred to his country as ‘Mater Austriae’, or the ‘ancient homeland’ of the Danube Swabians.53 Symbolically,
in 1969 the recently founded school in Entre Rios was named after the Empress Leopoldina, wife of the Emperor of Brazil in the nineteenth century and originally from the House of Habsburg in Vienna. The implication was that the Empress was an important German-Brazilian personality.54 Teachers
and teaching material were sent from Austria to the school. These connections with official bodies and non-governmental organizations in German-speaking countries allowed the reconstruction of cultural identity and the recreation of a new homeland in Brazil.
The choice of a German agronomist to write the commemorative book demonstrates the focus on agricultural development that the cooperative wanted to present. Between the late 1960s and early 1970s Albert Elfes had written many agro-economic and social studies in the state of Paraná with the support of the National Institute of Agrarian Development of Brazil.55 The
fact that the book was addressed to the Brazilian public meant that Elfes felt that he had to ask and answer the question ‘Who are the Danube Swabians?’—the subtitle to the introduction of the book—for the benefit of Brazilian readers, since the majority of Brazilians knew nothing of this self-identification, and identified the Danube Swabians as Germans.56 In
Brazil, this denomination would serve not only to differentiate the individual from Brazilian nationals, but also from other German immigrants and their descendants.
Although Elfes identified a cultural difference between Danube Swabians and Brazilians, he also explained the formation of internal divisions among the former. When discussing the cultural situation in Entre Rios, Elfes distinguished three groups, based not only on age but also on ‘the effect of external influences that they have suffered’.57 According
to Elfes, for the first generation, formed by ‘those who fled the homeland as adults’, Brazil had become a ‘hospitable country of asylum’ but never a ‘second homeland’. The second generation, consisting of those who spent their childhood and adolescence in Austria, were ‘more punished’ on account of the war and its effects.58 They
would retain ‘nothing more than vague imaginings, except through stories and literature’ of the ‘old homeland’. It was only the third generation, formed by those who were born in Brazil, for whom ‘Entre Rios, Guarapuava, Paraná’ would be ‘their homeland’.59
During the celebrations for the colony’s twentieth anniversary in 1971, the construction of a ‘new homeland’ in Brazil was also represented at a local historical museum, housed next to the headquarters of the Agrária cooperative. The idea of creating a museum in Entre Rios emerged during the participation of the President of the Agrária cooperative,
Mattias Leh, at a meeting of representative bodies of the Danube Swabians in Sindelfingen,60 where
the site of the Haus der Donauschwaben had been founded a year earlier.61 The
fact that a museum had been founded and that colonists had donated objects from the ‘old homeland’ shows a process of adaptation to their new local environment. In the course of this adaptation, a ‘fading away of the old homeland’ took place.62 The
very name given to the museum in German ( Heimatmuseum ) captures that fading and the multiple valences of the term Heimat . Unlike Heimat museums
in Germany, where the word Heimat refers only to the locality, in Entre Rios the word Heimat also referred to the ‘old homeland’ in Europe. Inside the museum an exhibition of photos, costumes and equipment used in agriculture at the beginning of colonization
was displayed. A panel featured photographs of ‘houses in the old homeland’ and a living room was set up designed to restore ‘the environment of the old homeland’.63 One
of the first panels presented a map with the location of the areas of origin of the Danube Swabians in south-eastern Europe. Even today, on the external wall of the former museum, there is a map with the bilingual title ‘Old Homeland’, which shows the Danube River and the five inhabited regions (Slavonia, Batschka, Sirmium, Banat [Romania] and Banat [Yugoslavia]).64 These
maps show the role of images and representations in the construction of a territory imagined as the ‘old homeland’.65
The ‘Monument to the Settlers’, a cube of granite, is located in front of the administrative office of the Agrária cooperative.66 Using
bilingual texts and rudimentary drawings, the monument represents the expulsion from the old homeland and the construction of a prosperous new homeland in Brazil. The dates at the top of the artwork seem to indicate the sequence of the design. On the side facing the site of the cooperative, an inscription in German reads: ‘Conquered—not by the sword / but with the plough / children of peace / heroes of labour’ (See Figure
3). This motto, written by Stefan Augsburger, poet, politician and Catholic priest born in Batschka in the nineteenth century, had become part of the collective memory of the Danube Swabians in Europe and presents them as peaceful and industrious settlers. The emphasis on pacifism, through the appropriation of this motto after World War II, can be seen as a signal of the silencing of the active role that took place during that conflict.
Figure 3:
Monument to the Settlers, first plate, 1971.
Source : Author′s own photograph |
On the museum monument, the idea of a peaceful occupation of the land in south-eastern Europe is replicated in a drawing depicting the arrival of a family of Danube Swabians. The indication of the year 1700, at the top of the sculpture, connects the images to the discourse that affirms the antiquity of the presence of the Danube Swabians in their former homeland, as seen on the monument beside the chapel discussed above.
The identification of the Danube Swabians as colonizers, and their representation through the theme of family, is repeated on the other side of the monument, through both the text and the images (See Figure 4). An inscription in German reads: ‘Here,
in 1951, the engineer Michael Moor sought and found, with Swiss support, a new homeland for 500 Danube-Swabian families’. Above the text is the shield of the Danube Swabians, which serves to mark the inhabitants of the colony as belonging to an imagined community that extends beyond the limits of the Brazilian nation state.67 It
is worth mentioning that at the inauguration of the monument, representatives of Danube-Swabian associations in the United States, Canada and Argentina were present.68 Beneath
the text there is a drawing with the dates 1700–1945 and showing agricultural work in south-eastern Europe. Both the drawings and the texts, therefore, refer to the theme of colonization, but while the artwork refers to the colonization of the ‘old homeland’, the text refers to the colonization of the ‘new homeland’.
Monument to the Settlers, second plate, 1971.
Source : Author′s own photograph
On the next side of the monument, the aforementioned poem by Stefan Augsburger is repeated in Portuguese (See Figure 5). The image beneath it, however, is different. It is a visual narrative of the Danube Swabians as victims of violence during World
War II. On the left is a representation of the expulsion of a family, a couple with a pram, and also a grave representing death during the expulsion. The right side represents the occupied homeland, with soldiers aiming their guns towards the escaping family in a scene of war and death. However, in the image the Danube Swabians are not represented as active soldiers, but rather as families evicted by enemies. The visual narrative of war victims is therefore directed here at residents of the colony and also at non-immigrant Brazilian visitors to the colony. The fact that they had lost their homes, unlike members of other foreign colonization projects in Brazil, reinforced their discourse of overcoming great difficulties against the odds.
Monument to the Settlers, third plate. 1971.
Source : Author′s own photograph
The idea of the progress achieved by the colony appears on the fourth side of the monument, where Brazilian authorities are honoured as those who have given the 500 families of the Danube Swabians ‘a new homeland and the opportunity to participate in the progress of Brazil’; the shield of the state of Paraná is displayed above (See Figure
6 ). In the image below the text, as well as the year of 1951, the clearing of Entre Rios is represented along with the organization into five villages. Modern agriculture is portrayed through the image of a tractor. Here the discursive narrative of the victory of the colonizing project is interwoven with the triumphalist discourse of progress, characteristic of the civil-military dictatorship in place in Brazil from 1964–1985.
Figure 6:
Monument to the Settlers, fourth plate, 1971.
Source : Author′s own photograph
If we consider all the elements presented on the four sides of the monument, it can be seen that the affirmation of building a new and prosperous homeland in Brazil is related to the colonization of land in south-east Europe and to expulsion from that region. The ‘new homeland’ in Brazil is thus situated within the ‘old homeland’. In this respect, the name of the host village of the colony, Vitória (Victory), is significant. While the other three villages, Jordãozinho (Little Jordan), Samambaia (Fern), Cachoeira
(Waterfall) refer to the landscape, the other two are more meaningful: Socorro (Aid) and Vitória (Victory) would be guaranteed to the refugees.69 The
idea of victory refers not only to the construction of a promising new homeland in Brazil, but also to the loss of the former homeland during World War II.70 Thus,
a self-image of the Danube Swabians as eternal colonizers was established, whether in south-eastern Europe or in Brazil; they were cast as a community which would bring economic progress wherever they settled. The loss of the old homeland was transformed into a founding myth of the colony of Entre Rios because the discourse of loss is a public narrative, which imposes an internal link to the past as origin and never ceases to be repeated.71 As
Stuart Hall states, myth, narrative, memory and fantasy construct the past, and they are often used as a basis for the construction of cultural identity.72
In his book The Lost German East , Andrew Demshuk demonstrates how expellees from Silesia generated in West Germany between 1945 and 1970 a ‘ Heimat of memory’, an idealized vision of what they had lost. This ‘ Heimat of
memory’ was confronted with their perception of Silesia as it then existed in Poland, the ‘ Heimat transformed’.73 In
Entre Rios, Danube Swabians coped with their loss of the Heimat in south-eastern Europe not only by investing and residing in the ‘ Heimat of memory’, but also by affirming their progress in their new Heimat. Economic
prosperity fostered their material integration into Brazil, but it also facilitated the emergence of the idea of a new Heimat.
This new Heimat , however, is not free of the old. Despite the triumphalist discourse of progress in Brazil and the homage to Brazilian authorities, for example, the texts engraved on the monument in Entre Rios, including those in Portuguese, are written in Gothic style ( Frakturschrift ),
highlighting the colonists’ German origin, and perhaps suggesting a politically conservative reading of the past.74 The
content and form of the monument, and the languages used to convey its sentiments, reflect the image that the colony’s authorities wanted to associate with Danube Swabians at that time and indicate the audience to which their message was directed. Representatives of the governments of Austria, Germany and Switzerland, and of Brazil, attended the inauguration.75 The
City of Guarapuava mounted a plaque on the granite pedestal with text that denoted the image that the local Brazilian authorities wished to establish in relation to the Danube Swabians. The plaque honours them as having discovered ‘the true economic vocation of the Campos Gerais region of Paraná’. This same idea was repeated in a message written by the mayor that was included in the book Suábios do Danúbio (Danube Swabians), in which the colony of Entre Rios was praised for ‘examples of dynamism and technical
improvements in agriculture’ and its role in building the ‘greatness of the Brazil of tomorrow’.76 The
immigrants were inspired by this national-developmentalist, triumphant rhetoric, which was aimed at building a ‘Great Brazil’. The prediction of a harvest of 50,000 tonnes of wheat in Entre Rios that year was mentioned by the governor of Paraná on the same occasion as a ‘miracle generated by intelligence and love of work’.77
NEXT: IV. Entre Rios as an ‘Economic Miracle’
Footnotes
DVHH
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Destination: The Americas
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Brazil
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