Germans in the History of Colombia from Colonial Times to the Present

Colombia, with 50,662,678 inhabitants in 2020, ranks second after Brazil as the most populous nation in South America, yet with the exception of Spanish immigration and the introduction of black slaves between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the country has never been an important receiver of immigrants. After Colombia had achieved independence, the perceived lack of economic opportunities (despite the governmentˇs offers of grants of land and reduced taxes) and successive civil wars provided few incentives to Europeans to immigrate. In contrast to Argentina and Brazil, Colombia did not energetically encourage large-scale immigration, and during the late 19th and early 20th centuries only a trickle of individuals arrived from Spain, Germany, Italy, and France as well as the US, Syria, Lebanon and China. As Professor Hermes Tovar Pinzón has noted, according the 1993 population census, only 106,162 foreigners resided in Colombia which represented 0.29% of a total of 37 million inhabitants that the country had at that time. The majority of these individuals came from neighboring Venezuela (41% or close to 43,300 persons) and Ecuador (8.4% or close to 9,000 persons.) Despite their consistently small numbers, individual Germans and German companies have been present in every era of Colombian history. The object of this book is provide an overview of German involvement in Colombia from the sixteenth century conquest to the years after World War II in order to demonstrate that the influence of their contributions to the nationˇs development has been far more significant than their scant number suggests. My determination to tackle this topic developed within the context of over fifty years of research into Colombian history. The impetus dates to October 1967 when as a young graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I arrived in Bogotá to begin research for my dissertation, ˝Modernization and Educational Reform in Colombia, 1863-1886.˛ At that time arrangements were made for me to lodge at a pension owned by Carlotta Masur in the barrio known as Teusaquillo, located within walking distance of the Biblioteca Nacional. Upon my arrival to my surprise, I found that rather than being immersed in Spanish, I was instead residing in a pension, run by a German woman, the former wife of Gerhard Masur, author the principal biography of Simon Bolívar at that time, who catered primarily to Germans living and visiting Bogotá. Although Carlotta was fluent in English and Spanish, the language of the pension was German. Almuerzo (lunch) was the principal meal served, and the language around the table was entirely in German. I would have been completely lost, if not one of the residents, Erika Brieke, a young woman fluent in German, Spanish and English who worked at the German Embassy, had translated the conversations for me so I had some idea of what was being said. Carlotta supplemented her income by creating beautiful leather crafts. Often during Bogotáˇs cold, dark evenings, she would invite me to her sitting room where I would watch her working while listening to the records of German lieder sung by Dietrich Fisher-Dieskau. This German connection seemed to continue for while researching the Colombian educational reform of 1870, I discovered that a key development was the arrival of a German Pedagogical Mission that had been invited by the Colombian government to establish normal schools to prepare teachers. Five years later, when I began my research on the history of the Colombian Llanos as a tropical plains frontier, I learned that during the 16th century Germans had played an active role in the exploration and conquest of the plains. Individual Germans entrepreneurs supported the Colombian patriots in their War of Independence against Spain, and once freedom had been achieved, a German, Juan Bernardo Elbers, facilitated navigation along the Magdalena River. A century, after the end of World War One, ex-German pilots initiated air transportation in Colombia with the formation of SCADTA (Sociedad Colombo-Alemana de Transportes Aéreos. In 2014, having completed five books tracing the history of the Llanos, I turned to the topic of Colombia and World War One which of course involved the countryˇs interaction with Germany. As a result of these experiences, it seemed to me that a survey of German involvement over time was an obvious way to tie together my various forays into Colombian history, and the absence of previous surveys of the topic strengthened my resolve. The two works that exist, both sponsored by the German Embassy in Bogotá Presencia Alemana en Colombia (Bogotá: Mayr & Cabal: 1993) edited by Claudia Tapias Ospina and 200 años de la presencia alemana en Colombia (Bogotá: Universidad del Rosario, 2012) edited by Juan Esteban Constain are collections of essays by different authors. Still lacking are monographs( either in Spanish or English) that deal with the topic by a single author, and it is this gap that the present work seeks to fill.