Nueva Germania: Nietzsche’s sister’s failed attempt to create an Aryan-German community in Paraguay

In this town there are street names related to German characters, a Lutheran church, a museum with the history of the place and you can see blond children with blue eyes speaking German.

Nothing extraordinary. Although perhaps if I tell you that these children also speak Spanish and Guaraní, and live in a tropical climate in an area known as the cradle of yerba mate, this will attract your attention.

Welcome to Nueva Germania, a German colony located in the jungle part of Paraguay. In it live something more than 6,000 people and the main activity is agriculture.

Some of its inhabitants are descendants of the first Germans who arrived at the end of the 19th century to found the colony. Today the community of Nueva Germania survives, although the concept that inspired its creation failed.

An Aryan Utopia

To understand the origins of Nueva Germania we have to place them in the growing anti-semitic climate touring Europe in the 1870s.

In some circles, ideas of racial purity and the creation of settlements outside of Jewish influence were flourishing.

The German composer was part of this environment Richard Wagner, a recognized anti-Semite, as well as Professor Bernhard Förster and his wife Elisabeth Nietzsche, sister of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche – by the way, opposed to the ideology of his sister.

“The idea started with Richard Wagner,” Polish-German anthropologist Jonatan Kurzwelly, who developed his thesis on identity in New Germania, tells BBC News Mundo.

“You have to understand the European historical context a bit. These were times of an increase in anti-Semitism, especially in Germany, in conjunction with two events on crack from the stock market in Vienna, which caused an economic crisis, and the pogroms in the Russian Empire, the attacks against the Jews that caused a great wave of immigration ”.

“At that time, at Richard Wagner’s house, Elizabeth Nietzsche met her future husband, Bernhard Förster,” adds Kurzwelly.

“And there Wagner supposedly put forward the idea that a New Germania should be built outside of Europe, because Europe was already under too much Jewish control.”

The marriage of Förster and Nietzsche put that idea into practice and that racist utopia of creating an Aryan community outside of Germany materialized – briefly – tens of thousands of miles away.

From Germany to Paraguay

Förster was traveling alone in Paraguay between 1883 and 1885. But why that country?

A little over a decade had passed since the end of the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870).

“Paraguay was a totally destroyed country, without economic resources and with a gigantic war debt,” Paraguayan historian and cultural manager Fabián Chamorro tells BBC Mundo.

Given this, “there was a policy of bringing immigrants.”

In addition, in Paraguay there was already a German colony, that of San Bernardino (although it had nothing to do with Förster’s Aryan utopia).

Traveling around the country, Förster chose the place where he wanted to locate his colony: a remote area with difficult access – in what is now the department of San Pedro – on the banks of the Aguaray River and about 300 km from the capital, Asunción. .

“What we don’t know is why he chose such a hostile place. Until just 10 years ago it was difficult to get there, ”says Chamorro.

He negotiated with the Paraguayan government and they reached an agreement in which the State ceded the land to Föster in exchange for him to bring 140 European families in two years. If he brought them in, the land became the property of the settlers.

Back in Germany, Förster married Elisabeth.

In 1887 they both traveled to Paraguay, together with several other German families, and founded New Germania.

His dream was clear: to create an area where he could put his utopian ideas about the superiority of the Aryan race into practice, away from the influence of the Jews, whom he despised.

In some reports, it is said that 14 families arrived, although the data is not easy to verify, says Kurzwelly, citing the doctoral thesis of Daniela Kraus.

“We must distinguish between the number of families that got on the ship in Hamburg, the number of families that arrived in Paraguay and those that moved to Nueva Germania,” says the anthropologist.

Problems

However, life in the colony and the adaptation to the place was not easy, and soon the problems began in Nueva Germania.

“That area has a tropical climate and it is terribly hot,” says Chamorro.

“They found a hostile landIt is not that any type of food could be proposed ”.

And also, adds the Paraguayan expert, they weren’t farmersThey did not have work experience in the field, but were people who also escaped due to the difficult situation they were living in Germany.

In addition, Förster decided to found the colony far away from the capital, although “Elizabeth did want it to be closer to Asunción and San Bernardino,” says Kurzwelly.

And above all, he had many financial problems.

The couple was the one who managed everything, including the prices of products that were later sold in the capital, explains the anthropologist. “It really was a private attempt by the couple.”

In addition, Förster sold land that did not yet belong to him as agreed with the Paraguayan government. But at the beginning the land did not belong to him legally, he had the use of it to be able to form a colony.

“He hoped the land was going to be his,” says Kurzwelly. “I really think They were excited with the dream that thousands and thousands of families would follow them”.

And the colonists’ relationship with the couple deteriorated. “Förster spent less and less time in the colony and Elisabeth more and more, took care of the management of the colony.”

The end of the Förster-Nietzsche dream

The news of what was happening in the colony eventually reached Germany, through letters or settlers who returned to the country. In some letters, Förster was accused of being a fraudster.

“There are some letters that say, for example, that it had been a mistake to go to Nueva Germania,” says Kurzwelly.

And that’s how a second contingent of Germans never arrived and Förster was never able to fulfill the commitment to bring 140 families.

In the end, he ended up going to San Bernardino, wheredied in 1889.

“There are two theories, most people say that he committed suicide, but it is not known for sure. The medical report said that he suffered a heart attack. It is said that the medical report was falsified by Elisabeth, but it cannot be verified ”, explains the German anthropologist.

Elisabeth traveled to Germany, and although she returned to New Germania, the settlers no longer accepted it and he settled permanently in his country in 1893 to take care of his sick brother.

After the death of the philosopher in 1900, he obtained the rights to his manuscripts and, rejecting public access to the works, he edited and distorted them.

It was supporter of National Socialism and his funeral in 1935 was attended by Adolf Hitler and other Nazi dignitaries.

After her death, experts reissued Nietzsche’s writings and found Elisabeth’s distorted versions: she forged almost 30 letters and rewrote several passages.

And this is how this Aryan utopia failed.

“Nueva Germania did not fail as a colony, as it continues to this day. What failed is Förster’s racist dream”, Kurzwelly points out.

“The thing to keep in mind is that the racist dream was his, Elisabeth’s and maybe one or two other families.”

“Others, at that time when there were gigantic waves of emigration to the Americas, all they wanted was to leave and build a new life, and the idea of ​​the organizer behind that emigration perhaps mattered less to them,” adds the anthropologist.

New Germania today

The German origin of this town is still visible, thanks to “the four or five original German families that stayed behind and had offspring,” says Chamorro.

“Today you can see blond boys speaking Guarani.”

In Nueva Germania they speak three languages. Guaraní and Spanish, which are the official languages ​​in Paraguay, and German, used by families of German descent.

“The German that is spoken many times is mixed with Spanish,” says Jonatan Kurzwelly, who lived for a time in Nueva Germania to do his thesis.

The anthropologist explains that there are connections with Germany currently. “Some people went for a time to travel or live in Germany.”

“There is an agreement with an evangelical community in Germany, which organized some exchanges between its members.”

There are two churches, for example, the evangelical lutheran church, with a strong relationship with the German Lutheran Church, and the Catholic one.

“Traditionally that was also the division between Germans and Paraguayans,” says the anthropologist.

As for identity, he says that “some define themselves as Germans, others define themselves as both German and Paraguayan, and sometimes they have that internal contradiction.”

“In Nueva Germania there is a third identity, which is to be German”.

What is not representative of the New Germania that survived Bernhard Förster and his wife Elisabeth Nietzsche, Kurzwelly clarifies, is the racist idea with which the couple conceived the colony.

“German families live with Paraguayans, sometimes they marry each other, they mix”

“Nueva Germania should not be sold as a racist dream, it has been a private dream of two people with very racist ideas who faced the harsh reality of working in the fields, managing the colony and the dissatisfaction of the people of the colony”.

“A friend of mine said that he would like Nueva Germania not to be remembered as the first prot-Nazi attempt, but the first failed prot-Nazi attempt.” (I)