German Brazilians

For the dialects of the German language spoken in Brazil, see Brazilian German.

German Brazilians
Teuto-brasileiros
Deutschbrasilianer

German descendants in São Paulo
Total population
5,000,000–12,000,000[1]
Regions with significant populations
Southern region; Southeastern region
Languages
Predominantly Portuguese. Great numbers speak Brazilian German dialects as their mother tongue; the largest group with est. 3,000,000 native Riograndenser Hunsrückisch[2][3] speakers.
Religion
Roman Catholicism
Protestantism[note 1]
Related ethnic groups
Germans, other Brazilians

German Brazilians (German: Deutschbrasilianer, Hunsrik: Deitschbrasiliooner, Portuguese: teuto-brasileiros) refers to Brazilians of full or partial German ancestry. German Brazilians live mostly in the country's South Region,[4] with a smaller but still significant percentage living in the Southeast Region.

Between 1824 and 1972, about 260,000 Germans settled in Brazil, the fifth largest nationality to immigrate after the Portuguese, the Italians, the Spanish, and the Japanese.[5] By 1940, the German diaspora in Brazil totaled about a million.[6]

The rapid increase in numbers was due to a relatively high birth rate, the highest in Brazil amongst immigrant groups although still lower than that of the local population.

The majority settled in the Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Paraná, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Less than 5% of Germans settled in Minas Gerais, Pernambuco, and Espírito Santo.[5]

According to a 1999 survey by IBGE researcher Simon Schwartzman, in a representative sample of the Brazilian population, 3.6% said they had some degree of German ancestry, a percentage that in a population of about 200 million amounts to 7.2 million descendants.[7] In 2004, Deutsche Welle cited the number of 5 million Brazilians of German descent.[8]

According to a 2016 survey published by Institute of Applied Economic Research, in a universe of 46,801,772 names of Brazilians analyzed, 1,525,890 or 3.3% of them had the only or the last surname of German origin, a proportion that represents about 6.7 million individuals if applied to the entire population in that year.

German dialects together make up the second most spoken first language in Brazil after Portuguese.[9] A few Brazilian municipalities have Brazilian Hunsrückisch and Germanic East Pomeranian as co-official with Portuguese; they are located in Southern Brazil and Espírito Santo.[1][10] It is estimated that between 2 and 3 million people can speak Brazilian Hunsrückisch.[3][11][12]

  1. ^ a b A little piece of Germany in the heart of Brazil. Al Jazeera. Retrieved 11 October 2016.
  2. ^ "Hunsrik | Ethnologue". Archived from the original on 7 December 2013. Retrieved 2 August 2015.
  3. ^ a b Wilhelm Bleek (2003). "Auslandsdeutsche" [Germans abroad] (in German). German Federal Agency for Civic Education. Archived from the original on 10 March 2011.
  4. ^ Latin America: Regions and People, p. 24, at Google Books
  5. ^ a b Levy, Maria Stella Ferreira (June 1974). "O papel da migração internacional na evolução da população brasileira (1872 a 1972)" [The role of international migration in the evolution of the Brazilian population (1872 to 1972)]. Revista de Saúde Pública (in Brazilian Portuguese). 8: 49–90. doi:10.1590/S0034-89101974000500003 – via SciELO.
  6. ^ Schoonover, Thomas (2008). Hitler's Man in Havana: Heinz Luning and Nazi Espionage in Latin America. United States of America: The University Press of Kentucky. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-8131-2501-5. Archived from the original on 2 November 2023. Retrieved 21 January 2021.
  7. ^ Many authors. Os Alemães no Sul do Brasil, Editora Ulbra, 2004 (2004).
  8. ^ "As Diferentes Fases da Imigração Alemã no Brasil". Deutsche Welle. Archived from the original on 5 September 2019. Retrieved 21 January 2021.
  9. ^ "Olivet Second Most Spoken Languages Around the World". olivet.edu. 7 April 2015. Archived from the original on 29 July 2018. Retrieved 29 March 2016.
  10. ^ German Roots – Gisele Bündchen. The German Times. Retrieved 11 October 2016.
  11. ^ Altenhofen, C. V.; Frey, J.; Käfer, M. L.; Klassmann, M. S.; Neumann, G. R.; Spinassé, K. P. 2007. Fundamentos para uma escrita do Hunsrückisch falado no Brasil. Revista Contingentia, 2: 73–87.
  12. ^ Hunsrik Archived 20 April 2014 at the Wayback Machine, Ethnologue (2016).


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