German Brazilian

Nationalization and assimilation

This scenario began to attract the attention of the Brazilian elite at the end of the 19th century. Although German immigrants were welcomed and valued for their contributions to Brazilian development, the image Brazilians held of Germans was based on inadequate and distorted information, rhetorical exaggerations, and myths. When the Brazilian elite attempted to identify the typical German attitude, they tended to focus on German Brazilian idealists. The average German Brazilian attached little importance to cultural assimilation; however, there was a group of immigrants who delivered speeches and published texts defending the right of Germans to maintain cultural separatism in Brazil, at a time when nationalist propaganda was growing in Germany and beyond. As a result, Brazilian authorities feared that German Brazilians in the South were becoming so numerous that they would never be assimilated. This marked the beginning of the so-called "German danger", a widespread belief that Germany was expanding its imperialism worldwide, partly based on the presence of German immigrants in various developing countries, including Brazil.