A New Moral World Order: Carl Alexander Simon and the German Colonization of Southern Chile^*

Abstract

This article focuses on overlooked aspects of German colonization in southern Chile by examining the treatise Auswanderung und deutsch-nationale Kolonisation von Süd-Amerika mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Freistaates Chile (Emigration and German National Colonization of South America with Special Attention to the Free State of Chile) by Carl Alexander Simon. Simon was a Romantic artist who advocated for overseas colonization and settled in Chile to promote his ideas. His treatise, which blended poetry and Romantic rhetoric with political ideas, aimed to encourage German occupation of Chile and South America based on the supposed physical and intellectual superiority of the Germans. This article argues that Simon’s work is integral to understanding the intersection of Romanticism and German colonialism in the nineteenth century and how racial and nationalistic sentiments fuelled German colonialism in remote corners of the world. Furthermore, it contributes to discussions on German nation-building overseas and the connections between German colonialism and race, the legacies of German colonialism, German colonial fantasies, and indigeneity and Germanness. Finally, this study of Simon’s work complements existing research on German settlements in Africa, Asia and the Pacific from 1850 onwards, highlighting the importance of considering the role of Germany in the global colonial project.

Carl Alexander Simon (Frankfurt an der Oder, 1805 – Magallanes Region, Chile, 1852) is probably an exceptional case globally—and surely the only example in nineteenth-century Germany—of a Romantic artist who actively promoted overseas colonization and was himself a settler. His core work is Auswanderung und deutsch-nationale Kolonisation von Süd-Amerika mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Freistaates Chile (Emigration and German National Colonization of South America with Special Attention to the Free State of Chile, hereafter Auswanderung und deutsch-nationale Kolonisation).¹ This little-known treatise on colonization, blending poetry and Romantic rhetoric in political pamphlet form, was published in two editions, the first in 1848 in Stuttgart and the second in 1850 in Bayreuth. In it, Simon sought to encourage the German occupation first of Chile and ultimately of the entirety of South America, based on a keen sense of the uniqueness and superiority of the ‘Germanic race’.

The treatise was produced during a tumultuous period of social upheaval and revolution across many European countries, often referred to as ‘the springtime of the peoples’ or ‘the Romantic Revolution’.² In some south-western German cities, a series of violent protest movements began the demand for a ‘social republic’.³ A distinct feature of this period in Germany was the rhetoric of ‘open action’, which viewed politics as a stage and political action as drama.⁴ Echoing this view, Simon’s plan to erect a new Germany in the forests of southern Chile acquired a noticeably grandiose tone. Influenced by nationalistic discourses, pan-Germanism, the growing animosity towards the Württemberg monarchy, and the intense discussion of Deutschtum (Germanness), Simon proclaimed himself a ‘prophet of freedom’, the ‘leader of the age’.⁵

In the newly free nation of Chile the situation was the reverse, at least in terms of social unrest. After declaring independence from Spain in 1818 (Spain recognized Chile in 1844), the young republic tested out various constitutions.⁶ Notwithstanding the political tensions between liberals and conservatives, by 1848 Chile had become a relatively stable republic with a democratic government and a thriving economy. Its ruling class had become convinced of the need for a ‘civilizing project’, which entailed the integration of European immigrants into the country. The underlying purpose of this idea was to take control of the lands of the south of the country occupied by Indigenous communities, principally Mapuche.⁷ ‘Peaceful and industrious immigrants will bring with their customs more civilization than the best books, more wealth than a thousand ships loaded with manufactured goods’, wrote Marcial González, a Chilean writer and politician, in 1848. An invitation was extended to the ‘wise Germans’ to colonize and civilize southern Chile ‘to improve the race of our people’,⁸ providing the perfect scenario for Simon and his project.

Simon’s activities have largely been overlooked in both his native Germany and Chile, where he moved in 1850 to pursue his ambitious scheme. Apart from a brief biography published in 1929 by Theodor Musper, a few press articles, and a book on his adventures in Chiloé by Marijke Van Meurs, Simon’s undertakings, particularly his treatise, have yet to be studied in detail. This article examines Simon’s treatise in relation to its Romantic, colonial and racialist framework. To date, the German colonization of southern Chile has mostly been addressed as an economic phenomenon that was politically motivated.⁹ I take a different approach by considering broader cultural aspects.

Initially nationalism and Romanticism were closely related ideological and discursive frameworks, their manifestations frequently intertwining. Romanticism, a philosophical and cultural movement, generally prioritized artists and intellectuals, emphasizing humanity’s quest for the infinite and human emotion, self-expression and the recovery of an authentic experience of the self. Nationalism (or rather Romanticism’s nationalist side) tended to focus on rediscovering pure origins and golden ages, based on shared convictions and identities of specific groups of people.¹⁰ Hence, although they tackled distinct facets of the human experience, nationalism and Romanticism eventually emerged as complementary modes of thinking significant for both the collective and the individual. Simon exemplifies this coexistence, for his artistic endeavours and personal life were characterized by both Romantic sensibilities and nationalist inclinations, as his idea of a German utopia in Chile demonstrates. The central objective of this article is thus to shed light on neglected aspects of the German colonization of southern Chile, revealing the degree to which it was swayed by Romantic ideals, nationalism, and discourses about race, identity and power.

The article contributes to two interrelated fields: Romantic studies and German colonialism studies. Specifically, Simon’s work is a distinctive yet little investigated instance of how the Romantic obsession with the primordial forest and purity of the landscape could provide a racial impetus. The marriage of European Romanticism and imperialism and also the imagining of distant lands during the Romantic period have attracted significant scholarly interest in recent decades, although for a long time previously, race-thinking, expansionism and colonialism seemed not to belong to the Romantics’ sensibility.¹¹ Scholars have often understood Romanticism as a dialogue between the soul and the external world, with the latter internally mediated through music, literature, paintings, sculptures and philosophical musings, leading to a sense of displacement and existential angst caused by the strangeness of nature.¹² While this description is accurate for the works of many German artists in their homeland (for example, it neatly fits Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings), it fails to fully acknowledge the active role played by Romantics as agents of power, actively involved in surveying, mapping and colonial practices.

This article also contributes to the debate on German nation-building overseas, addressing the cultural concerns of Auslandsdeutsche (Germans abroad). It explores the establishment of new German communities to disseminate culture, language and political influence on the premise that Germans’ physical and intellectual constitutions were superior and would elevate the cultures of their host societies.¹³ Bradley Naranch has pointed out that ‘the study of German national identity has rarely strayed far from the familiar geographic confines of central Europe, just as the study of German colonialism has tended to stay within the formal period of overseas imperial rule, 1884–1919’.¹⁴ The case of Simon in Chile extends our knowledge of the chronology and geographical scope of German overseas aspirations. And finally, this study of Simon’s work in Chile complements studies of German settlements in Africa, Asia and the Pacific from 1871 onwards, while also adding to ongoing research on the intersections between German colonialism and gender, the legacies of German colonialism, German colonial fantasies, and the dynamics of indigeneity and Germanness.¹⁵

The first part of the article addresses Simon’s rise as an artist and political figure who emerged from the heart of the German Romantic movement with activities in Weimar, Berlin, Munich and Stuttgart. It explains how Simon gradually became a revolutionary immersed in the principles of utopian socialism, a leader with messianic inclinations, and how these circumstances shaped his plan to establish a colony of German proletarians and democrats in Chile. The following sections delve into the central postulates of Simon’s treatise, in that process expounding its origins and its ideological structure. The article addresses key subjects such as the racial element, the appropriative narrative behind the transfiguration of Chile’s southern landscapes into a German paradise, and Simon’s strategies for occupying Chile and South America guided by the precept of instituting a ‘new moral world order’.

I. The Romantic Artist and Utopian Socialist

Art historian Theodor Musper, Simon’s first biographer, described his subject as a multifaceted individual who embraced poetry, painting, history, philosophy, economics, art criticism and the revolutionary political ideals of his time.¹⁶ Simon incorporated into his repertoire of prose and images all that he considered valuable for grasping the world. His fiery spirit and ardent idealism were shaped by the philosophies of Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and the proponents of Jena Romanticism, many of whom he met personally.¹⁷ Between 1821 and 1824, Simon trained as an artist at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich. In the latter city, he strengthened his links with the principles of Romanticism and with the Nazarenes (the Lukasbund, or Brotherhood of St Luke), receiving instruction in painting and drawing from acknowledged masters such as Peter Cornelius.¹⁸ The Nazarenes played a vital role in reinvigorating nationalistic sentiments by reviving the artistic traditions of medieval guilds and craftsmanship.¹⁹

Like many Romantic painters, Simon embarked on a grand tour, visiting Switzerland, Rome, Naples, Sorrento and Sicily between 1827 and 1831.²⁰ His intellectual connections, his travels and the solid artistic instruction he received resulted in hundreds of drawings and paintings, which are currently scattered throughout Germany and Chile.²¹ Simon appeared to meet all the requirements of a conventional conservative Romantic artist. However, subsequent events changed him. The turning point occurred soon after his grand tour, while he was living in Berlin. He began to feel an intense disgust for the burgeoning metropolis, its ‘viciousness and arrogance’, the ‘bureaucratic cowardice’ and the ‘despotism of the princes’, which caused him to question his beliefs and led to deep disillusionment.²²

Upon moving to Stuttgart in 1842, Simon experienced a series of artistic and academic setbacks, including conflicts with other artists and an unsuccessful application for a position as a lecturer at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste. These failures pushed him towards literature, which he found to be more fertile ground for his political ideas. In his diary Simon wrote, ‘I despise the brush; I cannot paint canvases with colourful grimaces. I want life, action or death. The pen is my instrument.’²³ During this time, Simon learnt of utopian socialism and embraced its ideas, marking a significant shift in his political beliefs.²⁴

By 1847, Simon’s political commitment had grown even stronger and was more apparent in his writings, which some commentators likened to the anarchist writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Charles Fourier and Étienne Cabet.²⁵ He became involved in political controversy and sought contact with revolutionaries and liberal democrats such as Friedrich Römer, Paul Pfitzer and Franz Tafel, with whom Simon formed a close friendship due to his own public support for the revolutionary cause.²⁶ Simon—now transformed into a political agitator—partook in the ‘Stuttgart bread riot’ (Stuttgarter Brotkrawall) in 1847, the protests against King Wilhelm of Württemberg, and in the revolution of 1848/49.²⁷ His political enthusiasm soon became a burning hatred and bitterness. After he had fought against the royal forces, Simon was labelled a ‘dangerous revolutionary’.²⁸ Like numerous other Germans who had participated in revolutionary activities or expressed dissenting opinions, Simon had to flee the country to avoid persecution or imprisonment. In the winter of 1848, he settled in France with a few comrades after voicing caustic criticism of the Württemberg monarchy, which he considered ‘as rotten as a bad apple’.²⁹ Simon became one of the ‘forty-eighters’, a group of German expatriates who sought refuge abroad following the failed revolutions and social reform movements of 1848.³⁰

In France, Simon lived amidst the poorest for several months, enduring starvation and harsh living conditions. He developed an even stronger nihilism, protesting against the ‘depravity of human society’ and lamenting the future of Germany. In a state of Romantic rapture, Simon declared that he preferred the ‘solitude and peace of nature’ and ‘the hardship of a quiet life’ to witnessing the curse of his time.³¹ While he was living as an ascetic in Provence, the idea of founding a new society in South America, of which he would be the leader, began to germinate in Simon’s mind: ‘I must go across, I must! It is more than a human longing, it is a divine trait—a destiny—I am a leader of this age’, he wrote in his letters.³² The messianic and abstruse roots of Simon’s colonizing endeavour are better appreciated when we read the complete paragraphs that follow that declaration:

I must lay the foundation for a new people’s temple and go down with them […] My eye has become prophetic. My spirit has seen its future on the shore of the sea, open in front of me lies the distance!

I see people of higher cultures in the Paradise of this earth blessing my name!

Whether they curse it, whether I lie forgotten deep in the abyss of history, I must accomplish it nonetheless and then I want to blossom from the deep. I have fulfilled what I wanted!³³

Simon perceived the establishment of this new society as a sacred obligation. Such a ‘Romantic’ attitude was not untypical of nineteenth-century European nationalist thought, in which civilization, law and ambitions for power and expansion were often viewed as a manifestation of a divinely ordained special mission.³⁴ However, if he was to become the ‘leader of the age’, Simon recognized, he needed to attract a group of supporters who would share his vision and follow him towards his goal. Having returned to Stuttgart from exile, Simon created the Society for National Emigration and Colonization.³⁵ This society was crucial to Simon’s dream of creating a new world away from Germany, which he considered a ‘region of death’. He became convinced that he would pave the ‘way for democracy’ and lay ‘the foundation for a social order based on social principles on the other side of the ocean’.³⁶ Chile was the land chosen for completing this mission, and Auswanderung und deutsch-nationale Kolonisation was to serve as the bible that would guide Germans to the promised land.

By 1846, a small group of Germans had already settled in Valparaíso and northern Chile, although primarily as investors rather than colonists. Colonization did not formally begin until 1848, when President Manuel Bulnes appointed Bernard E. Philippi as an agent for encouraging German colonization in Chile.³⁷ Another crucial figure in this process was Franz Kindermann—Simon’s brother-in-law—a landowner and future colonizer who had amassed a fortune while working since 1836 for Huth, Grüning & Co, a prestigious German company based in Valparaíso.³⁸ Kindermann deceitfully acquired Indigenous lands in the south of Chile of about two-thirds the size of Bavaria that were later used for the first settlements of the colony.³⁹ However, German colonization would have been impossible without the direct encouragement of the Chilean state. Crucial in this regard was the ley de inmigración selectiva (selective immigration law) promulgated in 1845, which was intended to promote European immigration to occupy vast expanses in southern Chile considered barren while improving the ‘racial stock’ of the country.⁴⁰ Between 1848 and 1875, approximately 8,000 German immigrants settled in the area of Lake Llanquihue, Chiloé and Valdivia, misleadingly assuming that Germans were ‘people without a country’, whereas Chile was ‘a country without people’.⁴¹ Simon was one of them. With his newly published treatise under his arm, the young Romantic painter and revolutionary embarked on the Johannes und Helene in Hamburg on 19 February 1850 and arrived at the Chilean port of Corral on 31 May.⁴²

II. A New Moral World Order

Auswanderung und deutsch-nationale Kolonisation was first published in 1848 under a slightly different title: Die Auswanderung der Demokraten und Proletarier und deutsch-nationale Kolonisation des Südamerikanischen Freistaates Chile (The Emigration of Democrats and Proletarians and German National Colonization of the South American Free State of Chile).⁴³ The inclusion of ‘democrats’ and ‘proletarians’ in the title indicated Simon’s more radical stance and target audience. However, he chose to eliminate these two terms from the 1850 edition because ‘they created concern among those who cannot think of the proletariat and democracy as anything other than identical to crime’.⁴⁴ The cities in which these two editions were published also shaped this decision. The 1848 edition was issued in Stuttgart, a fulcrum of political action at the time and a city where Simon was active politically, whereas the second edition was printed in Bayreuth, a more ‘neutral’ town. While Simon did not state so directly, the book’s potential readership may have been another reason for the title modification. The less partisan tone of the new title would have appealed to less politically inclined Germans considering immigration.

Additionally, the 1850 edition includes the name ‘Traugott Bromme’. Bromme was a member of the Society for National Emigration and Colonization. His name appears on the cover as the editor of the ‘revised edition for settlers and immigrants’ and author of an appendix. His inclusion may well have been intended to shift attention away from Simon, who had experienced political persecution before the book’s publication and had been in the public eye for some time.⁴⁵

The underlying aim of the treatise beyond encouraging fellow citizens to emigrate was to promote the German ‘conquest of South America’.⁴⁶ Simon presents his enterprise as an ‘idea of the time’, a ‘demand of the present’ that he claimed had been praised in Germany by major figures such as Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Ritter.⁴⁷ Simon believed that his project was by no means a chimaera. It was about preserving nationality and using Germany’s ‘ruins’ to build a ‘new, honourable foundation of history’. For Simon, immigration was a movement with ‘ethical motives’. That view is encapsulated in his personal motto, which appears as the book’s epigraph: ‘If you cannot take the tyrants from the people, take the people from the tyrant.’⁴⁸

From the very first pages, it is apparent that the treatise was not simply a guidebook for immigrants but also a manifesto. If we examine the list of specialized immigration books and booklets published by the Buchner’sche Buchhandlung, Simon’s work stands out on account of its less practical tone. Many of the publications listed in the Buchner’sche Buchhandlung’s catalogue offer comprehensive information about railway, mail and steamboat routes in the United States and Canada, for example, whereas Simon’s book offered a more Romantic perspective.⁴⁹ In his treatise, Simon quickly presents himself as a saviour who can alleviate the situation in Germany and restore the democracy that has been defeated. Simon states that his ‘political credo’ is ‘I no longer believe.’⁵⁰ One of the things he no longer believes is that the struggle for the instauration of a republic must be confined within the limits of the German nation, or even the Continent, for ‘the battle of democracy on European soil is a losing one’.⁵¹

Simon combines his political views with a Romantic ethos apparent in many passages whose poetic and cryptic language gives glimpses of a messianic personality.⁵² The result is a political text infused with biblical rhetoric, in which he addresses his followers using rhapsodic terms and ideas:

Humanity demands the sacrifice of concepts that violate freedom and reason, that incite brothers against brothers, peoples against peoples to murder, so that the bond of love that embraced the earth and humanity and that was torn apart may be re-tied in the interest of culture and morality. The league of peoples is an alliance against violence, bringing global peace and blessings.⁵³

Simon’s call for a ‘new moral order’ demands a new territory because, he claims, ‘it is not in Europe that the victory of justice will be decided’.⁵⁴ Unsurprisingly, the inception of this new world was driven by an Adamic impulse to achieve ‘the completion of humanity’. The idea of humankind as an incomplete project (unvollendete Mensch) was a German Romantic trope that found fertile ground in Latin America. Its virgin landscapes had historically been associated with an idealized Golden Age and a glorified preindustrial world, while its original inhabitants had been consistently linked with a picture of reborn humanity. Simon mirrors this way of conceiving Latin America’s nature, which aligns with what Viorica Patea calls the ‘locus classicus’ of the Garden of Eden, ‘the place where the nostalgic longings of lost innocence could be fulfilled again’.⁵⁵

Simon overtly connects Edenic and Adamic elements with his migration scheme, stating that ‘man should be free, or rather, he should become a human’.⁵⁶ Since he has been unable to achieve this goal in Europe, despite the greatest struggles, he notes, he is focusing on where he can achieve it. Although he primarily refers to the German people, his call for a new humanity reaches out to all the oppressed of the world: ‘All the million victims of despotism who languish in dungeons and exile are recruited for the service of humanity.’ In this ‘new moral world order’, religion will be ‘humanity’, and the object of its worship will be man, he concludes.⁵⁷

The grandiloquent language used by Simon was not unique to him. It reflects the prevailing mindset of European colonizers during this period. Franz Fanon’s characterization of the attitude of European colonizers overseas and the foundational spirit that informed their endeavours captures Simon’s project in southern Chile and the tone of his colonial ‘fantasy’: ‘The colonist makes history. His life is an epic, an odyssey. He is invested with the very beginning: “We made this land.” He is the guarantor for its existence: “If we leave, all will be lost, and this land will return to the Dark Ages.”’⁵⁸

One of the most notable features of Simon’s treatise is the constant interplay between epic foundational calls and remarkable pragmatism, which reflects his oscillating psyche. The text suggests that this ‘new moral world’ was a natural response to the political ineptitude of the German authorities. Its author complains that Germany has done too little to create national colonization but recognizes that Germany is now searching for a ‘drained site’ afflicted by ‘the curse of barbarism’ to repopulate with ‘German good-naturedness’.⁵⁹

Although Simon was clear that Chile was the ideal location for establishing his new social order, he dedicates several pages of his book to considering and discarding other potential sites for his colony. Notably, he rejects North America, although over five million Germans would emigrate there in the nineteenth century, including many of his fellow ‘forty-eighters’.⁶⁰ According to Simon, the United States would inevitably assimilate Germans into a nation that swallowed foreign customs, language and character. Simon’s vision, by contrast, was for a world that was fundamentally German, an enclosed space where his compatriots could preserve their Germanness and nationality. Furthermore, North America did not offer the favourable coastal location that Simon believed was necessary for the vigorous development of colonies.⁶¹ However, the real reason for Simon’s choice of South America over its ‘northern twin’ is soon revealed in the text, highlighting the eccentricity of his plan: he considered North America ‘only’ preparatory terrain for ‘the moral and intellectual perfection’ of the Germanic race; the ‘image of humanity’, he explained, would reach ‘harmonious perfection in the paradise of South America’.⁶²

Simon offers more arguments to convince his readers that South America was the right place to initiate the German conquest. Interestingly, he uses the scientific exploration of the continent carried out some decades earlier to claim that the territory was now open and more accessible to his people. Alexander von Humboldt, Alcide d’Orbigny, Karl Friedrich Philipp Martius and Eduard Friedrich Poeppig—all prominent nineteenth-century naturalists—have ‘revealed the secrets of the South American wonderland to us’, Simon comments.⁶³ This affirmation demonstrates that Simon’s endeavour was not born of a fevered and delusional mind but instead emerged from a complex network of contacts and influences that included merchants in cities such as Valparaíso (one of whom was the aforementioned Franz Kindermann), political figures in both Germany and Chile and, importantly, naturalists.

Simon viewed German scientific exploration of the continent as an early stage in land occupation, for it provided settlers with necessary data. It has long been known that Humboldt’s large-scale scientific project involved diverse participants and informants worldwide, such as naval officers, colonial administrators, physicians, diplomats, gentlemen of science and other travellers.⁶⁴ However, the exchange of information also functioned in the opposite direction, with Humboldt, possibly without knowing it, informing the activities of colonizers.

Thus, die Naturforscher (the Naturalists) laid the foundations for Simon’s argument that the colonization of southern Chile should be an exclusively German undertaking. Humboldt’s ‘godlike’ and ‘omniscient’ attitude towards nature and territory in America was a prelude to the arrival of colonizers like Simon, who represented the next, active phase of the ‘seeing-man’, a term coined by Mary Louis Pratt to describe the European male subject of European landscape discourse, ‘he whose imperial eyes passively look out and possess’.⁶⁵ Indeed, Simon’s actions in South America are a prime example of this active phase, as he endeavoured to impose his vision of a Germanic paradise on a land that had already undergone scientific scrutiny. Nature, Simon claims, ‘has not endowed this land with such an abundance for nothing’; it has ‘a higher purpose’, a ‘reason for its creation’. Again, Simon brings out his venture’s Adamic and Edenic spirit to justify the German occupation: ‘She [nature] did not plant the garden of beauty and abundance in vain.’ Southern Chile was a land destined and preserved for the Germans.⁶⁶

III. The German Paradise

The arguments Simon advanced in his treatise for the colonization of Chile and South America encompass both climatic and racial factors, which he viewed as intimately connected. In Simon’s opinion, the tropical climate was a severe obstacle in the hotter parts of the continent. He cites Central America, Guatemala, Venezuela and Brazil as examples of places where colonization failed because of the climate, overlooking, for example, that Brazil had been receiving a growing contingent of Germans since 1824 and had quickly become one of the leading destinations on the continent for European immigrants.⁶⁷ Simon’s attitude towards the tropics reveals the extent to which his plans in Chile were motivated by a desire to preserve Germans’ cultural and racial purity, for he denigrated the tropical climate in order to persuade his fellow citizens to emigrate to Chile instead.

The frequent correlation of race, culture, intelligence and climate was based on the popular scientific theory of environmental determinism. Broadly defined, this doctrine proposed that the physical environment regulated human growth, development and activities.⁶⁸ Simon probably knew of this theory—it is found in its early form in Romantic nature poetry and Humboldtian principles, and he was familiar with both.⁶⁹ It explains Simon’s fierce preference for Chile over the tropical regions: ‘Individuals might work with advantage in tropical zones, and trading colonies may prosper, but the farming Teuton, exposed to every influence of the elements, can only advance from the temperate latitudes towards the equator with the utmost caution.’ The Teuton ‘must begin where he breathes an air similar to his fatherland’, Simon continues, ‘where he builds on the nourishment of homeland, where related nutritional substances and analogous meteorological conditions do not morbidly affect and forcibly transform his physical and through this, his spiritual constitution’.⁷⁰ In this fashion, the climate of southern Chile, which was similar to that of Alpine Germany, was advanced as conditio sine qua non for preserving the integrity of the Germanic race.

The tropical regions of Latin America were a source of great anxiety for Simon, who believed that despite being the ‘workshop’ of nature’s wonders, they were also filled with terrors and dangers, such as fevers and poisonous insects.⁷¹ According to Simon, German colonization in any area ‘beyond the 38th latitude’ would be ‘always dangerous’, except for the southern provinces of La Plata and the Free State of Chile, where the valleys of the Andes offered settlers a ‘healthy alpine climate’. Simon even goes as far as to assert that ‘German plants do not thrive where the palm tree grows’.⁷²

The way Simon adapts the trope of Latin America as the Garden of Eden to suit Germanness sets him apart from the typical representations of the tropics as a physical manifestation of paradise. Simon’s focus is on persuading his fellow Germans that the colder southern regions of Chile, with their distinct landscapes and milder, more consistent climate, are a more suitable location for settlement than the warm but disease-ridden tropics. He argues that Chile’s southern regions constitute a ‘blessed paradise’, which, while different from the traditional notion of a tropical paradise, is better suited to the German way of life.⁷³

At its core, Simon’s treatise aligns closely with Susanne Zantop’s concept of ‘colonial fantasies’: it reveals the political undercurrents of Germany by exposing ‘the desires, dreams, and myths’ that shape public discourse and can inspire collective political action.⁷⁴ When Simon built a version of paradise adapted to the Germans’ origins and nature, almost as if he was advertising a tourist destination, he did so in the expectation of an active political reaction from his compatriots in the form of colonization. In the process, he drew on the repertoire of appropriative discourses of Germans overseas, employing, for instance, visual analogies to render new space intelligible to other Germans. Among all the natural elements that evoke the German ‘alpine nature’, the Andes interest Simon greatly, and he uses this mountain chain as a canvas onto which to project an image of Heimat. In the treatise, the Andes and the Alps are insistently likened to induce the idea of a European-like scenery with paradisiacal overtones. Thus, Chile’s southern landscapes are compared with Italy, Lake Llanquihue with Lake Geneva, and the entire region where Germans settled with Switzerland.⁷⁵

The description of animals and plants has an Edenic flavour: ‘the diucas, small birds dressed in the modest clothing of the temperate climate, chirp cheerfully from the light green vines covering most houses’ courtyards’, while ‘in the gardens and open spaces of the villages, the orange blossoms are fragrant’ and plants appear ‘as if by magic’.⁷⁶ To strengthen his idyllic portrayal of a ‘land of purity’ for the ‘new man’, Simon cites Eduard Poeppig, the renowned German naturalist, stating that ‘it would be difficult to find another country in the world of the same size whose inhabitants would be equally free of disease. Epidemics are unknown in Chile.’ However, Simon notes that ‘as soon as we cross the borders of Chile, we enter the territory of fevers’.⁷⁷ Though he does not mention God, it is implicit that southern Chile’s nature is somehow foreordained to be the German paradise: ‘[in Chile] all wild and poisonous animals, even mosquitos, have been eliminated to give man alone and his world, which serves him, room for higher development’.⁷⁸ In portraying Chile as the German paradise, Simon downplays natural hazards such as volcanoes and earthquakes, explaining that well-built houses (like German lodges) ‘resist any shaking’.⁷⁹

The myth of the German forest was also part of Simon’s repertoire of appropriative strategies. Capitalizing on the cultural predisposition of Germans to locate their ethnic origins in the primaeval forest and a distant past, Simon offers an extensive inventory of trees and gigantic plants that grow in southern Chile, creating ‘grandiose forest scenes’ that evoke the German primordial forest, the Urwald. ‘Wooded hills rise from the sea and stretch their dark silent halls of foliage and vaults, which no winter defoliates, far through the magnificent plain of Osorno’, writes Simon, continuing, ‘Myrtles, which alone occur in ten different species, mixed with Pinaceae and the Fagus obliqua form extensive forests that descend deep into the south.’⁸⁰ The Fagus obliqua, a type of local oak, is particularly relevant to Simon’s projection of Heimat. Since the late eighteenth century, oaks had been a forceful emblem of Germanic ‘resolve and independence’.⁸¹ As has been observed by Thomas Lekan, the use of oak trees as a symbol that ‘could stimulate convivial feelings of homeland’ was common in German colonies overseas, based on the conviction that Germans, regardless of where and when, had a unique connection to their native landscape.⁸²

In addition to their powerful meaning for nineteenth-century nationalistic movements, forests had been an archetype of a protective nature for Germans since the rediscovery of Tacitus’s Germania in the fifteenth century.⁸³ Echoing this cultural connotation, Simon emphasizes that these forests are ‘largely impenetrable’, which is cited as an advantage, in order to create an image of a German paradise that is uncontaminated and inaccessible to outsiders.⁸⁴ This ‘lost world’ full of wonders has remained hidden, awaiting the Germans:

those who have entered deeper into the forests, breaking their way with their machetes, or loggers who have climbed de cordillera to cut the cedar, which towers darkly above the deciduous forests like our fir, tell with admiration of the unknown plants, flowers and fruits they found there.⁸⁵

The German ‘promised land’ is bordered by the ocean on the west and by dense woodlands and the Andes on the East. On the high mountains, Simon describes, the rigid granite and snow region ‘where all life ceases closes the magic garden of Alpine scenes, forests, lakes and streams’.⁸⁶ Here again we see ‘colonial fantasies’ generated by symbols and allegories that imply a shared national identity and promote the concept of nationhood, urgently needed, it seemed, in the aftermath of 1848. As Zantop explains, these symbols were used to create a community of like-minded readers and gave the impression that the nation, like the individual, was driven by a single will and desire in matters of colonial expansion.⁸⁷

In southern Chile, Simon created hundreds of drawings depicting giant trees and impenetrable masses of plants and trunks, reflecting his view of the importance of forests (for examples, see Figs 1–2). These drawings not only confirm the significance of forests for the symbolic construction of the German paradise but also serve as a visual record of Simon’s colonization programme. Notably, he uses giant trees resembling the Tree of Life amidst rudimentary huts to symbolize the inception of this German world, investing himself with the title of the ‘first man’, ‘Adam in paradise’, the pioneer who will build from scratch.

IV. The Racial Issue

Race arouses all sorts of apprehension in Simon. The gist of the matter for him was the preservation of the Germanic race from an overt supremacist perspective. From the outset, Simon makes clear that the apotheosis of humankind in South America at the hands of the ‘Germanic race’ is just and somehow expected. Since North America has been divided and Australia has already been taken by the British, he asks, ‘Will we idly watch the partition of South America as well, without claiming a share in the riches of this continent, or a part in its history?’⁸⁸ In this context and arguing for the inherent racial, intellectual and cultural superiority of German people, Simon cites a text by German geographer and explorer Johann Eduard Wappäus, who contended that South America itself had invited them, ‘proclaiming the rule of our nationality’, dismissing in passing immigrants of ‘Romance origin’, who had proved unfit to achieve a ‘natural development’.⁸⁹ This view put forward by Wappäus and endorsed by Simon was grounded in a radical project of ethnic cleansing, foreseeing the extinction of the ‘Spanish race’ in South America and its gradual substitution by the Germanic, ‘either by conquest or by immigration’.⁹⁰

Along the same lines, Simon considers the absence of a Black population in Chile another crucial incentive for German immigration. He maintains that in Brazil, enslaved Black people were ‘filled with hatred as black as their colour’, which would transform them into dangerous enemies.⁹¹ Similarly, while Bolivia and Uruguay would also be good places in which to start the German conquest, the main issue was the presence of ‘African blood and the race of half-breeds’ at the heart of their societies. According to Simon, these groups were just as ‘dangerous and more than twice as strong as the whites’.⁹² Notably, he distinguishes between the white man in South America, thirsty for gold, ‘libertine’ and sunk in ‘indulgence’ and ‘lust’, and the superior Germanic race.⁹³ Confirming that his colonization project was dependent on the conservation of Germans’ racial integrity and was conceived as the advent of a ‘new man’, Simon concludes that Chile is the only place suitable for ‘primitive’ German settlement.⁹⁴

Miscegenation obsessed Simon in two respects: the racial amalgamation of Germans with other Europeans and South Americans of European lineage on the one hand and interbreeding with Indigenous people on the other. Regarding the former, after exposing all the virtues of the local aristocracy of European descent, Simon subtly suggests the Galicians, the first Spanish conquistadors, as a positive example of racial segregation that the Germans might follow. He emphasizes that the Galicians fought and conquered part of the country, settling in ‘peace and seclusion’ next to the ‘Indigenous race’ but without mixing with them. Simon argues that this segregation allowed the Galicians to ‘preserve their colder blood’ and avoid the ‘wild passions’ of mixed races.⁹⁵

Simon’s racial awareness did not entail overt disdain and hatred. On the contrary, it was founded on an ‘unquestionable’ natural order in which he recognized the German race as superior and more advanced within the human hierarchy. He saw Indigenous people as deserving of compassion, and he criticized the violence and slavery they endured at the hands of Spanish conquistadors.⁹⁶ Simon’s ‘moral’ racialism was not necessarily grounded in hierarchical/biological principles that would lead to an egalitarian view.⁹⁷ Indeed, he urged strict segregation from Indigenous people. Although he considered the merging of races necessary in some cases, he perceived a natural antagonism between races that would make such a mixture ‘almost impossible’. In Simon’s moral system, this natural opposition was tied to a powerful sense of supremacy and preservation that made him see racial assimilation as the destiny of South Americans, though not of the Germans, whose spirit was ‘tougher and stronger’.⁹⁸

The choice of Valdivia and Chiloé provinces as locations for German colonies was largely based on the Germans’ perceived ability to interact with Indigenous people according to this racial and moral standard. Whether mere strategy or sincere belief, treating Indigenous people differently to how the brutal Spanish had done during the conquest was crucial, Simon recognized, to the success of his project. Simon cites the examples of Kindermann and Johann Renous, two German colonizers who had become ‘friends of the Indians’ and gained experience in dealing kindly with these ‘primitive people’. Without these ‘skills’, Simon asserts, the acquisition of lands belonging to the ‘Indians’ would have been impossible.⁹⁹ This ‘friendly’ relationship yielded ‘protection and alliance’. ‘The Indians’, Simon declares, ‘eagerly await the ships leading the new brothers to their shores.’¹⁰⁰

Simon’s depiction of the Mapuche, or Araucanians, clearly echoes the European conception of these people as ‘noble savages’, those amiable and uncorrupted creatures who lived in harmony with nature, a Romantic image that scholars often relate to eighteenth-century scientific racism.¹⁰¹ When Simon opted to convey a view of these people as ‘infantile, good-natured, innocent, trusty domestic servants’—all characteristics that make them ‘an essential working element’ for the colonists—instead of stressing the Mapuche’s well-known indomitable and brave character, he did so for purely tactical purposes.¹⁰² To encourage other colonizers to go to Chile, it was convenient to propagate the idea of the Mapuche and other Indigenous groups as ‘good Indians’, ‘poor but well-intentioned people’, ‘gentle, docile and devoted’.¹⁰³ In doing so, he advantageously relegated their combative spirit to a distant past: ‘Their ancient heroism lives only in Ercilla’s saga.’¹⁰⁴

V. The Education of the Earth and the Thousand Families

Simon employed racial arguments to endow his mission with a higher purpose. Eventually, he reveals that the education of a ‘new race’ was essential to his agenda of possessing and ‘civilizing’ that corner of the world:

Just as foreign peoples once carried the education of India and Egypt across the sea to Greece and Rome, so German education, which has hitherto scattered its intellectual seed to all ends of the earth without finding a soil for independent development, will lay the foundations for new nation-building across the ocean.¹⁰⁵

In this distorted version of Novalis’s famous dictum ‘We are on a mission: we have been called upon for the education of the earth’, Simon contends that ‘South America has recognized that we are called upon to fulfil the mission of civilization there, and we can only do this as Germanic peoples’.¹⁰⁶ The decisive outcome of this conquest would be ‘a unique original species of people’, a new race shaped by Germans’ ‘stronger spirit’, whose existence would be in the interest of humanism and civilization.¹⁰⁷

Although Simon insists that his project would be nonviolent and carried out through industry and culture, the deployment of Germans across the continent would be its concrete outcome. Behind this ‘invisible conquest’ lies an ambitious calculation. Simon envisions two primary hubs of German colonies, one in Chile and one in California, which would have commercial ties. ‘Germanic tribes’, he writes, ‘will advance political and intellectual education’ from these two emporia of commerce. German colonies will progress from the north and the south to meet around ‘the hips of the earth’, the equator.¹⁰⁸ Subsequently, those moving from the north would take possession of the south-western American ports (Simon mentions Valdivia specifically). Concurrently, the migrant colonies will move inland to take the lands along the rivers Bueno and Maullín, and then ‘the northern wanderers’ will seize the land of the Araucanians, the territory of the Indigenous people who supposedly were ‘friends of the Germans’.¹⁰⁹ Finally, the German tribes would advance to the southernmost part of the continent to conquer Patagonia, the land populated by the mythological giant Patagonians. There, Simon hopes, ‘the sounds of culture’ will one day reign.¹¹⁰

Simon’s project grows in ambition and outlandishness as he details how the German occupation of Chile should take place. He has considered all the practicalities of this enterprise and has devised a clear socio-political strategy. Each German tribe, or cell, would consist of 1,000 families supporting and protecting one another. The first six tribes should be planted along the river Trumao, the remaining four on the coast. The only condition, Simon states, is that these tribes should be able to easily reach one another.¹¹¹

Additionally, Simon emphasizes the importance of including a group of 500 unmarried men, ‘vigorous fighters’, in each tribe.¹¹² Yet why would this be necessary if the Indigenous people were friendly to the Germans, and if the German colony was to be located approximately thirty miles from the free Araucanians?¹¹³ The only vague explanation Simon offers is the existence of ‘wild tribes’ such as the Huilliches and Pehuenches, who sometimes leave the mountains to raid cattle.¹¹⁴

These initial colonies would maintain their unique customs, language and community constitution while aware that they must not become a nation within a nation.¹¹⁵ Once these tribes reach their population limit in Chile, which could take decades or ‘even centuries’, the ‘Chilean Germano-Americans’ would continue their expansion by crossing the Andes into Argentina. There, tribes should be established closer together, owing to the greater danger posed by possible attackers from ‘the wild forests’.¹¹⁶ To ensure protection, Simon recommends that 10,000 men capable of bearing arms be stationed in these tribes. The German settlers would then move ‘from generation to generation’, much like in North America, where people entered the interior from the coasts along the rivers. Simon believes this account relates how his people’s greater destiny and history should unfold, laying the ‘foundations of a pyramid’ from which a ‘higher culture’ will proudly emerge.¹¹⁷

VI. Conclusion

A radical political position and racialized worldview progressively pervaded Simon’s works throughout his life and is evident in Auswanderung und Deutsch-nationale Kolonisation. This treatise was a product of Simon’s messianic personality, Romantic notions, the convulsed socio-political scenario in mid-nineteenth-century Germany, and the myriad scientific theories that championed the physical, moral and intellectual superiority of Germans over other peoples, an ideology that would become a pillar of German national identity throughout the nineteenth century.¹¹⁸

Simon encouraged territorial occupation on the basis of cultural, scientific, economic and racial arguments tailored to the idea of ‘Germanness’. Moreover, the treatise reveals the extent to which German colonization in Chile used education and science strategically, as Trojan horses deployed against the local authorities but reinforcing the myth of the ‘good colonizers’. Simon presents a fresh perspective on how epistemic colonization with nationalistic and Romantic overtones prefigured the seizure of the land and endured long thereafter, fuelling colonial operations with idealized mental pictures and a rhetoric of a new homeland, a ‘territory of freedom’ in which to establish a ‘new commencement’.

In practice, Simon aimed to preserve Germans’ national identity (Volkstum) in Chile in light of appropriative discourses that operated in physical and symbolic domains. In the process, he disseminated cultural anxieties about origin and purity, encouraging German settlement on the premise that Chile was a place devoid of culture, inhabited by beings who occupied an inferior level in the hierarchical natural order of humankind. Such a belief encapsulates the enduring perceived divide between ‘cultured white men’ (Kulturvölker) and the so-called ‘natural’ peoples (Naturvölker), which was dominant in scientific and cultural practices in nineteenth-century Germany.¹¹⁹

As this article has demonstrated, Simon’s treatise suggests momentous changes in the geopolitical landscape of Europe and Latin America. It deserves attention in particular in light of its expression of racialist roots of the German colonization of southern Chile. And while colonization pamphlets and guidebooks for colonizers were not uncommon in nineteenth-century Germany, Simon’s treatise is distinguished by its incorporation of Romantic ideas.

Indeed, most of the arguments developed in Auswanderung und deutsch-nationale Kolonisation paralleled those of the German Romantic movement and were substantially shaped by its philosophy. The most striking Romantic elements include the veneration of nature, a teleological vision of freedom, the idea of the Garden of Eden and the portrayal of incomplete and impure humanity. The presence of these ideas throughout the treatise resulted in bombastic rhetoric claiming the creation of a ‘new man’ regulated by new moral norms. This vision was a product of a fascination with the past and an emphasis on the unique superiority of the German mind. Simon’s work is set apart in challenging the notion that Romanticism never developed a programme for a modern German nation-state.¹²⁰ In a sense, Simon’s treatise is the missing link between the early nineteenth-century Romantic nationalism of Ernst Moritz Arndt, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn and Johann Gottlieb Fichte, which often had a distinctly democratic dimension, and the decidedly conservative völkisch nationalism of the later nineteenth century.¹²¹

While there is no clear evidence of Simon’s ideas influencing government policy in Germany, the treatise was widely known among German settlers in Chile and among German enthusiasts for colonial expansion. Simon has been considered one of the founding fathers of German colonization in Chile.¹²² His treatise was widely read and aspiring settlers frequently carried a copy on their journey to Chile.¹²³ Simon was aware of its success, writing in the 1850 preface that a second edition had become necessary just a year after publication of the work because of the high level of interest generated by the first edition.¹²⁴ Furthermore, Simon’s initiative in Chile can be viewed as an early endeavour to establish a ‘Nueva Germania’ in Latin America, a racially pure Aryan settlement akin to the project undertaken by Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and Bernhard Förster in Paraguay in 1887.¹²⁵

Simon’s work has been largely dismissed, however, as the product of a fevered mind and an eccentric personality. His voice and influence have been downplayed, probably because they reflect too truthfully the zeitgeist of the years preceding the establishment of the German colony in Chile and its obscure origins. Rodolfo Amando Philippi, a prominent figure in the Chilean-German community from the 1850s, disapproved strongly of Simon and deemed his ideas an unsavoury element in the German settlement of Chile. After Simon’s death, Philippi took possession of his diary and selectively edited Simon’s writings, effectively shaping and limiting the dissemination of their author’s ideas.¹²⁶ Later commentators agreed. As Gottfried Fittbogen noted in 1936, with Simon, the ‘spectre of the German danger’ in Chile became visible for the first time.¹²⁷

Yet, Simon was part of an organized network that included merchants, scientists and political activists in Germany and Chile. He explicitly affirmed in Auswanderung und deutsch-nationale Kolonisation that his ideas sprang from a system actively informed by settlers, scientists and naturalists who had surveyed the territory before him. His treatise highlights the blind spots and intersections of German Romanticism, colonialism, and racial thinking in nineteenth-century Latin America, revealing how these ideologies overlapped, influencing German perceptions and colonial ambitions in the region.

Footnotes