Writing a National Colony: The Hostility of Inscription in the Ge ...

Chapter 1

Writing the Colony

If the German does not find language, law, and custom in America, he must, in order to remain for the time being within the circle of his old ideas, take them with him in the form of a cohesive group.⁶

—Alexander Simon (Auswanderung 31)

The historiography of the German settlements in Southern Chile has converged on a father figure and a founding moment. On August 18, 1842, Bernhard Eunom Philippi (1811–1852) submitted to Ramón Luis Irarrázabal, Minister of the Interior of the Republic of Chile—through the intendant of Valdivia, Colonel José Ignacio García—a first plan for settling the interior of the province of Valdivia with German immigrants (Held, Colonización 11). The settlement came into being in 1852 and eventually prospered, having survived an initial period marred by starvation and administrative difficulties. To this day, the area’s German heritage is preserved in its cultural institutions and significant bilingualism.