Germany in Brazil — Oktoberfest, half-timbered fachwerkhaus and the most intact German cultural enclave in South America
Blumenau sits in the Itajaí Valley of Santa Catarina state — a city founded in 1850 by German immigrants whose cultural legacy is more visible here than in many regions of Germany itself. Half-timbered fachwerkhaus architecture lines Rua XV de Novembro, German is spoken in the homes of an estimated 800,000 Santa Catarinians, and the October Oktoberfest (the second-largest in the world after Munich, drawing 600,000 visitors over 18 days) fills the purpose-built Vila Germânica park. The Hering Textile Museum chronicles a company founded here in 1880 that became one of Brazil's largest clothing…
Dr Hermann Blumenau, a German chemist, founded the colony in 1850 with 17 settlers on land the Brazilian government was opening to European immigration as a counterweight to the slave-labour plantation economy of the Northeast. The colony grew to 10,000 residents by 1880, and the Hering textile dynasty established an industrial base that outlasted farming. Two World Wars brought severe pressure on German language and culture, but the Santa Catarina community largely retained its linguistic and folk heritage in a way that German communities elsewhere in South America did not, making Blumenau o…