Nueva Germania
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Nueva Germania ("New Germania") is a village in rural Paraguay. It was founded in 1888 in a remote jungle as a racially pure, utopian settlement of the Aryan race by Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche (the sister of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche), and her husband, the anti-Semitic agitator Bernhard Förster.
A handful of families (originally five; then fourteen) emigrated from Saxony to this 'New Germany' - envisioned as a fertile paradise in which would blossom a model rural society that demonstrated the qualities of German culture. The area's remoteness was thought to allow protection for their unique German culture and allow it to flourish.
The experiment failed. The settlers were unprepared for the hardships of working the land, which was not suitable for German methods of farming. Illness ran rampant, and transportation to the colony was slow and difficult. With the project increasingly mired in debt, Bernhard Förster fatally poisoned himself in a Paraguayan hotel, and Elisabeth returned home.
About 200 of their descendants remained in the village by the mid 1990s according to The Times newspaper.
[edit] References
- Macintyre, Ben. Forgotten Fatherland : The Search for Elisabeth Nietzsche. New York : Farrar Straus Giroux, 1992 Dialog International — "Dick Cheney and Nueva Germania"
- Recent media coverage
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