The music practice of German immigrants in Santa Catarina, Brazil (c. 1850 to c. 1900) between integration, segregation and Pan-Germanism

• Applicant: Dr. Christian Storch
• Subject Area: Musicology ; Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2015 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 278480285

The Brazilian Federal State of Santa Catarina can be regarded as a model for the history and present of German-speaking immigrant communities as they have developed in many countries across the globe like in the USA, in China, Argentina, or Australia during the great emigration wave in the middle of the 19th century. Using the example of German immigrants especially in the cities of Blumenau, Pomerode, Florianópolis (or Desterro, respectively), Brusque, and Joinville between c. 1850 and c. 1900, the project will be focussed on the significance of musical practices of a largely homogeneous immigrant community of settlers within an alien state - the Empire of Brazil, founded in 1822 and turned into the República dos Estados Unidos do Brasil in 1889 - as a means of keeping ones cultural identity on the one hand and of intercultural identity transformation on the other hand. A further aim of the project is, for the first time from a German perspective, to reconstruct, scrutinise critically and evaluate historically the music history of German emigrants, which is at the same time a Brazilian music history, in its complexity and cross-cultural dimension, also in the sense of a histoire croisée. The project will be concentrated on four aspects: (i) the repertoires of German theatre (associations) and concert organisations in Santa Catarina in opera and the so-called serious music; (ii) the presence of concert and opera in the German-speaking periodicals of the time, i.e. their public reception; (iii) the social conditions of this musical practice, i.e. the composition of the German and German-Brazilian audience, its influence on the repertoires and (iv) the question after the search for or, respectively, the assertion of cultural identity as well as after the transformation in the intercultural daily life between Germans and Brazilians against the background of political upheavals (e.g. the foundation of the German Empire in 1872; the abolition of the Brazilian Empire in 1889; the beginnings of German imperialism around 1890). As scientific output, the following contributions are planned: a monograph; at least six journal articles (with peer-review) or, respectively, book chapters; an edited volume, based on the papers of an international conference entitled - The Music of German emigrants outside Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries - (to be organised at the UDESC Florianópolis, presumably in March 2016). Furthermore, at least two paper presentations shall be given at international conference per scholarship year.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: Brazil
• Host: Professor Dr. Marcos Holler