Introduction

Talking about historical relations between Brazil and Luxembourg might at first seem a bit strange; here are two countries, continents apart, with breathtaking differences in size and population: Brazil is 3,290 times bigger in size, with a population that is 338 times larger than Luxembourg’s. When I arrived in Brasilia in 2017 to work in the capital of the fifth-largest country in the world, I was greeted with open arms and warm welcomes. What I found the most astonishing was that links with Luxembourg could be found nearly everywhere in Brazil, from the state of Rio Grande do Sul in the far south to the state of Amapá in the northern Amazon River delta. I set out to discover and document some of these connections, many of which are still alive today. My visits took me to the places where a Luxembourg presence is still visible and where there are testimonies—historical and contemporary—as well as a number of descendants of the Luxembourgish immigrants. Let me take you on a Brazilian journey from north to south, and through the centuries.

The first two stops on our Brazilian voyage will be among familiar faces. Indeed, extensive research has been done on João Felipe Bettendorff, the Luxembourg-born Jesuit who played an important role in the lower Amazon region of the senventeenth century. His own published work is considered as the classic description of this region and is extensively quoted by historians, biologists, anthropologists, and so on. Numerous Brazilian publications have focused on some of the things that Bettendorff first described to the Portuguese and European world. Even though he has not been translated, he ranks among the key historical figures of his time. Much is already known about him, so I will not dwell upon this here.

The same holds true for the centenary presence of ARBED, through its Brazilian subsidiary Belgo-Mineira, which today remains an important part of the largest steel company in the world: ArcelorMittal. The history is known, well-researched, and remains alive in the memories of the descendants of the Luxembourgers who went to Brazil to work for the company, and it is well-documented in the company archives in Sabará. This presence continues to contribute greatly to the economic success of ARBED’s successor company.

In this brief article, I have chosen to highlight some of the lesser-known history of the nineteenth-century Luxembourg immigration to southern Brazil. This topic is particularly interesting given that the descendants of these immigrants have taken on numerous prominent positions in Brazil. They have also become increasingly visible and relevant in Luxembourg. My hope is that these sketches will inspire readers to look into this topic further, to consult the excellent archival sources quoted in the text, or to conduct their own research and delve even further into this segment of history.

The places on the map (Figure 1) correlate, from north to south, with three different periods of immigration from Luxembourg:

1. In the second half of the seventeenth century, João Felipe Bettendorff was active from Parintins to São Luis, throughout the states of Amazonas (AM), Pará (PA), and Maranhão (MA).

2. BelgoMineira/ArcelorMittal has been active in the Monlevade area, in the state of Minas Gerais (MG), since 1921.

3. In the nineteenth century, immigrants settled in the states of Espirito Santo (ES), Paraná (PR), Santa Catarina (SC), and Rio Grande do Sul (RS), stretching from Luxemburgo to Walachai.

1. The presence of a few Luxembourgish missionaries has been documented in the history of Portuguese Brazil. Among them one stands out: João Felipe Bettendorff (b. 1625 in Lintgen). He lived in the Amazon from 1661 and died in 1698 in Belém do Pará. For some time, he was the Jesuit superior in the Amazon, in the historical Estado do Maranhão e Grão-Pará. During his travels, Bettendorff founded several mission stations, as far away as Parintins, in today’s state of Amazonas. One of these was established in 1661 on the Tapajo River and later became the city of Santarém, in the state of Pará. In 1698, he wrote a reference work on the history of the Lower Amazon—Crônica da Missão dos Padres da Companhia de Jesus no Estado do Maranhãoa—a region roughly encompassing today’s states of Pará, Amapá, and Maranhão. Testimonies of his presence are to be found in Santarém (see Figure 2), where he is remembered as the founder of that large city on the Amazon, midway between Belém and Manaus. In-depth research about Bettendorff’s life and his work has been done by Professor Karl Heinz Arenz, who published extensively on this subject.²

2. Further south, we jump forward a few centuries and arrive in more recent times. From the 1920s, several hundred engineers and technicians from Luxembourg brought their know-how to Minas Gerais in order to build and operate the first modern Brazilian steelworks. This substantial investment by ARBED created what would become Luxembourg’s largest economic diaspora in the country’s history. The comprehensive interactive project “colonia.lu” created by Dominique Santana is packed with historical details and oral histories of Luxembourgish economic migrants to the steel industry towns of Sabará and João Monlevade.⁴

One of the first Luxembourgish honorary consulates was opened in Belo Horizonte, and the successive directors of BelgoMineira, the ARBED investment in Brazil, became the honorary consuls. They functioned as heads of the company and as honorary representatives of Luxembourg’s government at the same time. This greatly improved the lives of engineers and technicians from Luxembourg and Europe, as the consuls authorized their entries, exits, passport renewals, and so on. During the Nazi occupation, this community assisted the Luxembourg government in exile and even hosted a historic visit by Prince Jean in 1942 (see Figure 3). The honorary consulate still continues to serve the interests of Luxembourg as well as the local historical community, though today it is no longer linked to ArcelorMittal.

The close economic connection remains alive as documented by two State visits, first by Grand-Duc Jean in 1964 and later by Grand-Duc Henri in 2007, in which they visited ArcelorMittal and the Luxembourg community in Minas Gerais. The steel industry’s strong link with Luxembourg continues to this day; BelgoMineira is still an integral part of the ArcelorMittal corporation, many emblematic buildings of the new futuristic capital Brasilia contain steel produced in these mills, and some of the descendants of those pioneers live in Belo Horizonte while others have spread throughout Brazil.

3. The major immigrations in the nineteenth century also brought Luxembourgers to Brazil. During my stay in Brazil, I was able to visit many communities of descendants of Luxembourgish immigrants from the nineteenth century. What struck me most was their strong emotional relationship with Luxembourg, which stems from their respect for their ancestors and the hardship they lived through when they immigrated to this faraway country in order to provide their descendants with a better life than they would have had in Luxembourg in those times. This feeling unites all of them. But first, some historical background about the country that actively invited these European immigrants.

The politico-historical context of nineteenth century immigration to Brazil

On September 7, 1822, Dom Pedro, the Brazilian Prince Regent and son of the Portuguese King Dom Joao VI, proclaimed himself Emperor of Brazil (Dom Pedro I), and cut the links to Portugal, declaring Brazilian independence. Independent Brazil bordered the new states which had emerged from strong Spanish colonies that had provided Spain and the rest of Europe with riches. The first Spanish settlements dated from the early 1500s (for example, Buenos Aires from 1536 and Asuncion from 1537). After the collapse of Spanish rule in South America during the Napoleonic period, new states emerged from the old vice-kingdoms. On Brazil’s southwestern borders these states were Argentina (1816) and Paraguay (1811). On the Brazilian side it was all jungle, inhabited by the native population. In the eyes of the Brazilian emperor, there was therefore an urgent need to counteract possible territorial claims by these neighbors. This was best done by sending immigrants there to settle and secure the borders of the independent Brazil (Jochem 2024). This immigration gave rise to today’s three federal states in the south: Paraná (Curitiba), Santa Catarina (Florianopolis), and Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre).

However, these areas of southern Brazil, like most of the rest of the country, were already well populated before the arrival of the first Europeans in the region, Portuguese immigrants from the Azores Islands who had settled along the coast of today’s Santa Catarina around 1750. Indigenous villages of the Guarani, Kaingang, Xokleng, and other peoples still existed along the coast and the rivers, although their populations had steadily been declining since the arrival of the first Europeans in the 16th century. The indigenous people were victims of large-scale exploitation, slavery, removal, and disease, particularly at the hands of the bandeirantes slavery expeditions originating in São Paulo (Green & Skidmore 2021).

The idea of creating incentives for Europeans to settle in the country’s vast spaces was probably also inspired by immigration policy in the United States (Santos 2004, 67). There had been initial efforts in Brazil even before independence. The Portuguese King Joao VI, who fled from Napoleon to Rio de Janeiro in 1807, saw that the small local population was not enough to develop an economic output on a European scale. In November 1808 he issued a decree (Decreto de 25 de novembro de 1808), based on an old Portuguese law, to allow people to clear land (sesmarias). This was the first formal policy of encouraging immigration to certain regions in Portuguese Brazil.

The immigration policy launched by Dom Pedro I foresaw European immigrants settling in so-called colonias and lasted from 1824 until 1830 (Costa, De Souza & Dos Anjos Barros 2019). At that time, the opening up might have been influenced by the emperor’s wife, Dona Leopoldina, who was Archduchess Maria Leopoldine of Austria, daughter of Emperor Franz I. European immigrants came mostly from the Austrian Empire, especially from Trento (Italians) and from German areas (Pomerania, both sides of the Moselle River, Luxembourg and the Hunsrück, the neighboring Eifel, etc.).

In the areas of Luxembourg, the Eifel, the Moselle, and the Hunsrück, recruiters became active, calling on the local population to emigrate. This gave rise to a “Brazil fever” (Wey 2005). Among these emigrants were veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, who were of particular interest for Brazil because they could help secure the borders if the need should arise. The emigrants from the Hunsrück, the Eifel, and the Trier area were joined by some individuals and families from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and from the old Duchy of Luxembourg; the areas on the eastern side of the Sauer and Our rivers were transferred to Prussia at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The emigrants followed promises (of free land, and so on) and together they went, either on foot or by boat on the Moselle and the Rhine rivers, to Bremen and to Hamburg. Upon reaching Brazil in Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janeiro, they underwent health controls and were then sent to the southern border states, usually by ship.

Starting in the late 1820s, a small number of emigrants from Luxembourg were among these settlers in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Paraná. Research indicates that 80% of Luxembourgish immigrants arrived in these three states, of which more than 50% arrived in Santa Catarina (Steiner & Loyo 2022). In the following pages I do not endeavor to present a complete study of this immigration, a vast topic in itself. Nor do I claim these lines to be a scientific treatise. The chapters that follow will in part present fragments, like pieces of a mosaic; stories and histories of individuals and places linked to the Luxembourgish immigration and other presences in Brazil. I therefore offer a contribution which helps to give context and background to the emigration from Luxembourg in the early nineteenth century.

Much has been written in Brazil about these immigrants, however, it is mostly limited to very detailed biographies of individuals, as well as detailed information about the villages they founded. Most of these very valuable publications reflect the perspective of genealogists. Often, these publications have been written by descendants, and thus benefit from invaluable firsthand information. However, this also means that circulation is limited and there is no translation into other languages. This body of work would merit in-depth consideration by social historians and anthropologists, as it deals with a unique phase in the history of early Brazilian colonization that is most distinct from the earlier and later Portuguese population, which in the south also has regional particularities.

Early Luxembourgish settlements

The Luxembourgish immigrants founded and co-founded villages in several states:

Rio Grande do Sul

Mathias Mombach arrived in 1829 and built the first house in Morro Reuter (Figure 4). He died there on November 7, 1878, at the age of ninety-one. Mombach was one of the very first Luxembourgers who came to this state. He not only represents an ideal immigrant from the Brazilian perspective back then, but his life reflects important events from that time in the south of the country, especially in the mountain ranges around the valley of Sinos, not far from Porto Alegre.

Mathias Mombach was born in Echternach on March 10, 1787, to Apollonia Reuter and Johann Mombach. He fought in the Napoleonic armies from 1807 to 1813 and took part in the campaigns in Calabria and Sicily, Russia, and Saxony. In August 1813, he was injured in a battle, which marked the end of his military career (Schaack 1909–1910). Back in Echternach, Mombach was recruited by one of the emigration agents who traveled the countryside and sold passages to Brazil. Dom Pedro I wanted European war veterans, mostly from the Napoleonic wars, to settle in southern Brazil in order to defend the borders.

Mombach arrived in the German colony of São Leopoldo on the Sinos River in the state of Rio Grande do Sul on March 18, 1829 with his wife Anna Maria Dietrich. From there, he moved straight into the mountains and was the first to settle the hamlet of Walachai in a remote valley in the township of Reutersberg (Morro Reuter).⁵ Today, Walachai is a lively village that, among other things, has a thriving shoe factory. According to the mother of local historian João Benno Wendling, it was said that Mombach spoke French better than German. Wendling’s grandmother reported that she had to learn French words like “malheur, plaisir, misérable” (Wendling 2013, 47).

Because of his military skills, Mombach came to play a role in the war of secession which took place in this southern province of Brazil. During the Farroupilha Revolution (1835–1845), he joined the head of the Imperial and the “Legalists” militia in the colony, led by Dr. Hillebrand. The German colonists were not interested in the revolution; they wanted to live and work in peace. In the wake of this unrest, they organized themselves against the bandits who were terrorizing their colony. The best known, according to reports, was a certain Antonio Joaquim da Silva, “Menino Diabo” (“devil child”), so called because of his small stature. Wendling describes how Mathias Mombach was an ensign in a militia unit that hunted this bandit’s group. At one point, Mombach recognized the bandit and caught him with his militia near the town of Baumschneis (Dois Irmãos). During a shootout, the bandit was injured in the leg and Mombach, being a good soldier, gave the order to transfer him to the town of Dois Irmãos to face trial there. Menino Diabo was locked up and guarded, but relatives of his victims killed him during the night (Wendling 2003, 75–76).

German-Luxembourg immigration historian Felipe Kuhn Braun and other local historians quote this story repeatedly and in detail. Mombach’s great-granddaughter Teresa Henrich also wrote about him, and probably embellished the story quite a bit. Nevertheless, Mombach must have been a local personality because, according to a contemporary report, the Argentine statesman, one-time foreign minister, historian, and poet Juan María Gutierrez, visited him in 1844. Here is how Gutierrez remembered the visit to Mombach’s home: “The main pieces are made of cedar wood and are arranged for defense against wild Indians. As I entered these rooms, I sensed a scent that I soon identified: it came from cedar wood, the only material used to build this type of ark, dedicated to the protection of an old man (Mombach). Soldier of the Emperor Napoleon and now lieutenant of Emperor Dom Pedro II. Half a block from the building, a very clear stream flows over the stony ground. Anyone who is near the house will find everything they need in Ensign Mombach’s realm: rifles, dogs, the company of one of his children. And just a few steps away there is a black tiger, a wild boar, a deer to choose from.”⁶ Mombach’s death was reported in this way: “He died at a very old age in little Wallachia, already a widower, under the care of his son Shang (João).”⁷

Santa Catarina

The State of Santa Catarina, founded in 1738 by secession from the state of São Paulo, went so far as to create its own immigration authority from 1840 onward (Piazza 1982, 79). European immigration had begun even earlier, when the Brazilian government founded the Colonia São Pedro de Alcântara in Santa Catarina in the coastal mountains in order to settle “German” emigrants there. The areas for the German and Italian immigrants were located in the mountain ranges above Florianopolis, and in the Itajaí and Rio Negro valleys.

In November 1828, 635 emigrants arrived there, of which 523 had traveled from the port of Bremen and 112 from the “Legião Alemã,” a German mercenary force that was stationed in Rio and was no longer needed there (Piazza 1982, 85). No Brazilian historians mention Luxembourgers, but there were a few who were already part of the first group. In Brazil, anyone who spoke a Germanic language was considered a German. The numbers of Luxembourgish immigrants were never very high, but the few who came did not go unnoticed. They were documented by local historians, such as Aderbal Philippi. His publications are an important source for this article (Philippi 1995). In the local history museum of São Pedro de Alcântara, a room is dedicated to these first Luxembourg immigrants.⁸

The first Luxembourgish immigrant was probably Peter Steil from Mertzig, who arrived in Santa Catarina on August 17, 1828. He settled in the river valley in Tijucas. In November 1828, 276 more immigrants from the Brig Luiza disembarked in Desterro, today’s Florianopolis, including Joannes Kirbag from Berburg, Nicolas Wild from Garnich, and Mathias Roden from Heisdorf. Immediately afterward, in 1829 or 1830, Nicolas and Georg Mannes arrived there from Echternach. They count among the very first settlers of São Pedro de Alcântara.

Another family with an interesting history is the Schwindens. Their experience helps us better understand the situation and lives of the first European settlers. They came to Santa Catarina as part of the “German” immigration from 1829 and 1863 to the colonies of Santa Isabel, Vargem Grande, and many other localities in the greater Florianopolis area. The Rancho Queimado colony accepted the following settlers on July 19, 1862: Mathias Schwinden (twenty-eight years old), his wife Margretta Schwinden (thirty-three years old), and their children Johann, Mathias, and Johann Peter Schwinden (ten, six, and three years old). The eldest son, Mathias Schwinden (thirteen years old) did not arrive in Brazil until July 16, 1863 because he got lost in Antwerp when the family embarked in 1862.

Upon the family’s arrival in 1862, Mathias Schwinden received the first piece of colonial land in Estrada de Lages, on the Taquaras River, from the Directorate of Public Lands and Colonization of the Ministry of Agriculture, Trade and Public Works of the Imperial Government of Brazil. The Taquaras district belongs to the municipality of Rancho Queimado, a region that had been familiar to the drovers of livestock of Campos de Lages since the 18th century.

As soon as they arrived, they immediately set about planting the first fields of corn, cassava, beans, and sugar cane, which were sold in the region that now forms the Florianopolis metropolitan area, as well as in the cities of Bom Retiro and Lages. But they had to face many difficulties in their new land. The frequent attacks by indigenous people in the region created a situation of permanent insecurity. In addition, these lands were not very fertile and were littered with rocks. This situation led the Schwinden family to decide on a new direction and move to a less “problematic” area. At that time, there were still more indigenous people living in Santa Catarina than there were immigrants.

Another factor that made life in the colony difficult was the geomorphology of the region, which consisted of very steep terrain that made it difficult to grow crops. The Schwindens sold their land and moved to Sul do Rio, a town in the municipality of Santo Amaro da Imperatriz in the fertile plain of the Rio Cubatão, closer to the coast (Fraga 1998). Another descendant, Nicolau Schwinden, was a tropeiro, a trader and cattle driver, and leader of caravans that sold goods along the all-important domestic trade routes. These traders were of enormous importance; they made cross-regional trade possible because they traveled along the old routes between the coastal area and the inland plateau. Later, he also ran a slaughterhouse.

I came upon another interesting Luxembourg descendant during a visit to the botanical garden in Rio de Janeiro. I noticed a name, Dr. Paulino Reitz, whose monument I had previously seen in the town of Antônio Carlos, SC (see Figure 5). Reitz was a very interesting personality. He was of Luxembourgish descent through his mother, Anna Wilvert, the Brazilian-born daughter of Joseph Wollwert/Wilwert (b. 1843 in Heiderscheidergrund), who emigrated at the age of eighteen with his family from Kocherei, Marnach, on board the ship Massilius and settled in São Pedro de Alcântara. Like many in southern Brazil, Dr. Paulino Reitz (b. September 19, 1919, in Antônio Carlos, SC; d. November 19, 1990, in Itapema, SC) believed that his ancestors were German. He was a priest and a botanist, and he was considered the world specialist for bromeliads in his time; some varieties also bear his name. He founded the Barbosa Rodrigues Herbarium in São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul, and was director of the botanical garden in Rio de Janeiro from 1971 to 1975, where he had the Bromeliad House installed. He then served as director of the Environmental Foundation of Santa Catarina (FATMA). He has received the United Nations Global 500 Prize for his scientific work.

Espirito Santo

In 1858, in addition to those three states in the south, a group of more than 50 people immigrated to the state of Espirito Santo, where they founded the small village of Luxemburgo, located in the district of Santa Leopoldina, nestled deep in the coastal mountains (see Figure 6). They too did not forget their origin, and they settled on lands reserved by the local authorities for European immigration and named for their home regions and countries (France, Switzerland, Tyrol, Pomerania, etc.) as documented in the Arquivo publico do Estado do Espirito Santo.⁹ At the time, there was a state company in Brazil that was making land available to newly arrived immigrants (Steiner & Loyo 2022).

The purpose of this article is to briefly describe Luxembourgish immigration to Brazil, and therefore I include this unique later immigration because it created a single coherent community that even carries the name of the country. I do not want to dwell on later immigrations, though it is worth noting that another big wave of emigration took place in Europe in the years 1855–1864. During this emigration from Luxembourg, a larger number of emigrants chose to go to the United States, which then occasionally led to siblings separating and emigrating to different countries. Today, some descendants of Luxembourgish immigrants in Brazil have direct relatives in the United States Midwest.

The descendants of the immigrants today

In the south of Brazil, elements of the migrants’ language have survived, and we can sometimes hear Luxembourgish at village festivals and family gatherings, where people celebrate and pay homage to the courage of their ancestors. Some cultural elements have also remained, even though the Hunsrück language and culture were very strong. But we have to be honest, some foods and traditions are regional and were shared historically in the region of the old Duchy of Luxembourg and beyond the Moselle, the Sauer, and the Our.

The most recent “discovery” of a large diaspora in southern Brazil, as well as the increased attention given to the better-known community in the United States Midwest, partly result from a temporary law (2008–2018) that allowed the descendants of Luxembourgers who had emigrated to reclaim the nationality of their ancestors. The procedure for applying for Luxembourgish nationality created a big boost in genealogy studies, and many Brazilians were surprised by the fact that their ancestors were not German, as they had always thought. A number of descendants of Luxembourgish immigrants, some of whom, in past centuries, had been prominent in society, politics, or religion, had never found out that they were of Luxembourgish descent. A new awareness has been created due to the results of genealogical research. During the process of applying for the nationality of their ancestors, many applicants traveled to Luxembourg and discovered the land of their forebears for the first time. This has created new bonds for the future.

Today, several tens of thousands of Brazilians, descendants of Luxembourgish immigrants, cherish their roots and identify with this unknown homeland of their forefathers. They are making great efforts to adopt more cultural elements to complement the few that were passed down by the immigrants, who were few in number and could not help but partially merge these elements with some of the traditions of the much more numerous German immigrants from neighboring regions, such as Trier and the Hunsrück. Thus, Luxembourg has become their newfound spiritual homeland, next to Brazil. The Luxembourg-Brazilians are connecting with each other through social media and creating a multitude of exchanges about all things Luxembourg.

The new Luxembourger double nationals living in Brazil today actively request cultural activities in order to strengthen this link, such as language classes and information about traditional activities. St. Nicolas’s day, Luxembourg’s main holiday for children, is now celebrated again by our honorary consuls with Luxembourg ancestry among the descendants’ communities in the three southern states and elsewhere. Some traditional foods brought over by the first immigrants have survived, other recipes are being revived, and new ones are appearing (see Figure 7). Traditional cookery classes take place, and a folk-dancing group named “Feierwon, mir wölle bleiwe wat mir sin” has been founded in Curitiba (see Figure 8). A network of ten honorary consulates all over Brazil has been put in place, which is also serving the new Luxembourgish citizens.

A new tendency, albeit fairly small, has developed in the form of a “reimmigration.” Having received their Luxembourg nationality, some families have already moved to Luxembourg to start a new life for themselves and their children in the home country of their ancestors. The multilingual society of Luxembourg is an immense challenge, which they are facing with courage. This big step is different, of course, but in a way not that different, from the one their ancestors took when they moved to a new world in southern Brazil.

This newfound closeness between the Brazilian Luxembourgers and the land of their ancestors has created another interesting dynamic: during the election campaign of 2023, some active members of the descendants’ community used the impressive number of citizens with double nationality, who all have the right to vote, as a reason to invite Luxembourgish politicians from all parties represented in parliament to visit southern Brazil and present their party programs.

This population of “new and old” Luxembourg-Brazilians, their cultural needs, and their search to identify with modern Luxembourg society is indeed worthy of scientific research and should interest historians and sociologists alike. I encourage the reader and future traveler to Brazil to look for Luxembourg’s heritage and cultural activities in the presences that are to be found among the descendants of these nineteenth century immigrants all over Brazil.

References

1. Arenz, Karl Heinz. De l’Alzette à l’Amazone: Jean-Philippe Bettendorff et les jésuites en Amazonie portugaise (1661–1693). PhD diss., Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2007.
2. Bley Júnior, Waldemiro. Genealogia da família Bley. Curitiba: Self-published, 1987.
3. Cavallaro, Glacy Weber Ruiz. “Imigrantes luxemburgueses em São Pedro de Alcântara.” In 1829: São Pedro de Alcântara, páginas de sua história, edited by Toni Jochem, and Daniel Silveira. São Pedro de Alcântara: Casa da Cultura, 2020. Accessed September 2, 2021.
4. Costa, Luiz Rosado, José Eduardo Melo De Souza, and Lívia Cristina Dos Anjos Barros. “Um historico da política migratória brasileira a partir de seus marcos legais (1808–2019).” GeoPantanal 14, no. 27 (2019): 167–184.
5. Fraga, Nilson Cesar. “Schwinden: uma família de imigrantes.” Blumenau em Cadernos 29, no. 6 (1998): 36–46.
6. Green, James N., and Thomas E. Skidmore. Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, 3rd Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.
7. Jochem, Toni Vidal. São Pedro de Alcântara. Primeira colônia alemã em Santa Catarina. Accessed January 28, 2024.
8. Krieger, Carlo, and Jean Ensch, “Clerfer Auswanderer in Südbrasilien.” De Cliärrwer Kanton,édition spéciale (2023): 51–65.
9. Kuhn Braun, Felipe. Mathias Mompach, o general caçador de Farrapos. 2013. Accessed July 9, 2023.
10. Moyen, François. A história da Companhia Siderúrgica Belgo-Mineira: uma trajetória de crescimente consistente (1921–2005). Belo Horizonte: ArcelorMittal S/A, 2007.
11. Piazza, Walter Fernando. A Colonização de Santa Catarina. Porto Alegre: Editora Pallotti, 1982.
12. Philippi, Aderbal João. São Pedro de Alcântara. A primeira colônia alemã em Santa Catarina. Florianópolis: Editora Letras Contemporâneas, 1995.
13. Santos, Sílvio Coelho Dos. Nova história de Santa Catarina. Florianópolis: Editora da Ufsc, 2004.
14. Schaack, Charles. Les Luxembourgeois, soldats de la France, 1792–1815. Publication de la Section Historique de l’Institut grand-ducal de Luxembourg 57 & 58. Diekirch: Imprimerie J. Schroell, 1909–10.
15. Steiner, Carlos Eduardo, and Dieter Loyo. “A imigração luxemburguesa em Santa Catarina no século XIX,” in Páginas da colonização: Estudos/subsídios históricos sobre a Colônia Alemã Santa Isabel–175 anos de Fundação, edited by Toni Jochem, and Jonas Bruch, 2022. Accessed January 29, 2024.
16. Wendling, João Benno. A história de Walachai. Porto Alegre: Companhia Rio-grandense de Artes Gráficas, 2013.
17. Wey, Claude. “Die Beziehungen Luxemburgs mit Portugal und Brasilien vom 17. Jahrhundert bis 1960,” Lëtzebuerger Journal 60, March 26 and 27, 2005.

Further reading

1. Arquivo publico do Estado do Espirito Santo. Vitoria: Registro de entrada de imigrante.
2. Decker, François. Feulen 963–1963. Luxembourg: Sankt-Paulus-Druckerei, 1963.
3. Ensch, Jean. “L’émigration à travers les actes notariés.” Nos Cahiers 2/3, 2000.
4. Fendrich, Henrique. A família de Nicolau Becker. Rio Negro, Mafra e Itaiópolis. Curitiba: Edited by the author, 2017.
5. Hennico, André. Messancy-Généalogie 1665–2002. Longueil & Québec: A. Hennico, 2003.
6. Hering, Maria Luiza Renaux. Colonização e indústria no Vale do Itajaí: o modelo catarinense de desenvolvimento. Blumenau: Editora da Furb, 1987.
7. Lenfers Ventura, Alexandre A. Trajetória da colonização luxemburguesa em Santa Catarina. B.A. thesis, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, 2023.
8. Mombach, Mathias. n.d. Genealogy; Accessed January 3, 2024.
9. Muller, Jos. “Die Amerikaauswanderer der Gemeinde Hosingen im 19. Jahrhundert”. In 150 Joer Houser Musek. Luxembourg: n.d.
10. Veber, Fábio, ed., Atlas interativo dos imigrantes luxemburgueses no Brasil.