Nueva Germania: The failed 'Aryan project' in Paraguay

He already had an idea of where such a place might exist.

"I will transplant German culture into 'new and promising soil'," he'd proclaimed — to Paraguay , where the Aguaray-mí and Aguaray-Guazu rivers meet.

For two years, from 1883 to 1885, Förster traveled through the country on horseback, searching for a place where he could realize his utopia.

"Of course, he was driven by his political or ideological beliefs,"  archaeologist Natascha Mehler tells DW.

"From today's perspective, however, one might also say he was a classic social misfit who tried to build a new life for himself elsewhere."
Accompanying him on this new life journey was his wife Elisabeth, the sister of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche .

She affirmed her husband's vision: "We will breed an Aryan master race in the forests of South America.

Only the strongest, the purest of blood, will join us.

The Germany of old is corrupt, but the new Germania will last forever."
Promoting a 'paradise-like refuge'
For the country's first ever independent colony, the Paraguayan government made 20,000 hectares of land about 150 kilometers north of the capital, Asuncion, available to Förster.

Only Germans were allowed to settle in "Nueva Germania." After the War of the Triple Alliance (1864–1870) between Paraguay and the three nations Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, Paraguay had not only lost 50% of its territory but, even worse, around 70% of its population.

That was why settlers eager to invest in the country were welcomed with open arms.

Little interest in the new Germania
"We know which plots of land they received and where they lived," says Mehler, but little is known about the emigrants' motives.

"They were mostly people who had little to no money.

They were certainly discontented in the German empire, left behind by industrialization."
Perhaps youngest sons left out of the inheritance, she suggests.

"And so, they simply put their faith in Bernhard Förster's promises, scraped together their last savings, if you will, to buy a passage on the ship and acquire a plot of land, before setting off for Paraguay with their families."
The settlers quickly became disillusioned.

They realized that Förster's promises of exceptionally fertile soil and a favorable climate did not reflect reality.

"It's really unbearably hot and humid during the rainy season, and also swampy and damp due to the rivers," says Mehler, who conducted two field expeditions in the footsteps of the early colony.

"During the dry season, the soil becomes very sandy and dry.

This made farming difficult; extracting crops from the soil was laborious work."
The colony did not maintain its intended "racial purity" for long.

Mehler believes that without the assistance of the indigenous Guaraní people in the region, the first generation of settlers in Nueva Germania would not have survived.

The utopian settlement was ultimately destined to fail.

"They never managed to establish a stable financial foundation.

All of Förster's letters to Germany, in which he pleaded for support, came to nothing.

After all, it was not a colony granted by the emperor's favor, but a private venture.

And it was clear that Förster was no financial expert either."
Friedrich Nietzsche declined any financial support to his sister and opposed his brother-in-law's antisemitic views.

To persuade him, his sister promised to name an area of the colony after him "Friedrichshain." However, Nietzsche scoffed at the idea and suggested they name it "Lamaland," as "Lama" was his sister's nickname.

Two years after the colony was founded, only 40 families had settled in Nueva Germania, far fewer than the 140 promised in the agreement with the government.

Bernhard Förster found himself deeply in debt and desperate.

He passed away on June 3, 1889.

While it's thought he may have committed suicide, this was never proven.

Förster-Nietzsche had German newspapers report that her husband died as a result of his great efforts on behalf of the colony.

She attempted to keep the colony running for a few more years but eventually returned to Germany.

The descendants and a new colony
Nueva Germania still exists today, with houses lining a wide dirt road that leads to the river, with murky water flowing sluggishly along the outskirts of the village.

Approximately 2,000 people live in the village, many of whom speak German.

When asked about the town's founding, the residents express surprise.

They're not pleased that the media is focusing on their dark past.

"Sometimes I felt that they were thinking: 'We have completely different problems here.

I need to ensure my tractor and my chicken farm are running smoothly and that my road won't wash away in the next rainy season.

And yes, maybe my grandpa or my great-grandpa had some nationalist leanings, but for us today, all of that seems very distant'," says Mehler.

Through her research, Mehler discovered a striking parallel to the present day.

"During the COVID-19 pandemic, many German anti-vaxxers declared Paraguay as their destination.

We actually found a written source from Bernhard Förster, who vehemently opposed the introduction of mandatory smallpox vaccination in the German empire.

He wrote, 'come with me to Paraguay; there's no mandatory vaccination there, so you can do whatever you want'."
Mehler was seated alongside anti-vaxxers on a flight to Asuncion.

At the airport, she noticed promotional posters for "El Paradiso Verde" or "the Green Paradise,"  a German-speaking colony for anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists.

"I was very surprised to see how dramatically history has repeated itself in just 140 years," says Mehler.

The German anti-vaxxers in Paraguay
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This article was originally written in German.