LOCAL HISTORYARTICLES
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Hi! We are students from SINODAL SCHOOL; it's a beautiful and great school! It has many trees and it is a good place to study. Here we learn everything: Math, Portuguese, German, English, History... About São Leopoldo: It is a city in the south of Brazil, with more than 150.000 inhabitants. We are near Porto Alegre (about 45 minutes by car), the capital of our state, Rio Grande do Sul. This city was colonized by German immigrants. The city has two museums for the German immigration: a big one, near the river, and a small one, far from downtown. São Leopoldo has a shopping center, a University, a lot of restaurants, clubs and many young people. We also have a public gym and Padre Réus Church, a place visited by many people from different places in our state. For the "Local History" Project we chose to describe and inform about the "Immigrants' House Museum" , the museum which is far from the center of the city. The German immigrants' house is an important place in São Leopoldo. When the Germans came to live here, in 1824, they lived in that house. It was their first house here. That is the only house left. The Germans left a lot of historical objects like furniture (table, chairs...), cups, plates, pictures, a lot of other things. This house is now the newest museum in São Leopoldo. It was open to the public only a few weeks ago. You will soon learn more about it and the German immigration. The German Immigrants House This house was founded by the Portuguese in 1788. In this house lived slaves from Africa and Portuguese from Europe. It used to be the "slaves" house near the bosses' house many years ago. It was a farm where it was made material that was used to make ropes and canvas for the Portuguese ships. In the XIX century, precisely on the 25th of July, in 1824, 33 German immigrants arrived in São Leopoldo which was then the "Feitoria do Linho Cânhamo" which is now Feitoria, one of São Leopoldo neighborhoods. Many immigrants were Lutherans. They lived in this house. The Portuguese King in Brazil, D. Pedro I, asked the Germans to come to Brazil. Here they founded a colony to grow vegetable and produce food. There was a shock between the Portuguese and the Germans because many things were different: food, language, culture, customs. The Germans worked very hard. They planted sweet potato, manioc, guava trees and other things. The house is old but it is preserved. It was made of brick and it is now painted white and brown. It has a style called "enxaimel." In the backyard there are many old machines and kind of a cemetery with a cross made of iron and some gravestones . It is very peaceful there with a very green grass, flowers and trees - how old are those trees? There is also a device to extract sugar from the sugar cane(engenho de açúcar) and a wagon. We saw a lot of interesting things about the Germans inside the house: their clothes, diverse personal objects. The house has three bedrooms, with beds and wardrobes, a cradle (How many babies slept in this cradle many years ago?). The mattresses are made of straw. Near the bedrooms there are clothes hanging on the walls, men's and women's clothes. The dining room is big and the kitchen is big, too. There is a stove made of stone, many cupboards, a table and iron casseroles. There is also a sewing machine (can you imagine a woman sewing her family's clothes in the evening with the light of a candle?). In a small room there was a photograph machine and many ancient pictures.The biggest room portrays an old store where the immigrants used to buy the necessary things for their daily life. Sinodal, our school, started there many years ago. We think the German Immigrants' House is a beautiful Museum and we know that the Germans changed the history of Rio Grande do Sul a lot. |
