Leopoldo Richter's Lost World

Leopoldo Richter, a German artist, explorer and entomologist, fled his troubled nation for the Amazon in the 1930s and spent the next years exploring remotes areas of Brazil and Colombia, where he sketched native peoples whose lives had still not been altered by western culture. A small exhibition of Richter's drawing is on display now in Bogotá's Museo Nacional.

Since Richter's time, hunters, loggers, miners and farmers have invaded deeper into the Amazon, forever changing, and often destroying, the lives of native peoples, who often fall victim to new diseases, habitat loss and the temptations of junk food, alchohol and television.

Nevertheless, some uncontacted indigenous people still remain in the Amazon. Recently, Colombia approved Decreto 4633, requiring the government to protect land used by uncontacted peoples. In January, the government announced it would more than double the size of Chiribiquete National Park in the Amazon, from 1.3 million to 3 million hectares, in part to protect uncontacted native peoples.

However, many of the forces threatening these peoples' existence are illegal, and therefore nearly impossible to control.

 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Karl Buchholz, Brave Bookseller

Karl Buchholz on left. The other man is probably one of his sons. 

While reading about German immigration to Colombia, I discovered the remarkable story of Karl Buchholz, a German bookstore owner who became a minor legend in Bogotá.

The old Buchholz store on
Jimenez Ave. 

Before World War II, Bucholz was a success in Europe, where he opened bookstores in his native Germany, Romania and Portugal, as well as an art gallery in New York. Some of his bookstores also included art galleries, which attracted important artists.

But then fascism tightened its grip on Germany. Buchholz's political leanings aren't clear, but he certainly believed in freedom of thought. In the face of the Nazis' totalitarian laws dictating which books could be read and which paintings displayed, Buchholz continued secretly showing work by artists considered 'degenerate' by the Nazi authorities.

If he'd been caught, Buchholz quite possibly could have been sent to a concentration camp and even murdered.

The Buchholz building today.
(Background, in center.) 

I don't know how Buchholz lived out the war, or if he even stayed in Germany, or why exactly he decided to leave Europe. In one interview shortly before his death, carried out in his book-filled home in north Bogotá, Buchholz said he had feared that communism, which also repressed art and literature, would take over Europe.

After the war, Buchholz emigrated to Bogotá, where he opened a bookstore on Jimenez Ave. and Carrera 8. Eventually, Buchholz and his sons Alberto and Godula opened several stores around the city. His flagship store on Jimenez, which occupied about five stores of the building, also included an art gallery. So, besides courage, give the man credit for persistance and believing in himself.

The area continues to be Bogotá's central bookselling district. Neighboring booksellers remember Buchholz's as being the best bookstore in Bogotá. Today, its building is occupied by a lottery store with offices above it, perhaps a sad commentary on cultural trends.

Bogotá's central book district today.
School texts predominate over literature. 

Beginning in 1960, Buchholz also published the arts magazine Eco, which lasted 24 years.

But with Buchholz's death in 1992 at age 91 and his son Alberto's death in an auto accident six years later, the stores closed, ending an important literary chapter in Bogotá.

See also: Buchholz's passion for literature.

The Buchholz Bookstore-Gallery of Bogotá.

Did a Great Colombian Hide a Nazi Past?

Shoa Remembrance in Bogotá

German Immigrants in Colombia

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

German Immigrants in Colombia

Today, for the first time, during a bike tour we were able to enter Bogotá's Cementerio Alemán, the German Cemetery.

Cemetery administrator Gonzalo.

The German Cemetery is located on the south side of Calle 16, just west of Parque Renacimiento (once the Children's Cemetery) and two blocks west of the Central Cemetery and the British Cemetery.

Gonzalo, who administers the German Cemetery, told us that it opened in 1912 and is still active. It contains about 500 tombs and has capacity for another 500.

'Rest in Peace'

Asian and European immigrants did not flood into Colombia as they did into more southern South American nations with more temperate climates. But immigrants, including German ones, have contributed a lot to Colombia's history and economy.

German immigrants played important roles in exploration, aviation, jewelry, manufacturing and business, amongst other areas, administrator Gonzalo said. In fact, Colombia's first airline - and one of the first in the world - was the Colombian-German Air Transport Society, founded in 1919. The company eventually evolved into Avianca, today Colombia's largest airline.

Leon de Greiff, poet

Germans also were prominent in Colombian science, the most famous of them being Alexander Von Humboldt, who traveled up the Magdalena River in 1800. Another was anthropologist Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, who fled Hitler's fascism and did pioneering research on Colombia's indigenous peoples and founded the Department of Anthropology of the University of the Andes, the first such department in Colombia.

Antonio Navarro Wolff, ex-guerrilla, and now a
top official of Bogotá.

Other prominent Colombians of at least partially German descent include Leon de Greiff, a Colombian modernist poet of the early 1900s, as well as his son Boris, a chess champion, who died just two months ago. Antonio Navarro Wolff, a leader of the M-19 guerrillas is now governor of Nariño Department.

German immigrants have also played important roles in the fabrics, coffee and banking businesses.

Colombia's most famous German immigrant is probably Leo Siegfried Kopp, a German Jew who founded the Bavaria Beer Company and has become a popular saint in Bogotá's Central Cemetery.

But Carlos Lehder, an associate of Pablo Escobar in the Medellin Cartel, was also of German descent.

Asking for a favor
at the tomb of
Leo Kopp in the
Central Cemetery. 

Colombia was also affected by the dark side of German history - fascism and the Holocaust. Colombia backed the Allies during the Second World War, when some German nationals lost their properties and were either deported or sequestered in a hotel in the tropics. A small number of Jews fleeing Naziism settled in Colombia, and a few Nazi war criminals came here. But their numbers were tiny compared to those who emigrated to nations like Argentina, Chile and Brazil.

This headstone carries a cross,
but the name sounds Jewish.

Returning to the cemetery, like the British Cemetery, the German Cemetery is a peaceful, green oasis in the heart of the city. Not all those buried there are from Germany, or even of German descent. We saw headstones with Polish surnames and at least one apparently Jewish-German name. (On the other hand, the Central Cemetery contains many German surnames.) Perhaps those buried in the German cemetery are Protestants, since the tombs' style is much more plain and austere. Or, maybe those buried there simply felt more affinity for their German heritage.

Related posts: A Glimpse of Historical Tragedy , Shoah Remembrence in Bogotá, Colombia in World War II , Karl Buchholz, Bookseller, Did a Great Colombia Hide a Nazi Past?, The Sinking of the Resolute

See also: Germans in Latin America (Spanish).

Enrique Biermann, a professor at Bogotá's National University, has written a book about Germans in Colombia: Distant and Distinct: German Immigrants in Colombia.

An angel on a tomb. 

Friede (Peace); The entrance to Bogotá's German Cemetery.

The pair of hammers mean the man was a geologist. 

A coat of arms on a headstone. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours