"Groβes zärtliches Brasilien": Das Brasilienbild in den Werken von Heinrich Eduard Jacob

Abstract

Although Heinrich Eduard Jacob visited Brazil in 1932, having written various articles about this trip in particular, and later three books on Brazilian issues, he is almost unknown in Brazil. The following paper, therefore, focuses on the biography of the journalist and writer and his Brazilian books Hothouse South America (1934), Coffee. The Epic of a Commodity (1935) and Estrangeiro. Einwandererschicksal in Brasilien (1951). Furthermore he is put in context with other German-speaking authors who wrote about Brazil in the thirties and forties. These were mainly émigrés fleeing the Nazism such as Stefan Zweig, Richard Katz, Wolfgang Hoffmann-Harnisch, Frank Arnau and Marte Brill. Regarding the image of Brazil espoused by Jacob, it becomes clear that he, as so many other authors, saw in Brazil a "Land of a future" (as he called it) and an alleged existing "racial democracy". Nevertheless, he doesn't refrain from revealing the proverbial Brazilian cordiality to be only appearance and from pointing out existing difficulties such as the politics regarding the coffee and the negative consequences of the nationalism promoted by the Vargas-Regime. By doing so, he took a view that opposed the one of his friend Stefan Zweig.