In 1933, Austrian colonialists founded the Dreiezlinden settlement in Brazil; Babenberg followed in 1935 and a year later – in honor of the dictator who was murdered by the National Socialists in 1934 – the Dollfuß settlement. They bought the land for this with the support of the Dollfuß-Schuschnigg regime. In total, they spent around 800,000 schillings on the settlement-colonial project; not least because it corresponded to his cultural sense of mission. With this money, the settlers not only bought landless people, but also crossing tickets, equipment and machines as well as film equipment for one Propaganda film.
In Brazil, however, the settlers were by no means supposed to assimilate, but rather transform the settlement-colonial space according to their ideas: This included, on the one hand, the violent seizure of land. The land that the colonialists wanted to settle permanently was by no means empty. Indigenous farming families had lived there legally. The Austrians felt superior to them and demanded their expulsion; there were violent clashes. Ultimately, the Brazilians were forced off their land under the threat of state armed force. The Austrians wanted to settle up to 10,000 people there. By 1938, however, only about 800 reached the settlements.
On the other hand, a “pure” settler community should replace the indigenous population. For Andreas Thaler (1883–1939), the Christian social politician and former agriculture minister, who saw himself as the undisputed “leader” of the settlement, the only possible emigrants were “Austrians of German nationality and Roman Catholic religion”; others remained excluded. In order to make the cultural-imperialist feeling of superiority visible in everyday settlement colonial life, the colonialists built in the “Alpine” style and, according to Thaler, should not only dress like they would at home, but also maintain customs and traditions. It is precisely this intangible/material heritage that today forms the core of Thirteen Linden’s tourist offering.
The cultural imperialist intention of the settlement-colonial project is also reflected in the settlement name: Thaler borrowed it from Wilhelm Weber’s story of the same name, which is about the colonization activities of a Benedictine monastery around 800 in the “Sachsenwald”. He wrote about it: “Just as monks spread culture in our homeland in the Middle Ages, Tyrolean farmers who are firmly rooted in religious principles should carry Austrian culture and customs into the jungle of Brazil.”
