Geo von Lengerke
Geo of Lengerke ( born August 31, 1827 as Georg Ernst Heinrich of Lengerke in Dohnsen (Hall ) in the former Duchy of Brunswick; † July 4, 1882 in Zapatoca, Santander, Colombia ) was a German engineer, landowner and businessman.
Life
George of Lengerke was the second youngest of seven children of businessman and landowner John Abraham Lengerke (1775-1831) and his wife Emilie, born Lutterloh ( 1796-1888 ). Of Mathematics and technical hochbegegabt, he studied at the Collegium Carolinum in Brunswick, the forerunner of the Ducal Polytechnic School, and was engineer. In 1852 he left Germany. The reasons he never disclosed. One explanation is that because of a woman he killed his adversary in an " affair of honor " in a duel with sabers and had to flee.
He immigrated to Colombia, where he henceforth Geo of Lengerke called himself, and settled in the state of Santander. As one of the first to recognize the potential of the cultivation of China Beef trees in this region. Trade with China bark ( Quina ) made him rich. He invested his fortune in the reclamation of derelict lands that gave him the Colombian state in 1862 and which he had already bought. His tenure extended over more than 12,000 ha in the near Bethulia, he created the hacienda ( plantation ) Montebello, which has become a center of social life between Bucaramanga and the Río Magdalena soon, despite the fact that Lengerke a Lutheran and freethinkers was in the midst of Catholic and conservative aristocratic families. He built on tobacco, cocoa and coffee, and led to the processing of crops partly by himself advanced machines and new procedures. In addition, he ran in Bucaramanga trading business with imported goods. For the development of the region he had - he came here his training as an engineer benefit - Create a network of roads and build numerous bridges over rivers and canyons. Some of his bridges are still in use today.
After the China bark Lengerke economy could not generate the costs of its farms. Although not impoverished ( as it was called in earlier representations ), but in - for him - humble he died in 1882 and was buried under large public participation in Zapatoca. His grave stone is still to be seen.
Afterlife
His life was similar to a feudal lord. In addition, he was a womanizer, and reports on the brutal expulsion of the Indians, especially the Yariguies, from its sphere of influence ask him from an ambivalent testimony. In today's Department of Santander in Colombia Geo is Lengerke, known as the " bridge builder", but a folk hero. To his life and his contemporaries eccentric appearing invasions entwine many rumors and legends.
The novel " La otra raya del tigre " of the Colombian writer Pedro Gómez Valderrama (1923-1992) put him a literary monument.
Works
- Geo of Lengerke: Palabras del dialecto de los indios del Opone. Palabras indias dictadas por un Indio de la Tribu de Carare. In: Journal of Anthropology, Wiegandt, Hempel & Parey (Berlin), vol 10 ( 1878).