Mittwoch, 15. Dezember 2010

....

Airview of the BERLIN-Settlement near SAN ONOFRE (Sucre Department / Colombia)

With kind permission of Google Earth


The advance of the Colombian Berlin-settlement investigation and documentation between 2000 and 2008 is outlined in the correspondent previous report chapter that can be consulted in german language under http://www.2009-berlinprojekt.blogspot.com/.


With the translated online-publication of the first 4 chapters in spanish language until october of 2009 a request for external comments and contributions was published that remained completely without reply during the first two years of the presentation of the project in Internet. Due to the lack of response CID Investigation supposed that no interest for consultation of the presented book chapters or cooperation in the editing of the site-descriptions existed in the group of possible readers or visitors of the Blogs, even more because also the number of Blog visitors remained unknown to CID. For that reason the further advance of the completion of the translated book was not considered as prioritary beneath other working thematics of the investigation office.


In august 2010 CID Investigation received first responses of several lectors of the Berlin-book Internet version chapters by email so that since the month of october 2010 the completion of the 4th book chapter that treats the Berlin district of the village La Belleza in the Santander department was proceeded.


With the comunications from Colombia CID received several worthful contributions and actual informations refering to the settlement such as the actual municipal village presentation in Internet as well as several videos about touristic sites, so that it was possible to design the webpage much more complete than a simple translation of the already published book chapter would have allowed.


Additionally an more far reaching investigation on certain ecological aspects of the villages natural surroundings was started in Internet utilizing information resources about native plant species so that more exact and specific information about an important native tree, the `Lechero`-tree (Stemmadenia litoralis APOCYNACEAE) could be included in the re-edited chapter.



Stemmadenia litoralis APOCYNACEAE

Leafs, flower and fruit (reproduction with kind permission by G.D.Carr, University of Hawaii)

http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/carr/images/ste_lit_cu.jpg


Also more far than the original chapter the Blog page now includes an own post titled `Virtual Pathways towards La Belleza` where contributions of the habitants of the village, photographies and videos, reports of travellers or Links to future new Internet scenes refering to the village have space for presentation.


This means, that for the constant survey for new Internet articles referring the already described Berlin settlements and the permanent actualization of the Blog pages of every site a more constant communication with the local habitants must be established. A basic requiry to fulfil this task would be, that an employee responsable for this permanent actualization survey could be contracted.


The actual item on Berlin - La Belleza has the direction http://www.berlin-labelleza.blogspot.com. An erroneous link to that page established in the upside mentioned report 2009 chapter that led to an US-Blog-page with different contents could be detected and repaired recently. Now the link in report 2009 leads directly to the correct CID Berlin – item.


The following Berlin settlement presentation referring to the Berlin-district of the village Tona also situated in the Santander department was started at 1st of November 2010 with the positioning of the titeled photographies in the Blog-posts. Also for this chapter is prepared a space for contributions from Berlin-Tona itself but during Internet researches no useful sites citing this settlement or area could be found until now. A request by email directed to the regional administration in the department capital Bucaramanga is still without answer. Email directions of the municipal administration of Tona, where actual information about that Berlin could be inquired, have not been found yet. A contact to the german catholic diocese in Aachen, that maintains an long year relationship to the local vicarage, has been established to receive actual information about the villages development during the past 9 years since the CID visit in 2001, as far as such information should exist.


Also this new article, that already is accessible under the direction http://www.berlin-tona.blogspot.com is not designed to be a literal translation of the already existing book chapter edited in german language and published in 2004. The article most probably will be much more extense and complete, if the necessary contacts to realize this can be established or if the correspondent information can be obtained by the consultation of Internet sources that still are to find. So the completion date of the item in process is still unknown.


The introduction and chapter overview for the whole CID Berlin-project with the completed chapters for

  • Berlin / Medellin (Antioquia)

  • Berlin / San Onofre (Sucre)

  • Berlin / La Belleza (Santander)

and the prepared items about

  • Berlin / Cartagena de las Indias (Bolivar) and

  • Berlin / Tona (Santander)

contains the projects Homepage Blog http://www.losberlines.blogspot.com.


Airview of the BERLIN-Quarter of MEDELLIN (Antioquia Department / Colombia)

With kind permission of Google Earth


Short Summary of the Project History

In January 1989 the authors attention was drawn by the colombian lawyer Mario Montoya Hernandez to the fact, that an atlas of the colombian geographic institute Agustin Codazzi registered more than a dozen of sites and settlements named Berlin distributed over the whole colombian nations territory.

This fact remained forgotten until at 4th of february 2000 during a bus travel from San Antonio Tachira in Venezuela to the town of Bucaramanga in the Santander department of Colombia the author personally registered for the first time the real existence of one of these settlements – the Tona - Berlin village situated in the Paramo Berlin of the oriental Andes cordillera.

From this discovery started the first independent investigation activity of the authors newly founded PLAN E.U. office, established during these days in 1st of May quarter of Southern Bogota. An intense literature enquiry started in march of 2000 in several public libraries in Bogota and Medellin brought the finding, that a total of 93 sites namend Berlin have been registered in Colombia and that several more unregistered places such as for example the Berlin quarters of the towns of Cali and Cartagena as well as the site `Berlin de Monjas` besides the national road from Tunja to Socorro further exist.

The existence of Berlin settlements and sites named so during the several century long emigration history from Germany to other parts of the world in many countries of the African and American continent is a long known fact and described for example in the illustrated bicycle travel report of the german author Harry Hampel `From Berlin over Berlin to Berlin`(Ruetten & Loening Editors, 1998). But the fact, of the existence of more than 100 sites called so in one single country made obvious, that the immigration history let grow in the nation of Colombia an undeciphered phenomenon that was worth to direct the attention on it.

Of special interest in the composition of the colombian Berlin sites was, that many of these places never had been organized settlement establishments of german colonial history. Many of them situated in very remote unaccessible regions of the country, several of them never inhabited by emigrants from Germany, some being renamed during the history of their existence, others named so by persons that never knew Germany personally but had certain admiration for the german state or it`s role during the historic past.

The fact, that besides the registration of the geographic site names nearly no further written literature referring to or mentioning the colombian Berlin sites could be found, made obvious, that with the alternation of generations the knowledge about the sites namesgiving history could get lost. The organized foundation of Berlin settlements worldwide by emigrants from Germany often dated to the years between 1860 and 1890, when emigration of professionally qualified persons from Germany to it`s colonies was promoted and supported by the german state. So the PLAN office started it`s first investigation project attempt in 2000 with an project application to the colombian Banco de la Republica investigation fund. The basic idea was to visit all about 100 colombian Berlin sites, collect there all literature about the settlement foundation such as school monographies or vicary registries, establish relationships with the habitants and realize interviews about their knowledge and versions related to the namegiving of their Berlin, draw up photographic documentations of the sites, monuments, architectonic characterics, econcomic and ecological aspects as well as the natural surroundings and edit illustrated articles about every site based on this information. The results of the inquiry where previewed to be published in an book or periodic review. The office PLAN itself was designed as future representation structure for all Berlins in the colombian capital Santa Fe de Bogota.

Until June 2001 a dozen Berlin sites where visited, all available data collected and a previous illustrated documentation in spanish language edited. For organizative reasons the PLAN office had to remove from it`s installations in Southern Bogota in december 2001, was transferred to Germany and reopened there as CID Investigation, Private Scientific Investigation Bureau. The first review series in german language about 7 of the total of 11 visited Berlin settlements (Tona, Medellin, Fredonia, San Onofre, La Belleza, Suba, Yarumal) was published by CID Publishing, the editing department of CID Investigation, that was founded for that reason.

The step to the printed publication of the first investigation results in Germany was done to promote the continuation of the project from the new office establishment site in Weilmuenster. This task only could be complied with financial support to cover the travel costs of the CID project members from Germany to Colombia and there to the further Berlin settlements projected to visit. But all project request of the CID office presented at german institutions remained rejected between June 2001 until midst of 2005 and also an attempt to reconnect the investigation project in 2008 directly with an colombian institution, the Agustin Codazzi Geographic Institute (IGAC) and the University of Antioquia (UdeA), failed. Details of these project applications are documented in the previous CID reports.

The actual state of development of the CID Berlin-project advance is deduced from the fact, that CID can present by it`s own capacity the Online-publications of the already described Berlin settlements as translated article in Internet and that the actualization and completition of the presented data depends on the cooperation of independent contributors such as habitants of the Berlin sites or travellers and on the availability of actualized information in Internet for example as Berlin settlements own homepages.


The CID Investigators Myriam Reina & Peter Zanger during their visit at Berlin Tona in February of 2001.



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