Sociedade Germania in Rio de Janeiro founded in 1821. In São Paulo, Esporte Clube Pinheiros was founded on 7 September 1899 by German immigrants as Sport Club Germânia. Germânia is the fourth oldest football club of Brazil and was part of the very first interclub match of the country. During the course of World War II the club abandoned references to its German origin and in 1941 was renamed to Pinheiros. São Paulo FC also have connections with the German community after merging, during the World War II, with the former Associação Alemã de Esportes (Deutscher SC). The club has 12 international titles. Alisson Becker is the famous German Brazilian goalkeeper, who plays for Liverpool and Brazil national football team. Eric Leme Walther Brazil's first Olympic Bobsleigh athlete and founder of the Brazilian Ice Sports Federation (Brasilianischer Eissportverband). Number of German Brazilians and ethnicity In the southern states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, Germans were 22.34% and 19.3% respectively of the population in the 1940s and 6.9% for Paraná. Only in the state of Rio Grande do Sul there are approximately between 2.5 million (or even a third of its population) German descent living there. The percentages are higher in some cities. For example, in the town of Pomerode, Santa Catarina, 90% of the population are Brazilians of German descent, and the main local language is an East Pomeranian dialect. It is considered the most "German" city in Brazil. Many towns in Southern Brazil have a majority of German-descent citizens. Sometimes, Germans surnames were adapted or changed in Brazil to a more "understandable" writing in Portuguese since many were incomprehensible to Brazilians. The Lins family Two of the first Germans that arrived in Brazil were the cousins Sebald Linz von Dorndorf and Christoph Linz (or Sebald Lins von Dorndorf and Christoph Lins) who arrived in Brazil in 1570 as landowners. At the time they arrived, they married into the Luso-Brazilian nobility living there and changed their names to Portuguese names and surnames of Portuguese writing conventions, respectively, Cibaldo Lins and Cristovão Lins, founding the Lins family in Brazil. The surname is original from the surrounding areas around Linz (Austria). The Brazilian family comes from the branch from Ulm (Germany). The first German communities Municipalities with co-official German dialects or other Germanic languages East Pomeranian dialect (Ostpommersch) Espírito Santo Domingos Martins Itarana Laranja da Terra Pancas Santa Maria