far exceeds that of the Portuguese. Surely to us belongs this part of the world, and the key to it all is Santa Catharina, stretching from the harbor of San Francisco far into the interior with its hitherto undeveloped, hardly suspected wealth. Here indeed, in southern Brazil, is a rich and healthy land, where the German emigrant may retain his nationality, where for all that is comprised in the word 'Germanismus,' a glorious future smiles." – Dr. Leyser, a German traveller in South Brazil at the beginning of the 20th century Urban Germans in Brazil Not all Germans who settled in Brazil became farmers. In the early 20th century, very few rural areas of Southern Brazil were empty. Most of them had been settled by German, Italian and Polish immigrants during the 19th century. Given this situation, most Germans who immigrated to Brazil during the 20th century settled in big towns, although many of them also settled in the old rural German colonies. German immigration to Brazil peaked during the 1920s, after World War I. These Germans were mostly middle-class laborers from urban areas of Germany, different from the poor peasants who had settled in the colonies of Brazil during the 19th century. In 1858, Germans were 15% of Porto Alegre's population, 10% of São Paulo's population in 1860, and 60% of the immigrants living in Curitiba by the end of the 19th century. In Rio de Janeiro, by 1830 there were 20 businesses owned by Germans. Twenty years later the number reached 50. People of German descent actively participated in the industrialization and development of big cities in Brazil, such as Curitiba and Porto Alegre. In São Paulo, Germans founded their first colony in 1829. By the beginning of the 20th century, the city was considered the center of the German Brazilian Culture. The city attracted German immigrants until the 1950s. Today, there are 400,000 German Brazilians living within Greater São Paulo. Pioneering period The German settlements, and also those of other European ethnic groups, occupy a vast area in the centers of the states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. To the east, they border the old areas of Azorean Portuguese colonization, and to the south and west, the gaúcho grazing areas. The areas of German settlement emerged in the center of the region, isolated from other settlements. In these remote pastoral and farming areas,