History of Education has emphasized the contribution of the project of the Company of Jesus to the establishment of schools in Brazil, highlighting the Jesuit influence. This study is grounded on the premise that such an approach obscures the complexity of the cultural factors of the establishment of schools in different Brazilian regions, and on the hypothesis that the presence of German symbolic and material components has been characteristic of the unique development of Germanness in Santa Catarina state, Brazil. The study aims to discuss the German spirit - Zeitgeist - and the establishment of schools. The methodology is based on a documentary corpus: travelers’ accounts, press, reports of the board of a colonization company, legislation, textbooks and a school notebook. Analysis has been conducted from the ethno-historical perspective, discussed in the light of other research on the relations between the German immigration and education. Findings have indicated that the linguistic factor, amalgamated with ethnic elements and the production of individual and collective identities, underlies the understanding of the establishment of formal education, considering primary the historical modes of organization of both German schools and German-Brazilian schools. Findings have also indicated that the introduction, maintenance and dissemination of Germanic cultural and identity elements since the nineteenth century, both in harmonious and in conflicting contexts, has contributed to erect a historic status of Germanness in Santa Catarina.
Education; German immigration; Germanness