German Legacy in Davao (V)

                                                                                                                                                                    

By Antonio V. Figueroa

The German Evangelic Church, in the sixties, donated a multi-million building and equipment to the Brokenshire Memorial Hospital, a Protestant hospital in Davao City. Part of that assistance came from the German Federal Government.

In 1969, the port of Davao got a share from the DM 12.5 million grant the German Government extended under a financial cooperation for the rehabilitation of ports.

Another funding amount DM 2 million was earmarked for the preparation of the Master Plan Study  of the port of Davao (Sasa wharf), which was prepared from June June 1979 to December 1980.

Product links

In terms of exports, the famous Chocolate de San Isidro produced by farmer cooperatives in Davao del Norte is now exported to the Netherlands and other European countries, including Germany and and Belgium.

And who would forget the iconic Mongol pencil that took the Philippines by storm during the American period? It was originally manufactured by Eberhard Faber GmbH, founded in 1922 in Neumarkt, near Nuremberg, Germany. The pencil factory was taken over by Staedtler, a stationery company with global reach, in 1978.

The US operations of the popular Eberhard Faber writing pencil were founded in New York City in 1861, on the site where the United Nations building now stands, by John Eberhard Faber (Dec. 6, 1822 - March 2, 1879). This was acquired in 1994 by Faber-Castell USA before it was purchased by Newell (Sanford) and rolled into the Paper Mate brand.

In transport, as Davao's traffic jam moves from bad to worse, German imprints are present also in costly, high-end cars, that negotiate, even if irregularly, the city's thoroughfares. Who can deny the pricey BMW (Bavaria Motor Works), Volkswagen (People's Car) and the Mercedes-Benz (built by German manufacturer Daimler AG) brands that have caught our fancy?

In the mall freezers, names like frankfurter (a small, cooked and smoke sausage of beef or pork named after Austrian-born Felix Frankfurter, a U.S. jurist, 1882-1965); bratwurst (a fine German pork sausage, typically fried or grilled), and wiener (a small, thin hot dog made of veal and pork) surely will remind you of their origin - that is, German-speaking territories.

Congregations

As a Catholic country, the Philippines has much in common with Germany, a predominantly Protestant country, when it comes to the spread of Christianity. Two of the three religious congregations founded by St. Arnold Jannsen have established branches in Davao City.

Jannsen, born on November 5, 1837 in Goch, Germany, was ordained priest on August 15, 1861. He founded three religious congregations, namely: the Societas Verbi Divini (SVD, 175), the Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit (SSps, 1889), and the Sister Servants of the Holy Spirit of Perpetual Adoration (SSpSAP, September 8, 1896).

The SVD priests took over the management of the Saint Francis Xavier Regional Major Seminary at Catalunan Grande, Davao City, in the 1980's from the Foreign Mission Society of Quebec (PME Fathers), while the SSpSAp, also known as the Pink Sisters, holds court at the Holy Spirit Adoration Convent, along Seminary Road, Catalunan Grande, Davao City.

In the field of Education, the German language, has been institutionalized at the state-funded University of Southeastern Philippines (USEP) at Obrero, Davao City. One of the institute's most visible professors is Professor Klaus Döring, an expatriate journalist, court translator and interpreter certified by the German, Swiss and Austrian embassies in Manila, a businessman who has made Davao City as his home since 1999 and since June 2017, taking office as German Honorary Consul to the island of Mindanao.

Germany Legacy in Davao City (IV)

Saint Arnold Jannsen, founder of the religious SVD congregation

By: Antonio V. Figueroa

In recent times, German legacy has extended to Education with the opening of an institute offering German language (among others) at a local state-funded industry.

In trade, Germany was one of the export markets of Davao logs during the logging boom in the 1950's. These raw materials were returned to the country s finished products.

In recent years, abaca, then one of the region's global products, has found its niche in some of German-made automobiles and upholsteries.

Born on September 20, 1891, in Hessen, Germany, Captain Henry (Heinrich) Gilsheuser (spelled popularly, though erroneously, as Gilhouser in books and newspaper accounts) was educated in the public schools of Germany and New York City. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1898 and served in the Spanish-American War. On March 9, 1903, he was appointed third lieutenant in the PC, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

He was a district secretary of Cotabato and after reappointed to the same post. He was also governor of the province of Lanao twice (1910-12, 1915-17) where he left a legacy of civil and industrial development before retiring. In 1910, Gen. John J. Pershing, commander of the military and governor of the Department for Mindanao and Sulu, appointed him governor for Davao City (Jan.1, 1910 - Jan. 31, 1912).

Gilsheuser's qualities were recognized by Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison, the American colonial administrator in the country (October 1913 - February 1921), who appointed him chief lieutenant "in the work of civilization and organized government." The recognition was largely inspired by the achievements he accomplished as a civil service official.

In his official functions, Gilsheuser was ably assisted by district secretary Robert A. Gillmore, a first lieutenant in the Philippine Scout who joined the civil service on May 17, 1910; and district governors George C. Charlton, a captain the Philippine Scout, who was appointed on June 6, 1910, and Levi E. Case, a PC captain, who was appointed January 12, 1903.

Through the decades since the Philippines and Germany signed an agreement of cooperation on April 25, 1955, German assistance to the Filipinos, including relief and disaster assistance, has been in the millions of deutschmarks (DM), the then German currency.

Historically, a year before Davao was conquered by Basque judge Don Jose Oyanguren y Cruz, the first German consular office was established in Manila in 1849.

(To be continued!)

German Legacy in Davao City (III)

Berthold Stein

By: Antonio V. Figueroa


Born in Stuttgart, Germany, Berthold Stein (1847-1899) was a renowned German botanist (orchid specialist), lichen expert, and mycologist (a scientist who studies fungus and its genetic and biochemical properties) who contributions in the field of taxonomy are recognized in numerous international publications. He never visited the Philippines.

In Davao, where he is an unknown, his contribution lives on after a small tree, the Rhododendron apoanum Stein, was named after the Mount Apo.The specimen was discovered  at Todaya, Santa Cruz, Davao del Sur. A rhododendron is described as "a shrub or small tree of the health family, with large clusters of bell-shaped flowers and typically with large evergreen leaves, widely grown as an ornamental."

(In 1905, distinguished American botanist Elmer D. Merrill [1876-1956] named a new Mount Apo shrub as Rhododendron mindanaense, after the island of Mindanao, and in 1929, American botanist Herbert Copeland classified another tree species in the same genus as Rhododendron bagobonum, in honor of the Bagobo tribe.)

Other inheritances

It is uncommon knowledge that a German, who enlisted in the U.S. Army and served in the Philippine Constabulary, once governed Davao, serving the bureaucracy with dedication, expertise and excellence.

German legacy in Davao region dates back to over 100 years, and this included missionary activities, financial grants, commodities and foods that bear indisputable German trademarks.

In the field of technical assistance granted through financial cooperation signed by the German Filipino governments, these were spent for port development and building of medical institutions, to name just a few.

(To be continued!)

German Legacy in Davao City (II)

By Antonio V. Figueroa

Scaling Mount Apo

The Mount Apo expedition of Schadenberg and Koch is well documented by Otto Scherer in his 'Alexander Schadenberg, His Life and Work in the Philippines' (1923), published in Manila.

"By December [1881] ... the two fiends had established themselves beyond the pale of civilization, in the Bagobo village [of] Sibulan, south of Mount Apo, where, in exchange for some coils of brass wire, they had purchased the handsome bamboo cottage of one the headmen. During their stay here of about six months they mace the tribe among which they lived, and which was notorious for the practice of human sacrifice, the object of a close ethnographic study, drawing up also a vocabulary of the language."

The Rafflesia schadenbergiana, a parasitic plant, is endemic to Mindanao. It has a diameter of 51-80 centimeters and is the second largest flower in its genus. The flower was first collected in the vicinity of Mount Apo but was considered extinct until 1984 after another specimen was discovered in South Cotabato. (Rafflesia is named in honored of British Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the 'founding father of Singapore'.)

Heinrich Friedrich Conrad Sander

Born in Bremen, Germany, Heinrich Friedrich Conrad Sander (1847-1920) was a nurseryman who moved to Saint Albans, England and founded the monthly publication on orchids, Reichenbachia, named in honor of Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach of Hamburg. He never visited the Philippines but his studies of orchids have become the benchmark in global orchidology.

Dr. Otto Koch, a German naturalist residing in Cebu, on the other hand, stayed long enough in the country to find his niche, but was only known to a limited circle of savants engaged in linguistics, botany, and geography. His name appears in official colonial records in a deed dated October 31, 1897, after he leased the estate of the Convent of the Holy Infant of Cebu.

The estate, covering 7,454.6 hectares, was divided into two parts, one within the municipal jurisdiction of Talisay town and the other one within the municipality of Minglanilla, both in Cebu Province. The property was originally sold by an Augustinian company to Don Juan Castro y Martin but was redeemed under the one-year repurchase clause.

(To be continued!)

German Legacy in Davao City (I)

By: Antonio V. Figueroa

European legacy in Davao City history is an under explored subject, especially when discussions turn to the less-known contribution of Germans in the region historiography.

By Europeans, it always points to the Spaniards who colonized the Philippines and converted most of the archipelago into a Catholic enclave; the Portuguese, who predated Spain into the proselytizing of Davao; and the Dutch, who opened trade links with the fiefs around Davao Gulf in the 17th century.

But the Germans, too, have their unique contributions to the region's natural history. In fact, two German naturalists have immortalized their names after two of the most important flower finds in Davao area, the Rafflesia schadenbergiana, known to the Bagobo as the 'bo-o', and the Vanda sanderiana, or the waling-waling, are named after the Germans. 

The Rafflesia schadenbergiana, the largest flower among the species found in the Philippines, was discovered in 1882 by naturalists Alexander Schadenberg and Otto Koch, while the Vanda sanderiana , worshipped by the Bagobo as a goddess and one of the country's national flowers, got its appellation from Heinrich Friedrich Conrad Sander, a noted German orchidologist.

Berthold Stein, also a renowned German botanist, was honored in 1885 after a small tree, R. apoanum Stein, discovered at Todaya, Santa Cruz, Davao del Sur, was named after him.

Schadenberg, Rizal's pen pal

Born in Breslau, Germany, Alexander Schadenberg (1852-96) was a medical doctor trained in pharmaceutics and botany. in 1879, he visited the Philippines to study the Negritos but first worked in a German pharmacy in Manila before deciding to go home to marry his countryman and arrange a temporary separation from his spouse while finishing the researches. 

Upon his return, Schadenberg brought with him all the needed instruments and articles of exchange necessary in dealing with the natives. He then linked and worked as a team with Otto Koch, another German naturalist in the country. Their most famous work together, published in a book a year later, was in 1882, when they discovered the new species of the Rafflesia later named after him, and conquered Mount Apo.

Discovered in 1885, the burrowing skink, scientifically known as Brachymeles schadenbergi, found in Davao and some regions of Mindanao, was also named in his honor.

Dr. Schadenberg, in his personal life, was a pen pal of Dr. Jose Rizal, the national hero. In his correspondence to Dr. Ferdinand Blumentritt dated December 19, 1893 and postmarked at Dapitan, Rizal mentioned Schadenberg's letter to him saying "the History I sent to [Adolf Bernhard] Meyer [a respected German anthropologist, ornithologist, entomologist, and herpetologist] has been sinking of the Normandy."

(To be continued!)