Ernesto Geisel - Early Life and Family

Early Life and Family

Ernesto Geisel was born in Bento Gonçalves, Rio Grande do Sul. His father was Guilherme Augusto Geisel (born Wilhelm August Geisel), a German teacher from Herborn. He immigrated to Brazil in 1883, at 16. The mother was the homemaker Lydia Beckmann, born in Brazil (Teutônia) to German parents from Osnabrück. In Bento Gonçalves, where he was raised, there were only two families of German origin- the Geisel and the Dreher- while the majority of the population was composed of Italian immigrants. About the contact with the local Italian immigrants during his childhood Geisel described the cultural contrasts between the strict and rigorous education that his German parents imposed compared to the freedom and more relaxed way of life that his Italian friends had, whom he admired. Geisel was raised in a Lutheran family (the grandfather was a priest) and he claimed to be part of a lower middle class, relatively poor family. At home, Geisel spoke German as well as Portuguese because his father, who spoke Portuguese so well that became a teacher of this language, did not want his children to speak Portuguese with a foreign accent. As an adult, Geisel reported that he was able to understand the German language, but was not able to write it and had some difficulty speaking it.

Geisel along with his brother, Orlando (1905–1979, who would be later Minister of Army in the Médici's government), entered the army early and was the first of his class when he graduated from the Military College of Porto Alegre in 1925. He acquired a better military knowledge as he attended the Escola Militar do Realengo, graduated, in 1928, as first in his class and could take part in the artillery as an Aspirante. Geisel witnessed and participated in the most prominent events of Brazilian history in the 20th century, such as the revolution of 1930, the Getúlio Vargas dictatorship and the 1964 military coup d'état that overthrew the leftist President João Goulart. In this military intervention, Geisel was an important figure and he became Military chief of Staff of President Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco.

Also in 1964 he became Lieutenant-General and in 1966 a 4 star-General. In 1969 he was made president of Petrobras, the state-owned oil company of Brazil.

Geisel married Lucy Markus, the daughter of an army colonel, in 1940. They had a daughter, Amália Lucy (later a university professor), and a son, Orlando, from whose death in a 1957 train accident his father never completely recovered. His widow died in an automobile accident in 2000.