Despite his active colonial involvement, the oeuvre of this Romantic all-round artist (he was not only a painter, but also a poet, writer, historian, critic, philosopher, politician, economist, and revolutionary) has to date not been studied in terms of its colonial traces. Art historian Dr. Miguel Gaete has set out to change this state of affairs by identifying the place Simon’s output takes in cultural and intellectual history in the context of German Romanticism and the efforts to colonize South America in the 19^th century. What new insights can be gained from Simon’s hitherto unexplored oeuvre when it comes to the historical processes innate in the colonization of South Chile that German Romanticism so supported? How does it reflect the ethnocentric and nationalist ideas that were deeply rooted in the German society of the day and to what extent did these ideas inform how the German settlers treated the indigenous societies?

In this context, Dr. Gaete is conducting the very first examination of the linkages of text and images in Simon’s oeuvre in an effort to underscore how the two forms of artistic output influenced each other and thus spawned a narrative which interwove Romanticism, nationalism, and colonial discourses. He has chosen as his main written source material the treatise “Auswanderung und deutsch-nationale Kolonisation” which as part of his research will come out in a newly edited version and in a bilingual English/Spanish translation. The research will be accompanied by publishing individual aspects of the project in several lectures at international conferences and in at least two articles in specialist journals. Dr. Gaete wishes to bring all his research findings together in a monograph that focuses on Simon’s artistic views, the German colony in Chile, and the Mapuche communities.