Karl von Haimhausen

Karl von Haimhausen

(Corrupt form of Aymausen.)

German missionary; b. at Munich, of a noble Bavarian family, 28 May, 1692; d. in Chile, 7 April, 1767. On 20 October, 1702, he entered the Society of Jesus, and, in 1724, went as a missionary to Chile. He was a professor of theology and for many years rector of the Collegium Maximum at Santiago. Chile having been constituted an independence province of the order in 1624, Father Haimhausen was made provincial procurator, master of novices, and instructor. In these capacities he won such high esteem that even the Spanish bishops and the viceroy chose him for their confessor in spite of the fact of his being a foreigner.

Haimhausen completed the magnificent college church in Santiago, built a novitiate establishment and two houses for spiritual retreats, with churches attached to them, and rendered most valuable service in promoting the economic and industrial development of the colony. The abundance of gold and silver that poured out of the mines of the newly acquired countries has ruined the industries of the mother country, since it was easier and more convenient for Spain to import manufactured articles from abroad and pay for them in specie (R. Capps, "Estudios criticos acerca de la dominación española en América", XIII, 169, and passim). As a result, art and industries in the colonies decayed. Their regeneration was due especially to the German and Dutch missionaries who went thither at the end of the seventeenth century. Haimhausen founded an arts-and-crafts school at Calera, near Santiago, himself procuring the proper assistance from Germany. Here the ateliers of the bell-founder, the watchmaker and the goldsmith, the organ-builder and the furniture maker, and the studios of the painter and sculptor turned out monuments of arts and crafts such as Chile had hitherto never seen.

Huonder, Jesuitenmissionäre des 17ten und 18ten Jahrhunderts (Freiberg im Br., 1899), 65-75 sqq. 92, 132; Cappa, Estudios críticos acerca de la dominación española en America, VIII, Industrias mecánicas, 193 sqq.; XIII, 170; Enrich, Historia de la Campañía de Jesús en Chile, I (Barcelona, 1891), 103 sqq., 129 sqq., 243, 294; Carayon, Documents inédits, XVI (Poitiers, 1867-68), 331 sqq. Two letters of Haimhausen are published in the Welt-Bott, nos. 203 and 776. The manuscript of an apologia for the Society of Jesus, written in 1755, is contained in the archives of the Foreign Office at Santiago.

A. HUONDER