Rohr, João Alfredo

Basic Biographical Information

João Alfredo Rohr was born in 1908 at Arroio do Meio, Rio Grande do Sul, in southern Brazil, amidst a community of German Catholic immigrants. At the age of 12, at a time where there were no universities in the southern part of the country, he left to attend a seminary maintained by the Society of Jesus. It was in Pareci Novo, and later, São Leopoldo, that João Alfredo pursued his education for the next 20 years, until finally becoming an ordained priest of the Jesuit Order (Schimitz 2009).

Father Rohr’s first assignment was to teach at the traditional school that the Jesuits had established in 1905 at the city of Florianopolis. Father Rohr taught chemistry, physics, and natural sciences at the Catarinense School for 22 years. As a Jesuit, he had a strong background in Humanities and Natural History (Schimitz 2009). The school had a small museum, which Father Rohr expanded into the Museum of the American Man and later into the Museum of the Sambaqui Man...