Map - Frutillar

Frutillar is a city and commune located in southern Chile, Chilean Patagonia, in Llanquihue Province, within the Los Lagos Region, the lake district. The bay of Frutillar is placed on the banks of Lake Llanquihue, the largest lake entirely within Chile. Frutillar is known as the "City of Music", and since 2017 is part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN), becoming the first Chilean city to be nominated, as well as the southernmost Creative City of Music in the world.

After a period of clearing up the land, the city of Frutillar was founded by German settlers in 1856, among them Christian Winkler, Wilhelm Kaschel, Heinrich Kuschel, Theodor Niklitshek, Christian Nannig and Adams Schmidt.

Vicente Pérez Rosales on a later expedition towards the south of Valdivia changed the course of the incoming colony to Lake Llanquihue. Rosales was searching for more land for the German settlers, south of Valdivia, as many sailing ships were arriving to the port of Valdivia from Germany sent by Bernardo Philippi under the official colonisation program of Southern Chile. This program was granted by President Manuel Bulnes and executed by president of Chile Manuel Montt naming officially Vicente Perez Rosales the head of the German colonisation of Llanquihue, as a continuation of the initial efforts done by Bernard Philippi.

Rosales reached the lake through the dense wild forest and climbed to Osorno Volcano and at the height of 2,000 meters he was able to see the ocean to the south where he saw sailing ships navigating. It was the chilotes from Chiloe that had been sailing in the inner waters of Puerto Montt since 1550 and came mainly from Galicia Spain, which has very similar climate conditions. He immediately informed this issue to the port of Valdivia and thus, from there on, the settlers started their incoming through Puerto Montt and travelled by land to Puerto Varas where other ships would sail the shores of lake Llanquihue to Frutillar and Puerto Octay.

A quote of the time illustrates the discovery of lake Llanquihue during its first sighting by Philippi: "The water of this lake is as clear as that of Geneva in Switzerland, its surface is about seven leagues long and one league wide, so I could not distinguish the opposite bank. On one hand, it has the snowy Alps, the Andes Mountain that rises from its eastern banks of a volcano covered with snow up to half of its height and goes into its waters" (Bernardo Philippi, 1842). This illustrates the period when Philippi discovered Lake Llanquihue and its similarity with Lake Geneva in Switzerland. This information was given to the German settler in order to describe them the beauty of the region. It took over 10 years to be able to bring all the settlers from Germany to Chile and establish the first colonisation program in Lake Llanquihue.

Although Bernhard Eunom Philippi discovered it in 1842, when he was exploring the region with the Chilean army, he brought the idea to the Chilean government that the Southern Region of Chile would be best developed by bringing German settlers that were having a hard time in Germany due yo the industrial revolution and had plans to migrate to America. This opportunity to attract German families to immigrate to Chile had to be done. The combined effort of Bernhard Eunom Philippi with Vicente Pérez Rosales, made the colonisation a reality and proved to be a success, as the region later was very well developed in agricultural and forestry, with European technology. Also German schools proved to be the best in the Southern region of Chile.