Karl von Haimhausen

Karl von Haimhausen (originally Aymausen) (b. at Munich, of a noble Bavarian family, 28 May1692; d. in Chile, 7 April1767) was a German Jesuit theologian and missionary.

Life

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. He acted as confessor to Spanish bishops and the viceroy.

Haimhausen completed the college church in Santiago, and built a novitiate establishment and two houses for spiritual retreats, with churches attached to them. He als promoted local economic and industrial development. Haimhausen founded an arts-and-crafts school at Calera, near Santiago, with 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 products not before made in Chile.

References

*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, was found in the archives of the Foreign Office at Santiago.