San Bernardino (Paraguay) | city

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San Bernardino or San Ber is a town in Paraguay, located on the shores of Lake Ypacarai in the Cordillera Department. It is a popular holiday resort for people from Asunción, both Alfredo Stroessner and former Nicaraguan president Anastasio Somoza have had lakehouse there.

The town contains a museum, a rathaus, a bierstube and a cemetery that contains the grave of Los Paraguayos singer Luis Alberto del Paraná.

The town was founded in 1881 by German immigrants who named the town New Bavaria. More Germans came from Tanganyika and the Sudetenland after the First World War, though the town was renamed after General Bernardino Caballero, president of Paraguay 1880 - 1886.

The Lake Hotel in San Bernardino was where the German nationalist Dr. Bernhard Förster spent the last 6 weeks of his life, before committing suicide on 3rd June 1889 by taking an overdose of strychnine. Inspired by a writing of Richard Wagner's, and his own strong anti-semitism, he set out to found a German settlement in Paraguay with his wife Elisabeth Förster née Nietzsche (sister of the philosopher) and some German families. Their efforts, at a site called Nueva Germania, failed dismally causing Förster to leave for San Bernardino.

Förster was buried in the town's cemetery. As Nazism became increasingly popular amongst Paraguay's German community in the 1930's, Förster became something of a hero. In 1934 Adolf Hitler ordered a small memorial service to take place at his graveside, with German soil sent to sprinkle over the grave.