Bartolomé Blumenthal

Bartolomé Flores (1511 – November 11, 1585) is believed to have been the first German to arrive in Chile. He came with the expedition of Pedro de Valdivia at the beginning of the Spanish conquest of Chile.

Biography Bartholomew, known in Chile as Bartolomé Flores, was born 1506 or 1511 in the Franconian town of Nuremberg. His parents were John and Agatha. His Spanish family name Flores is a translation of his unknown original name in German. Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna (1877) named him hypothetically Blumen, which is a translation of his Spanish name into German, but does not exist as a surname in German. In his Diccionario Biográfico Colonial de Chile (1906) José Toribio Medina named him Blumenthal, a modern German-Jewish name, without mentioning his source. and is the grandmother of Catalina de los Ríos y Lisperguer, called La Quintrala.

Flores made his will in Santiago on 11 November 1585, and died that year in Talagante. Some claim that he died while on the voyage to discover the Solomon Islands.