Georg Anton Schäffer

Georg Anton Schäffer (rarely russified as Yegor Nikolayevich or Egor AntonovichSheffer; von Schaeffer in Portuguese sources; born in Münnerstadt on 27 January 1779, died in Jacarandá,Brazil in 1836) was a German physician in the employ of the Russian-American Company who attempted to conquer Hawaii for the Company and, ultimately, the Russian Empire. The bloodless Schäffer Affair (1815–1817) or the Hawaiian spectacular, as it was called by contemporary Russians, became a significant financial blunder for the Company.

In the 1820s Schäffer became an agent of the Empire of Brazil and recruited thousands of German emigrants, the ancestors of many members of the present-day German Brazilian community, for resettlement in Brazil.

Georg Anton Schäffer, native of Franconia, son of a distillery owner, studied medicine at Wurzburg's Juliusspital College of Medicine. He joined Imperial Russian service as a surgeon, serving in Moscow before 1812. During the Napoleon's invasion of Russia (1812) he was involved in Frantz Leppich's ill-fated combat balloon project. In 1813 he was a ship surgeon on board the Suvorov. Disagreements with the captain prompted Schäffer to leave the ship in Sitka. Governor of the Russian-American Company Alexander Baranov, who also happened to be at odds with Suvorov's captain, hired Schäffer into the Company's service.

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