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SOME NOTES
ON OUR
TEXAS GERMANIC HERITAGE By
W. T. Block | |
We
Texans of German descent have for much too long let an unfortunate circumstance
dampen our enthusiasm for our Germanic heritage. With two World Wars fought between
the United States and Germany in this century, many German-speaking Texans of
the older generations experienced a need to suppress their feelings about their
origins for fear of hearing unkind accusations hinting upon treason toward their
country. And yet, we who are of World
War II vintage have at no time felt any antagonisms which would remotely compare
with those of 1918. My grandfather
came to Port Neches
from Prussia at age six in 1846. My father, who was born in Port Neches in 1870
and had never seen Germany, was nonetheless accused by some of his neighbors of
spying for the Fatherland. Some Texaco asphalt plant employees of 1918, such as
German-born Joe Esch and Joseph Biermortt, were called "Huns," and not being permitted
to enter or exit the plant through the main gate, they were humiliated by being
forced to crawl through a hole in the fence.
Fortunately, such intense
anti-German feelings did not carry over to World War II, a period when in fact
Nazi atrocities were much more repulsive. Of course, one cause for that was the
profound American hatred targeted against the Japanese and reaped by the 150,000
Japanese-American citizens who were carted away to concentration camps. Many of
these people were fourth generation American. Reflect upon that circumstance for
a moment. Hence, did German Americans and Italian Americans escape such harsh
treatment only because their eyes didn't slant in Oriental fashion, or did the
sneak Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor displace all American hatred and agression
solely toward the Japanese? At any rate, there were only 150,000 Japanese-American
citizens in 1942, whereas there were 35,000,000 Americans of German descent in
addition to perhaps 20,000,000 Italian Americans. |
| | A
Braunig Studio photo of the Elkins Bros, first-generation German immigrants in
Lavaca County
Photo courtesy Jason Penney | |
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If I were to write
a book about the earliest German immigrants to Texas during the 1840's, I would
label them as being "the German Pilgrims," because, like the Puritan Pilgrims
of Massachusetts, for every German immigrant who succeeded in reaching Texas and
establishing himself as a successful farmer, merchant, or mechanic, one other
German died along the way, a sacrifice to the success of that mammoth migration
effort. Even the Blocks contributed one family member to that effort, my great
aunt Elissa and her husband, who in 1848 were killed by the Lipan Indians near
Fredericksburg.
I
have always been intrigued by the causes that sent thousands
of Germans fleeing toward the American shores in search of some type of freedom,
especially economic and religious. Generally, persecution of the Anabaptist sects,
principally the Mennonites, and of Lutherans in the Rhenish and Bavarian Palatinates
(Rheinpfalz and Bayerpfalz) stimulated the earliest German migrations to New York
and Pennsylvania, descendents of whom are known to us today as the Amish or "Pennsylvania
Dutch." If in these notes I refer to "the Germanies," I mean those 300 plus German
provinces, free cities, kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, etc., that existed
prior to 1871 and were governed by every variety of nobleman except an Arabian
sheik. There were harsh economic circumstances simmering in the Germanic provinces
of 1820, all of which were struggling to recover from the Napoleonic Wars. It
was the 10-year Conscription Law of Prussia which dispatched the Blocks on the
long, 3-months voyage to Texas. Certainly, Gottfried Duden's book, published in
Switzerland in 1829, fired the enthusiasms of overpopulated Germany with its prospect
of countless acres of free land in the American West, where also there were no
taxes to pay. Another volume, "The Cabin Book," published there in 1841, would
also induce many Germans to leave. The sixteen years of the Napoleonic Wars had
left the Germanies economically prostrate. The industrial workers were wretchedly
oppressed in the Ruhr and Saar regions, while the German peasantry, whose survival
was still much akin to serfdom, faced the prospect of never owning a single acre
of land that they could call their own. In 1820, industrial workers and peasants
alike were saddled with the highest taxation ever known, largely to reestablish
the elegance and extravagance of the courts of the German princes. Gottfried Duden
reminded Germans that their wretched brand of serfdom, in many respects, was worse
than the legalized black slavery of the American South. In addition, between 1815
and 1848, Prince Metternich of Vienna, fearing that the guillotines of revolt
were once more threatening the monarchies of Central Europe, ruled Austria and
the German Confederation of about 40 independent countries with a reactionary
iron fist. The Liberal Revolts of 1848 in France, Austria and the Germanies left
many of the elite classes, college professors, physicians, bankers, politicians,
even noblemen, on the wrong side of the fence, and spurred many of them to hightail
it to Texas only one jump ahead of the hangman. In 1850, West Texas had enough
German 'Forty-niners,' that is, 'grafs,' princes, dukes, barons, and counts, in
it to stock Buckingham Palace.
On one occasion, the German poet, Heinrich
Heine, stopped a German emigrant as he prepared to board ship and asked, "Why
are you leaving Germany?" His reply was, "I swear by all the gods in heaven and
on earth that if France had suffered just one-tenth of what these people in Germany
have suffered, it would have caused thirty-six revolutions in France, and thirty-six
kings would have lost their heads to the guillotine."
Twenty-one of the
ruling German princes also recognized the need to reduce the overpopulation of
the Germanies, and to that end, they organized the "Mainzer Adelsverein," later
shortened to "Adelsverein." In English, this became the "Society for the Protection
of German Immigrants in Texas," and it later became known as the German-Texas
Immigration Company.
Even
before the Texas Revolution, there had been some negotiation between the German
princes and Mexico for the resettlement of German families in Texas, but generally
this came to naught before the Texans won their independence. Three German families
and some mechanics did resettle in Austin's colony in 1832. Three Germans died
for Texas freedom at the Alamo,
and seven more were captured and massacred in Colonel James Fannin's ill-fated
army. Altogether, 95 German immigrants fought for Texas during its war for independence.
One of them, George B. Erath, was a hero of the Battle
of San Jacinto, and along with Robert Kleberg, were giant figures in the Texas
of their day.
In time, Austin's colony, that region between Galveston Bay
and the Colorado River, became known as "Little Germany," its immigrant
population being an admixture of Germans who had lived earlier in the United States
and others who came direct from the German provinces. The regions lying between
the Colorado River and the Rio Grande became known in Europe as "Greater Germany,"
because all immigrants who came there to settle came direct from the Germanies.
All of this, of course, was in addition to the thousands of Anglo-Americans from
the United States, who were rapidly resettling the same areas.
The cradle
community of German immigration was the town of Industry,
in Austin County, founded by Friedrich Ernst, who arrived in Austin's colony in
1831. Some said that the town's name came from the industry and backbreaking labor
employed by the settlers in the cultivation of their fields. Industry's dating
stemmed from its survey into town lots in 1838, but Germans who came by way of
the United States were living there long before that. The second German community
was Biegel's Settlement, Fayette County, founded by Joseph Biegel in 1832. Fearing
persecution, perhaps because he was a German Protestant in the Catholic province
of Texas, Biegel changed the spelling of his name to B-E-A-G-L-E to disguise its
Germanic origins. The third German community was Cat
Spring, Austin County, founded in 1834 by Ludwig von Roemer and Louis and
Robert Kleberg, who later was to own the largest cattle ranch still surviving
in Texas. Other German settlements of the late 1830's included Frelsburg,
Blumenthal, New Ulm, and Bernardo,
then in Colorado County.
If
there were numerous causes for leaving Germany in 1840, there were an equal number
of reasons for NOT coming to Texas. As of that year, bands of fierce Karankawa,
Lipan Apache, Comanches, Kiowas, Tonkawas, Caddoes, and Waco Indians roamed over
that Republic, and many German scalps were to be lost to the Lipans and Comanches.
Generally speaking, because of German treaties with the Comanches in 1847, that
tribe usually spared the German settlers whereas they massacred the Anglo-American
setters who lived nearby.
Even before 1850, a secret American political
party, called the "Know Nothings" ("I know nothing," was always their stock answer),
had as its central theme hatred of immigrants and Roman Catholics, and since the
immigration of the 1840's-1850's was made up entirely of Irish Catholics and German
Catholics and Lutherans everywhere in the United States (and the Republic of Texas
before 1846), the brunt of their wrath locally was concentrated on these Central
Texas German settlers.
Unfortunately, an immigrant teacher-newspaperman
was soon to heap coals of fire upon that already incendiary situation. Dr. Adolph
Douai, an outspoken German of French Huguenot extraction, was a Free Thinker,
an atheist, an abolitionist, and an admirer of Karl Marx' communist philosophies.
He had already been run out of New
Braunfels because of his radical statements and teachings, and immediately
he founded the German-language San Antonio "Zeitung," which published abolition
editorials and espoused an all-German free state in West Texas in which runaway
slaves could take refuge. Needless to say, this was all that the "Know Nothings"
of Texas required before transposing and charging that Dr. Douai's philosophies
were characteristic thinking of all German immigrants. Although no more than five
percent of the Germans were pro-slavery, nearly all of them held steadfast to
the premise that others could and should own slaves if they so desired.
Some
of the German princes, 'grafs' (counts), dukes and barons who met at Bieberich-am-Rhein
in April, 1842, and organized the "Adelsverein" included Duke Adolf of Nassau,
Princes Carl, Ferdinand, and Alexander of Solms-Braunfels, Counts Clement, Joseph
and Anton of Boos-Waldeck, Prince Victor of Leiningen, Count Carl of Castell,
Prince Maurice of Nassau and so on to a total of 21 noblemen. Immediately two
of the princes departed to buy land in Texas, but their first attempt ended in
failure. Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels was named the commissioner-general for
German immigration, and it was he who led the first German contingents to Texas
and he who purchased the 5,000-square mile Miller-Fisher land grant located between
present-day San Saba
and San Angelo.
Prince Braunfels also purchased a coastal strip where he founded Carlshafen or
Indianola as the
'Adelsverein's' seaport as well as founding New
Braunfels, which became the first immigrant rest stop along the 230-mile route
to the Miller-Fisher land grant.
In 1845, Prince Braunfels returned to
Germany and was replaced as commisioner-general by Baron Ottfried von Meusebach,
who became known in Texas only as John Meusebach. He remained commissioner-general
for only two years before becoming a farmer and private citizen, but during that
time he founded the towns of Fredericksburg
and Castell and signed
a treaty with Santa Anna, war chief of the Comanches, that was generally successful.
In fact, another German nobleman, Baron Kriewicz of Potsdam, lived with the Comanches
for many years, and he managed on most occasions to keep the Comanches from raiding
into the German settlements. The colony at Castell,
Llano County, was as far north into the ten-county Miller-Fisher grant that the
Germans ever settled, and eventually most of the huge grant reverted to public
school land because the colonization requirements were not met. On his first visit
there, Meusebach went straight to New
Braunfels and for some time worked to straighten out the sagging financial
status of the 'Adelsverein,' which had fallen in to considerble disarray after
the departure of Prince Braunfels. At this point, I'm going to quote briefly from
a long Galveston "Weekly News" article of November 12, 1877, written by a survivor
of that first death
march from Indianola to New Braunfels, as follows: |
"When Baron Meusebach
returned to the coast, he found that ships carrying 6,000 immigrants had unloaded
at Indianola, for whose reception and transportation not the slightest preparation
had been made. With no other shelter, these unfortunate victims lived in holes
they had excavated in the ground, without roofs and without any drinking water
except that that fell from heaven. Meusebach had contracted with teamsters to
take the immigrants inland to New Braunfels. Instead, the teamsters ran away to
earn more money working for the U. S. Army. Their principal food was fish and
wild ducks because none of them had brought guns capable of killing larger game.
For weeks the rains came, and for miles the marsh prairies were covered with knee-deep
water. Immigrants suffered at first from malarial fever, and later, a kind of
flux or dysentery which resembled cholera had been thinning their ranks. Hundreds
of corpses were buried, only to be dug up by the wolves and their bones were left
dotting the prairie."
"Finally the roads became passable, and those who
were able started for New Braunfels on foot, leaving behind them not only their
weather-beaten household goods, but also their sick relatives. The route from
Indianola to New Braunfels was strewn with the bones of these immigrants. The
writer recalled coming upon a large, loaded wagon, stuck in the mud. The bones
of the oxen were still under the yoke, as were those of the driver and his family,
scattered about on all sides of the wagon. Of the 6,000 immigrants who reached
Indianola during that period of 1845-1846, no more than 1,500 ever reached New
Braunfels, and 50% or more of the victims had died miserable deaths from starvation
and disease. Upon reaching New Braunfels, the writer wrote back to Prussia, suggesting
that the proud German eagle be removed from the 'Adelsverein's' coat of arms and
be replaced with a Texas buzzard." |
| At
this point, I will stop long enough to discuss a single voyage of especial interest,
that of the 1,347-ton "Ben Nevis," a clipper ship built in Canada in 1852,
and one of the largest of its day, which carried Pastor Johann Kilian and 588
members of his Wendish congregation from the provinces of Saxony and Prussian
Lusatia in Germany in September, 1854, to Serbin, Texas... next
page |
We
invite the serious reader to try to locate: Yesterday in the Texas Hill Country
by Dr. Gilbert J. Jordan, Texas A & M Press, 1978.
This small, very
entertaining book includes the tiniest details of life in the small German Hill
Country communities that no longer appear on highway maps.
The 160 page
book. contains details on well-digging, sausage making, courtship rituals, old-world
customs and lessons in German-English language compromise. |
Order
Here
Yesterday in the Texas Hill Country | |
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