By Tara V. Kohlenberg — 

I watch rooftops multiply daily as I look out from our house of more than 30 years. I will not lie. It is distressing. It truly makes me appreciate the beautiful well-built 100-plus-year-old buildings that grace our city. Being a native, I often wonder what has become of the many others that no longer stand in their places.

In the mid-’60s, there was a young dentist who officed in a little house on Comal Avenue. It was the cutest little two-or-three-room house, gray with a red tin roof and red window trim. That dentist was Dr. Kahler. While he was away studying orthodontics, Dr. Hubert Risinger occupied his office. Dr. Risinger was my dentist for a short time.

The cute little house was originally owned by the Heinrich Scholl family. The Scholls, consisting of Heinrich Scholl and wife Anna Marie Saenger Scholl, along with their three children, Heinrich Jr., Adam and Caroline, set out for Texas from their home in Dillenburg, Nassau, Germany, with other immigrants through the Adelsverein. Upon arriving in Indianola, tragedy struck the Scholl family. Heinrich Sr. went hunting in a boat, fell out and drowned.

His wife and her three children continued to New Braunfels. The family worked hard to survive. The boys, Heinrich Jr. and Adam, learned carpentry and the mother kept boarders. Adam and Heinrich made the windows and doors used in building houses, which became an outstanding business. At one time, they worked for Dr. Koester in a mill. Later they made chairs and tables of walnut and cedar. The Scholl brothers also built houses and built them well.

Shortly after the Scholls reached New Braunfels, the Mexican American war broke out creating trouble for those in the young German settlement. Some men enlisted in the American Army while others were not interested in war. They had left Germany to escape mandatory military service. According to Scholl family historians, Heinrich Jr, Adam and a few other men of their age decided they would hide in hollow trees down on the Comal River to escape the soldiers who were rounding up men to fight.

The Scholl home was not far from the river, so Adam, being the bravest or the hungriest, decided he would venture out of hiding to go home for food. Adam dressed as a woman with a big sunbonnet on. About the time he got in the house, a soldier knocked at the door. He told Caroline Scholl he had seen a suspicious character come into her house. In the meantime, she had shoved her brother Adam under her bed where there was a trap door to the cellar. She denied seeing anyone, telling the soldier that there was no one else there. Adam, thinking the soldier had left, peeped from out from under the bed. Caroline quickly shoved him back with her foot and the soldier was none the wiser.

Heinrich Scholl, Jr. married twice. His first marriage was to Johanna Schmidt, which produced five children. After her death, he married Louise Schneider. They had nine children including two sets of twins. Heinrich became a well-known cabinet maker in New Braunfels and eventually lived in the house across the street from the original home. He died in 1909 at the age of 81.

The old original Scholl home ca.1846 is now near 179 years old. It is solidly built and still standing, even though not in its original place. It is a unique house in that it utilizes two different kinds of fachwerk. In the front wall of the house, builders used “rammed earth” fachwerk . That is much like pouring a curb today. Forms are set up and then mud is poured in between to fill the space. The mud is ‘rammed” with a long pole to remove any air pockets. Once the mud dries/hardens, the forms are removed, and plaster is applied to both sides to make a smooth wall.

The other three walls are made of mud brick. In Germany, they used fired brick. Here in Texas, they made bricks of mud and straw in brick molds, then air dried them before putting them in between the timbers. Once the dry bricks complete the walls, cedar shingles were placed on the exterior to prevent erosion. Inside the home, they used original Bastrop pine for both the floors and ceilings. It was originally built over a wonderful root cellar, which must have served as a good hiding place. The roof was of cedar shingles. In 1867, the city of New Braunfels passed an ordinance requiring all roofs to be fireproofed for insurance purposes, so tin was simply nailed over the shingles. In 1881, 90 percent of New Braunfels’ structures were fachwerk. Now, 95 percent of them are gone.

By the mid-1960s, the porch of the little house had been closed in to make another room. More windows were added. The exterior of the entire building was wrapped in wood shiplap siding. The little house changed hands over the years with room additions made. Wayne and Toni Peters purchased it in 1987 to use as a summer home. When they completed their rock home behind it in 1999, they graciously donated the little fachwerk house to the New Braunfels Conservation Society.

In its new place among the other architectural treasures, it serves as the office for New Braunfels Conservation Society Old Towne. The Scholl Peters house has been returned to near its original state with the “rammed earth” fachwerk and mud bricks still visible thru Plexiglas windows on the walls. The little house that I thought had “gone missing” was indeed hiding in plain sight all along. When buildings disappear, our history connection disappears. It makes me happy to see the Scholl house and history being cared for.

Do you know of any hidden fachwerk buildings?

Sources: New Braunfels Conservation Society; Sophienburg Museum and Archives; Betty Stratemann.

“Around the Sophienburg” is published every other weekend in the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung.

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By Tara V. Kohlenberg —

The Hinman House, the first stone house built in New Braunfels, is more than 150 years old. To tell the story of any great house, we must begin with the family’s story. Before the Hinmans came the Arnolds.

Peter Arnold arrived on the ship Ferdinand with the German Emigration Company in December 1844. He and his family were some of the original settlers of New Braunfels to arrive in March 1845. Through his contract with the company for the Fisher-Miller Grant, he drew Town Lot No. 76, which is the property located at 161 S. Castell. Most of the lots in town had a street frontage of 100 German feet (about 90 English feet) and a depth of 200 German feet. In my non-math brain, that is a little more than a one-third acre.

On his lot, Arnold, a blacksmith by trade, built a blacksmith shop and a log house where he lived with his wife and family. In 1855, Peter Arnold sold the property to Heinrich Hinmann (notice it is a double N on the end) for $550.

Heinrich Hinmann was born in 1819 in Lower Saxony in Germany. At the age of 17, he immigrated and travelled through America for several years before settling in New Braunfels. Hinmann, who was also a blacksmith, purchased Lot 76 the year after he married Therese Sickold. They went on to have 10 children, eight of whom survived.

The Hinman House was built in 1868. It is quite a step up from a log cabin. The builder of the cut limestone home is not recorded but was clearly an immigrant stone mason trained in the traditional construction methods of his German homeland. It is surmised that it was built by Heinrich Hinmann himself. One article I found purports that it was built by his son Charles Hinmann, but according to census records, Charles was only 7 at the time.

The original two-story home is rectangular with a small cellar and porches. It sits on a foundation of mortared stone walls to a depth below the cellar floor. The exterior walls are twenty-inch-thick stone masonry of squared, hammer-dressed local limestone with wide lime-mortar joints. The first floor sits on 7-inch-by-7-inch” rough-hewn joists … basically, cedar tree trunks.

The architectural feature that absolutely makes this house, in my humble opinion, is the porches. On the southwest side, facing the street, there are two porches running the length of the house. The lower porch is open with six wood columns supporting the upper porch. On the second-floor porch, solid wood columns support the roof. The upper porch is surrounded by a wooden railing. The original railing was lattice work. Now the railing is in a geometric pattern. There may have been similar porches along the back of the house.

Although the main structure of the Hinman House has remained the same, there have been wood-frame-additions made to the rear of the house to increase functionality. It is possible that rear porches were closed in to create those additions. It is thought that the home was originally heated with wood stoves as there has been no evidence of chimneys. With later renovations, a fireplace was built in the main room and a gas-fired furnace was installed in the cellar. Renovations also moved and reconfigured the interior stairwell.

Heinrich (Henry) Hinmann was a man of many talents. As a blacksmith, he made and repaired most anything made of metal, including farm equipment. He was also the inventor and manufacturer of the Hinman Plow, created specifically for the black soil of Comal County.

Heinrich was also a marble cutter. In the late 19th-century New Braunfels, marble was used for headstones. When Heinrich died in 1899, his son, Adolf, also a marble cutter, returned to New Braunfels to continue The Hinmann Marble Yard at the Castell address. His mother, Therese, lived in the limestone house.

Alexander J. Hinman (he officially dropped the extra N off the end of his name) was a well-respected physician and a prominent businessman in the New Braunfels community. He, his parents and siblings had moved into the Hinman family home to live with his grandmother after his grandfather Heinrich died. On October 1, 1913, Dr. A.J. Hinman bought the two-story home and surrounding property from his grandmother, Therese Hinmann. There, he raised his family, practiced medicine and lived until his death. It is believed that the bulk of the house renovations and additions were done to accommodate his medical practice in the early 1920s.

Hinman was notable not only for the care he gave to his patients, but the impact he had on New Braunfels. He was recognized for being president of the New Braunfels Independent School District school board, founding member of the New Braunfels Rotary Club and the first president of the New Braunfels Hospital. The Hinman Family owned what is known as Hinman Island, which is now part of Landa Park.

When Dr. A.J. Hin­man passed away in Oc­to­ber of 1960, an­other chap­ter opened for the Hin­man House. Of­fice space was leased out to var­i­ous en­ti­ties over the years, in­clud­ing real es­tate firms, med­ical prac­tices and United Way.

The Hin­man House was pur­chased by First Na­tional Bank (now Chase Bank) with the in­ten­tion of build­ing their mo­tor­bank fa­cil­ity on the ad­ja­cent prop­erty; how­ever, they se­lected an­other site. The bank opened the Hin­man House to var­i­ous or­ga­ni­za­tions for meet­ings and events.

In the early ‘70s, the Hin­man House was the venue for Garten­fest, a fundraiser held by the Con­ser­va­tion So­ci­ety dur­ing Wurst­fest. The event of­fered a lit­tle of every­thing — Ger­man food, mu­sic and rum­mage sale all in one. That is where that great Con­ser­va­tion So­ci­ety tra­di­tion of “Kartof­fel­suppe” and Iron Brew be­gan.

Chase Bank gifted The Hin­man House to Braun­fels Foun­da­tion in 1999. The Hin­man House was des­ig­nated a Texas His­tor­i­cal Land­mark in 2009 and is cur­rently used by Com­mu­ni­ties in Schools free of charge. Our city is lucky to have such a won­der­ful spec­i­men of early Ger­man Texas ar­chi­tec­ture on full dis­play in our down­town.

Sources: Sophienburg Museum and Archives; Handbook of Texas History Online.

“Around the Sophienburg” is published every other weekend in the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung.

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How easy we ladies have life today compared to the old days in the 1850s. “You’ve come a long way, baby” is the understatement of our time.

A woman’s role in society has changed dramatically due to not only modern technology but changes that occurred in society such as the equal rights to all humans, including women’s right to vote. Since World War II, a large percentage of women work outside the home. One hundred sixty years ago, women worked at home starting early in the morning until late at night.

Women in the old days were primarily in charge of the living quarters, food, clothing, and children. The typical woman would start her work day very early working all day to accomplish all that was necessary for survival. The one room log house she lived in with her family was cold in winter and hot in summer, but it was better than the tent the settlers lived in on the coast and while traveling to New Braunfels. Floors were added later to keep bugs from invading the house. Furniture legs were placed in dishes of water or kerosene, like a small moat. Bedbugs were kept out or in, using the same method on the legs of the bed.

As the family expanded, so did the house. A second room was added separated by a dogtrot, a covered, breezeway between the two rooms. Originally cooking was done outside but the two-room house allowed cooking to be indoors. The children typically slept in a loft above the dogtrot. The handmade furniture was made of oak, cypress, cedar or pine. Cedar was the choice wood because it repelled bugs. Trunks held the meager supplies that each immigrant was allowed to bring from Germany.

Electricity didn’t appear on the scene until the beginning of the 20^th century. Wood-burning stoves were not only used for cooking but also for heating. Most early houses had no window panes but had openings that were covered with animal hide. With no electricity, homemade candles and oil lamps took the place of lights but the “early to bed” philosophy made light unnecessary.

There is a reason that settlements sprang up around water sources. New Braunfels had two large rivers, the Guadalupe and the Comal. Drinking water was plentiful as a necessity for human survival. A very early water source in New Braunfels was the Comal River from which water was hauled by individuals in wooden buckets. At one time there was a path from Seguin Ave. crossing over to Comal Ave. and down the hill to the river. Piped water was a long time coming.

Clothes were washed outside in large iron pots heated on coals. Homemade soap was made by mixing ash and lard and then slicing it into chunks. The clothes cleaning process took up a lot of a woman’s time. People had very few clothes and tending to animals and the garden was dirty business.

At the Sophienburg Museum, there are many examples of clothing, some even brought over from Germany in the 1840s. Clothing was made of linen woven from flax. Cotton was available for making thread and yarn with a spinning wheel. Notice the picture of the thread or yarn measuring machine called the weasel. When the desired length was obtained, the machine made a popping noise, hence the children’s rhyme “Pop Goes the Weasel.” Sewing was a skill most women learned in Germany.

Growing and preparing food was the job of women. Gardens were mostly tended by women, using the very popular modern concept of growing food called “organic.” How? There were no chemicals and animals supplied the fertilizer.

Raising corn was a matter of life or death. Cornbread was made every day and took the place of the black bread that the Germans were used to. Nut trees, mulberry trees, blackberries and grapes were abundant. The Adelsverein provided coffee, salt, vinegar, and sugar.

Letters were sent home from Texas requesting that immigrants bring plows, axes, scythes, rakes, sewing needles and seeds of all kinds.

Most immigrants had small amounts of cattle. A small pen that was attached to the house held the milk cows and their calves. The calves were left in the pens and the cows were released to graze out on the open land since there was no fencing. At night the cows would come back to their calves and so it wasn’t necessary to round them up. Milk, butter and cheese of all kinds were made from cow’s milk. Another important food came from chickens mainly because of eggs but also meat. They scratched around the yard eating bugs not realizing that they were performing a service.

Spoilage of food was a big problem in the Texas weather. Meat had to be smoked or packed in lard for preservation. Crockery was important for this purpose but oak barrels were cheaper and larger than pottery. The barrels were constructed from large tree trunks and the crocks made from local clays.

Dr. Ferdinand Roemer told the story of the Shawnee Indians that would bring bear meat and bear oil for sale to New Braunfels. Supposedly bear meat was very tasty and contained a lot of fat right under the skin. The Indians brought the bear oil in skins and this oil was preferred in place of lard or other oil. Roemer said that when the Indians came to sell their bear oil they would each bring about 60 gallons. Bear oil needed no refrigeration.

Isn’t it interesting that the latest concept of food production is called “farm to table?”

Child bearing and care were primarily a woman’s job. In old New Braunfels, a sign of a woman’s worth had to do with how many children she had. There was another side effect of multiple children and that was that they helped men in the fields and women in the home.

At the Heritage Village with the Museum of Handmade Furniture there is an authentic kitchen from the 1800s. This free-standing rock kitchen was originally on the Breustedt house property. Most of the contents of this kitchen were donated to the museum by David Hartman. An icebox dates around the 1880s after the first railroad came to town and ice was available by rail. This kitchen and its contents can be viewed when the Heritage Society holds its annual Folkfest on April 9&10. Many of the old methods of survival and living are demonstrated at the festival like sausage making, open hearth cooking, sauerkraut making, quilt making, hand washing of clothes and many other exhibits.

Social changes involving women were a result of technological changes. Of one thing we can be certain: Technological advancements now will have a direct effect on the role of women in society in the future just as in the past. “How’re you going to keep them down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?” This song was written about men in WWI but I think the idea is appropriate for women as well.

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Besides the Plaza Hotel on the Main Plaza, another grand hotel was built around the turn of the century, the Comal Hotel (now Prince Solms Inn). What was the reason for more large hotels in the little town of New Braunfels? Hotels are built to fill a need. The coming of the railroad bringing visitors to the quaint little town, with its Landa Park, was actually the big boost to tourism. At one time Emilie and Theodore Eggeling ran the Plaza Hotel on the Main Plaza and decided that a second large hotel was needed. Let’s go back to the roots of the family that made this second hotel possible.

Joseph Klein

Immigrant Joseph Klein built a little German house in New Braunfels in 1852. That house still stands but not where it was built. It started its 115-year-old life on the property where the Prince Solms Inn is now located on the corner of San Antonio and Market Sts.

Joseph Klein, a single 26-year-old bachelor from Germany first lived with his parents, Stephan and Margaretha Klein who had built their small house next to the Naegelin Bakery on Seguin St. in 1845. This house is also still standing.

Stephan Klein helped his son Joseph construct his corner lot house on San Antonio St. Joseph married widow Johanna Freitag and they moved into the new house.

William and Friedricke Kuse

Records show that Joseph sold his house in 1859 to William Kuse who became a naturalized a citizen the next year. His family consisted of his wife Friedricke, his ten-year-old son Carl, a daughter Emilie, aged six and a son Friedrich, one year old. All the children were born in Prussia except Friedrich. Daughter Emilie would have a big impact on New Braunfels.

Theodore and Emily Eggeling

William Kuse was a shoemaker and had set up his shop in the house that he bought from Klein. About 40 years later the house was moved to the north of the same lot and resituated about 100 feet from its original location. Then it faced Market St. The reason for this move was an economic one instigated by Emilie Kuse now married to Theodore Eggeling. They had a general store across the street from her parent’s house on the corner of San Antonio and Market Sts. (Look at the photo) Theodore and Emilie Kuse Eggeling were successful business people. Together they ran the very successful Plaza Hotel around Main Plaza. Particularly Emilie was considered a successful business woman in New Braunfels.

Around the turn of the century New Braunfels began to attract thousands of visitors who often spent the night in local hotels. Emilie was familiar with what was happening in town and decided that another large hotel was needed. Her parents had been living in the little house on the corner of San Antonio and Market Sts. all this time. Her father had retired from the shoemaking business and she convinced her parents to allow her to move the house to the back of the large lot. Emilie and Theodore would construct a large hotel on this spot.

The Comal Hotel

The Comal Hotel, sometimes called the Eggeling Hotel, built over a period of two years from 1898 to 1900 was another masterpiece by builder Christian Herry. Built in Texas Victorian style, the two story brick building has maintained its original exterior walls to this day. The bricks were made in McQueeney where a certain clay was located. The walls are 18” thick, the window sills of white limestone with cypress wood boards are 20” wide. The building consists of a full basement, two floors and an attic.

Rooms had no closets but were provided with private basins, pitchers and chamber pots. In the back yard was a privy. At the front of the building on the second floor was a luggage hoist, a pulley used to raise and lower trunks to the upstairs porch. There was a large dining room/parlor that became a favorite of townspeople.

Upon completion of the hotel, the Eggeling family, consisting of four children, moved into the hotel. As these children grew older, they became a part of the operation of the hotel. Son Adolph drove a dray (stout cart or truck) to haul luggage from the train to the hotel. Two carriages were driven by family members. With time, family members were involved in running the hotel.

The Comal Hotel (now the Prince Solms Inn) is situated on a half-acre lot. The Eggeling family utilized the lot for their business. They would serve food from the garden and kept pigs, cows, and chickens. They had a feed store. Stories tell of guests wanting fresh milk, and Emilie would go out to the cow lot, milk the cow, and bring it to the guest.

For a brief time in 1919, a hospital was set up in the hotel by Ida Heulitte, R.N. complete with operating rooms, emergency ward, and private rooms. All doctors were welcome to use the facilities.

Bill and Nan Dillen

After the death of both Eggelings with Emilie in 1930, family members helped run the hotel until the property was sold to Bill and Nan Dillen They bought the hotel, the Klein house, and the feed store. The Dillens refurbished the hotel and brought the structure up to modern standards with electricity, heating, and plumbing. Bill and Nan Dillen were responsible for saving many historic buildings in New Braunfels.

Dillen was the one who named the hotel, “The Prince Solms Inn.” The Dillens added historic features from other structures. Cypress shutters inside were joined by wooden pegs and purchased from the original courthouse in Marlin, Tx. The doors leading to the basement were obtained from the Sam Bennett mansion in San Antonio. When the Dillens added a patio next to the outside basement entrance, stones from the old original Comal County Prison that was torn down were used. This prison building was located behind Chase Bank building and the words, “Comal County Prison” can be seen carved in the entry of the basement. For the cover of the patio, old cypress and cedar timbers were obtained from the first woolen mill-steam laundry on Comal St. Also from that site are two large doors that are used as entrances from the patio to the storage area.

The Dillens sold the property, but the sale was unsuccessful and the Dillens reclaimed the property in 1977. They sold it that same year to Betty Mitchell and Marg Crumbaker. Much of the information for this story came from research of these two ladies.

Present owner is Al Buttross who has owned the Inn since 2007. New Braunfels is so fortunate to have some of these original structures and thankful for the people that made that possible.

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Hermann Seele gave us a good description of the Texas Hill Country. I’m paraphrasing what he said and you can observe as you drive between Austin and San Antonio on Highway 35. In the distance, take notice of a low, dark green line of cedar-covered hills. This line indicates the location of the Edwards Escarpment. Along this line, the earth split long ago and the coastal plain on which you are traveling fell away several hundred feet. This falling exposed a limestone strata. Subterranean waters gushed forth to the surface by pressure and found themselves exposed to the surface. Barton Springs, San Marcos Springs, San Antonio Springs (Brackenridge Park) and Comal Springs are examples. The springs fed streams causing an abundance of water below the fault.

Now go above the fault and you see the beautiful hill country where so many small communities were established soon after New Braunfels was settled. In the hill country, surface water is scarce and wells are essential. Most of the land is used for ranching and small farms. The Guadalupe River and small creeks were important sources of water in the hill country. The settlements outside of the city limits of New Braunfels were created where water was available. One of the areas about 25 miles Northwest of New Braunfels was settled in 1850 and called Honey Creek.

Back in the early 1840s, a man named Andrew Bechtold heard stories from friends and relatives in Germany that Texas was indeed the “promised land” found along the Guadalupe River. With that thought in mind, Bechtold, along with his wife Christina and their five sons, made the 32 day trip across the seas, arriving on the coast just about when the cholera epidemic broke out. Many immigrants died and the tragedy for Christina was that her husband and four of her five children perished.

Christina who was 27 years old at the time and her one surviving son, Michael, had no choice but to make the difficult trip inland by ox wagon. These immigrants were looking for unclaimed land. Christina was Roman Catholic so she joined others of that same faith.

Among those immigrants was a single man named George Friedrich Kunz and it was on this trip that Mrs. Bechtold met and married Mr. Kunz. Together they came to an area of unclaimed land outside New Braunfels belonging to the State of Texas where a stream emptied into the Guadalupe River. They chose a spot where a small spring bubbled from under a rock. They applied for a homestead and within two years the 160 acres would be theirs.

The land was mostly caliche and so they constructed a shelter until they could construct a cedar log house. Buildings of cedar were very strong. Cedar logs were an important resource. Do you know why chests were made of cedar? Bugs don’t like it. While the couple was busy building their house, her son Michael was sent to the creek to get drinking water. On the banks he came upon a large number of swarming bees hanging from a tree forming a large clump. Michael ran back to the parents to tell them of his find and they decided to return to the place and look for honey that they knew must be there because of the bees. The name of the place became Honey Creek.

Of course, there are more than one story of the origin of the name Honey Creek. Another version is that early settlers found swarms of bees along the Guadalupe River. The creek bank would become a source of honey, a welcome addition to the meager diet of the settlers. Some even connect the name with the unusual honeycomb rock found in abundance in the area.

George Kunz was a resourceful man. He chopped cedar for his house. The cedar that he didn’t use for construction, he burned. He noticed that the burned cedar produced a coal that lasted for several hours. These coals could be used for heating an iron for ironing clothes. You may wonder why anyone would bother to iron clothes used in the outdoors. If you wash the stiff material that work clothes were made of, hang them out to dry, they are extremely stiff. Ironing the garment makes it more comfortable. This charcoal was George’s first cash crop and he hauled charcoal to sell in surrounding towns such as San Antonio, New Braunfels, and Boerne.

On one of these excursions, George Kunz met Rev. John Kosspiel, a Catholic missionary priest stationed at a parish in Boerne. He was actually a circuit-riding priest covering several counties. Kunz invited the priest to spend the night and say mass in his home. Other catholic families invited were Kneupper, Acker, Lux, Moos, Scheel, and Kaiser.

From that initial meeting, Kunz’s house became the site of services, even weddings. In 1876 a small log chapel was built near the Kunz home. It burned in 1877 and was replaced by a second log chapel. A larger frame church was built in 1892 on the site of what is now St. Joseph’s Educational Building.

After years of struggle, St. Joseph’s of Honey Creek received its first resident priest, Rev. Virgillus Draessel. Parishioner Barbara Wehe states that Draessel was in poor health and spoke almost no English, which was all right with his parishioners. He supposedly made a promise to the Blessed Virgin Mary that if he was made well, he would build a chapel on the hill and then a church. Land for this big church was purchased from Hermann Scheel. Rev. Draessel started the construction in 1908 and soon there was conflict between the priest and the parishioners who were building the structure.

Discouraged, Draessel returned to Germany for a couple of years at which time no progress was made in the church construction. He returned from Germany and completed the St. Joseph’s building. Rev. Draessel died after serving the church 34 years and was buried inside the church beneath the floor near the altar.

The Honey Creek State Natural Area, across the highway from St. Joseph’s Church is now open by guided tours only. It had its beginning as the Jacob Doeppenschmidt Ranch. The Doeppenschmidts were members of St. Joseph’s Church. As members of the family added parcels of land, the area eventually became the Honey Creek Ranch. This well-preserved wildlife area has become the showcase of the Texas Hill Country.

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You have to admit that in South Texas it’s sometimes hard to get in the Christmas spirit. Where is the snow and the one-horse open sleigh, ho, ho, ho? The Sophienburg Museum and Archives tries its best to create the Christmas atmosphere in the Civic Center during its fund-raising Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market).

Every year for the last 25 years, the decorating committee would strive to decorate with something a little bit different and this year they hit the jackpot. Both of the halls will be decorated as usual, but look at the small ballroom stage! Donna and Cody Debner and Beverly and Clark Wigley came up with the idea for decorating the stage behind Sophie’s Café with something that they knew a great deal about. They would create a miniature Neuremburg Christkindlesmarkt.

The Debners and the Wigleys met in Germany in 1977 when both husbands were in the Air Force. The two couples traveled together in the early 2000s and Christmas markets were their favorite destination, particularly in Neuremburg. Christmas markets go way back in Germany and the Neuremburg Market started in 1628. All kinds of craftsmen brought their goods to the market to sell and over the years the market moved to various places. In 1933 it moved to the Main Market Square in the town.

During WWII there was no market held in Neuremburg. It was one of the most bombed- out areas in Germany, but after the war in 1948, the custom was revived and held in the destroyed Old Town among the ruins. Even today, each vendor creates a small area with a red and white striped awning over it. The red and white awnings are actually the colors of the flag of the city of Neuremburg.

The stage at the Civic Center will be adorned with large examples of German Folk Art called Schwibbögen. Perhaps you have seen these arches and didn’t know what they were. Here’s the explanation:

In the Erzgebirge Mountains (Ore Mountains), on the border with Czechoslovakia, is an area of silver and iron mines. A long-standing tradition of that area is construction of small arches to put in windows of the homes. These arches were made of iron and contained seven candles across the arch. The tradition of these objects in the windows was to welcome home the miners at Christmas. The light of the candles represented the only time that work stopped for the miners and so it was a happy time.

As the miners made their way through the snow, they were welcomed home by these candle-lit arches. During Christmas, large Schwibbögen are set up in churches and public buildings. They are decorated with many scenes such as the Nativity, family, hunters, houses and German scenery. For many years the Schwibbögen were hand carved of a very soft wood. Some of them are painted, but most are left to the natural beauty of the wood.

There will be two Schwibbögen five feet tall and nine feet wide on the stage with a traditional Christmas tree between the two. This tree will be decorated with candles (electric) and German straw ornaments. The Germans are not the only people who claim that they originated the Christmas tree, although Martin Luther is the person who has gotten the most credit. The story is that he looked at the night star-filled sky and decided to decorate his indoor tree with candles representing the stars. It seems that the only prerequisite for a Christmas tree is that it has to still be green in December. When the immigrants came to New Braunfels and were looking around for a green tree, preferably a fir tree, they found the cedar. What do we find now? An artificial tree, mostly green, but sometimes even pink. In the late 1800s Sears and Roebuck offered artificial Christmas trees sold by the number of limbs, 33 limbs for $.50 and 55 limbs for $1.00.

Are you familiar with the Weihnachtspyramiden (Christmas pyramid)? It is a reasonable facsimile of a Christmas tree made of finely carved wood with candles at the base that make the top spin. These were quite popular when trees were brought inside. They are beautiful works of art and most are very expensive.

The Schwibbögen on the stage will be left in their original wood and decorated with a wintry mountain scene in Germany. Quaint miniature houses will overlook a festively decorated Christmas market complete with red and white awnings. The arches were designed and drawn by Wilfred Schlather and constructed and decorated by the Wigleys and Debners. Schlather is a devoted volunteer at the Sophienburg besides writing a book about the Civil War in Comal County. It can be purchased at Sophie’s Shop.

The tables in Sophie’s Café in front of the stage allows one to sit and rest, eat German food, and then get up and shop again. The lantern centerpieces decorated by Donna Debner can be purchased at Sophie’s Shop.

Weihnachtsmarkt is organized by the staff at the Sophienburg with Linda Dietert as Executive Director. Hundreds of volunteers give of their time and hundreds contribute, but the Museum and Archives needs you to help their large mission of keeping history alive in New Braunfels.

Weihnachtsmarkt is the largest money-making event that the Sophienburg has. Other fundraisers are the Sophie’s Shop at Wurstfest and a brand new upcoming event on Februray 28, 2015. It is called “Braunfest” on the grounds of the Sophienburg. Watch for details of this new event.

Weihnachtsmark will open its doors at 10 a.m. this Friday and will run through Sunday. Even if it’s 90 degrees outside, you will immediately get that cold winter feeling.

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