By Tara V. Kohlenberg ─

One might think that New Braunfels knows sausage because of Wurstfest, when it is really the other way around. New Braunfels has Wurstfest because We Know Sausage.

Sausage making is an art that requires patience, skill, and attention to detail. A food staple of many cultures, sausage evolved as a way to efficiently preserve meat for long periods of time.

Early sausage makers found that a wide range of raw ingredients could be used, including the parts of the animal carcasses that could not be used in other ways, including the less tender cuts, organ meats and blood.

Good sausage makers are as discriminating about what goes into sausage as winemakers are about grape selection. They take into account not only the meat used, but also the aroma of seasonings and balance of flavors to create a juicy, tender sausage with a satisfying ‘snap’ upon first bite. Sausage makers of the world’s cultures used regional ingredients and spices, contributing to a vast culinary diversity of sausage, even though the processes were basically the same. By the 19th century, butchers and sausage makers were considered skilled craftsmen in Germany. They had to undergo years of apprenticeships and rigorous practice, before recognition as a Metzgermeister or master sausage maker.

Karl August Lohse, believed to be the first commercial sausage maker in New Braunfels, was born in 1830 in Meissen, Saxony. He apprenticed under a master butcher for three and one-half years before being issued a diploma. For the next eight years, he traveled as a journeyman working under other butchers to hone his trade. He set sail for Texas as a Metzgermeister in 1860. He is attributed with spreading the fame of Comal County’s German sausages by supplying them to San Antonio on a regular basis.

By 1961, with a population of about 16,000 people, New Braunfels boasted at least nineteen commercial sausage makers (roughly one sausage maker per 850 people). Local veterinarian and meat inspector E.A. Grist knew them all. He proposed that New Braunfels recognize and honor the local sausage makers with a sausage week.

The inaugural Sausage Festival Week was held December 11-16, 1961. Sausage makers and local merchants promoted and displayed all types of sausage made in New Braunfels while restaurants featured sausage dishes on their menus. The week ended with a public sausage supper scheduled in Landa Park. The Saturday supper event was actually held in the National Guard Armory due to bad weather.

The stars of the show were the sausage makers: Artzt Meat market, Brodt’s Slaughter House, Fritz’s Meat Market, Kraft Slaughter House, Krause’s Café, Kriewald Meat, Neuse’s Grocery, New Braunfels Smokehouse, Norbert’s Market & Grocery, Rahe Packing Company (now Granzin’s Meat), Schwamkrug’s Garden, Soechting Country Market, Textile Café, Warnecke Catering and Weyel’s IGA Foodliner and others.

Today, grocery stores are huge and stock a lot of prepackaged, big name sausage brands. There are only a handful of commercial sausage makers in New Braunfels who have grown to meet the demand. The traditional local butcher shops that still make their own sausage include Granzin’s Meat Market, Rust Game Place, and although not really in Comal County, Penshorn’s Meat Market in Marion. In addition, there may be some game processors that make venison sausage for their customers.

There are two large-scale United States Department of Agriculture commercial sausage operations: 1845 Meat Company and the New Braunfels Smokehouse. They sell both wholesale and retail, promoting and shipping on a national level. They keep up the tradition of providing locally made sausage for Wurstfest, along with Rust Game place.

Of course, many local farmers still slaughter and butcher their own farm animals (hogs and calves) for their use. It is a big job. Butchering meant days of work by the whole family to process the meat, make sausage and render fat for soap making. Over the years, they developed their own secret family sausage recipes, many of which were passed down through the generations.

For the uninitiated, sausage is made by grinding up meat parts of an animal and mixing with spices and seasonings. I have participated with my family in a weekend of deer processing and sausage making. I started with turning casings (pig intestines) and moved up to tying sausage off with string. It is a great way to carry on the family recipe; however, I have to admit, it is tough doing everything by hand for 80 pounds of sausage. I was never in charge of the smoking chore. It can be complex and take hours.

According to Smokemeister Charles McKinnis, 1845 Meat Company makes sausage in 200-pound batches. Each batch goes through the same steps: primary grind of selected meat; second grind with seasonings added; third grind with curing agent; then stuffed into natural casings and hung, which takes about 50 minutes. From there, they go to a huge smokehouse oven to be smoked and steamed for about two hours. That is considerably shorter than the six hours needed for traditional smokehouse ovens. Once the sausages are chilled, they are packaged, labeled and dated according to USDA requirements. Two hundred pounds in three hours is a way better average than my 80 pounds in a week.

Every sausage maker learns from someone else. It is great to be able to naturally discern subtle flavors and aromas, but that skill is usually coached by someone else. McKinnis learned about flavors from his mother and his grandmother. He learned about flavor formulations from Clint Skarosky. Mostly, McKinnis spent at least 20 years under the tutelage of Smokemeister Rocky Tays, who has at least 50 years in the business. He learned not only about how to make sausage, but how to do it right to meet USDA regulations.

The time-honored process of sausage making is a big part of New Braunfels’ German heritage.

With every butcher shop or local sausage maker that closes, an invaluable culinary heritage is lost.

Sources: The Sophienburg Museum and Archives; Mike Dietert; Wurstfest New Braunfels: the First Fifty Years by Alton J. Rahe; Charles McKinnis.

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

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What’s going on at the Sophienburg Museum and Archives? By far the most important news is the Sophienburg Board choosing Tara Kohlenburg as its Executive Director. Tara grew up here in New Braunfels. When asked why she accepted the position of Sophienburg Executive Director, here is what she wrote to me:

Home by Tara Kohlenburg

Home. The place where one resides or is naturally located. I consider home to be that special place where the sounds and sights and smells come together, stirring images of good times and safe places. The Sophienburg feels like home.

The streets of this neighborhood, Academy, Coll, Magazine and Jahn, bring back fond memories. When I was little, we lived on Academy and then on Magazine just down the street from the Museum. My Oma lived in a gingerbread house on Jahn just above the ice plant. In the summer my sister and I stayed with her while my mother worked. We would use the wash house as our very own “play house,” that is until I got into the bluing, the kind used to brighten your wash. Needless to say, I wore the discovery of the beautiful blue liquid on my hands for a week, try as I did to try to wash it off. Oma wasn’t one to spank, but the German under her breath let me know just how much trouble I was in.

Each week of the summer, my sister and I were allowed to walk the two blocks to the Emmie Seele Faust Library to trade in our books for new adventures. We, and probably many other kids, would walk the rock retaining wall of the Museum to the rock stairs, cross over, and continue past the grape vine to the library. Even now, when the bell above the front door announces an arrival to the refurbished library building, I can still visualize the shelves of books and me making a bee line to the children’s section for my next pick.

Falling pecans; the smell of burning leaves; thick slices of homemade bread smeared with mustang grape jam; buttermilk cookies; and the twelve o’clock whistle signaling my Opa (a fireman) would be home for lunch in 5 minutes. These are just some of the memories of my childhood, the kind that come out of nowhere when you open a box of photos. Home.

I love being back at The Sophienburg Museum & Archives where we are the “Guardians of History, Keepers of the Treasures, and Stewards of the Stories.” The stories of how and why New Braunfels is so darn inviting to people… It’s in our history. Our people. Our Families. Our culture. Our rituals. Home.

Come be “At Home” in the museum with us. Volunteer your time and talents. It certainly doesn’t feel like work. Dorothy had it right. “There’s no place like HOME.”

Thanks Tara for sharing these vivid memories. It’s obvious that Tara is a strong advocate of volunteerism. She picked the right job because volunteers are absolutely necessary for a not-for-profit organization like the Sophienburg.

So, what else is going on at the hill? A big group of volunteers are busy organizing the Sophienburg’s number one fund raising event, Weihnachtsmarkt that will happen towards the middle of November (Nov. 18^th through 20^th). There are several hundred volunteers involved in planning and running this big Christmas Market at the Convention Center.

Another big important money-maker is the Sophie’s Shop booth at Wurstfest. Run by Nancy Classen, the booth is entirely manned (womanned) by volunteers. When you buy the beautiful German Christmas ornaments or the wooden figurines, you will be helping your museum preserve the history of the town and county.

Wurstfest begins two weeks before Weihnachtsmarkt (Nov. 4^th) and lasts for 10 days. Alton Rahe, in his book Wurstfest. The First Fifty Years, wrote the interesting story of who, what, where, when, why and how Wurstfest started and has continued for over 50 years. Darvin Dietert compiled all of the marvelous photos. Talk about a volunteer driven event that achieved world-wide acclaim.

Local veterinarian E. A. Grist is given credit for having the idea of a celebration about sausage and the sausage makers. Dr. Grist had also been the local meat inspector since 1955. Members of the original steering committee including Grist, Kermit Krause, Charlie Schwamkrug, Harley Schulz, Alphonse Oberkampf, Joe Chapman and Tom Purdum, felt that the local sausage makers should be honored for what they do. Boy, did they hit that nail on the head. Herb Skoog with his expertise on advertising became their spokesperson deluxe.

That was in 1961. There were 19 sausage makers. In Alton’s book the list was compiled and 16 commercial sausage-makers identified. They were Erhardt Artzt of Artzt Meat Market, William “Butcher” Brodt of Brodt’s Slaughter House, Fritz Soechting of Fritz’s Meat Market, Goswin Kraft of Kraft Slaughter House, Kermit Krause of Krause’s Café, Reno Kriewald of Kriewald Meat, Gilbert Neuse and Norman Hanz of Neuse’s Grocery, Joe Chapman of New Braunfels Smokehouse, Norbert Haecker of Norbert’s Market & Grocery, Frank Rahe of Rahe Packing Co., Charlie Schwamkrug of Schwamkrug’s Garden, Arthur Soechting of Soechting Country Market, Alois Hildebrandt of Textile Café, Ben Warnecke of Warnecke Catering, and George Preiss of Weyel’s IGA Foodliner. This is a list of known commercial sausage makers but by no means does it represent all those individuals who made sausage in Comal County at home.

Dr. Grist presented the idea of a sausage celebration to the New Braunfels City Commission and it was immediately approved. The City of New Braunfels, the New Braunfels Board of City Development and the Chamber of Commerce agreed to sponsor it. A unique band was organized to visit surrounding towns to get the word out. With advertisement on television, clubs, newspapers and advertising guru Herb Skoog, the word about a sausage week got around. When Tom Purdum wrote a Chamber release that hit the associated press wire service it was used throughout the country and even in some foreign countries.

The first Sausage Week was from December 11^th through the 16^th of December. The first five days were to be full of activities in Landa Park. The big sausage festival day on the 16^th, although planned for Landa Park, had to be moved to the National Guard Armory due to bad weather. No beer could be sold at the government owned Armory, so beer was given away.

Music became a part of the celebration from the beginning and still is. The Amtliche Stadt Wurst Kapelle (Official City Sausage Band made up of Jo Faust, Alphonse Oberkampf, Gilbert Zipp, Johnny Schnabel, Hilar Voges and Harry Schmidt, played and the local German singing clubs of Harmonie, Echo, Frohsinn and Maennerchor performed under the direction of Otto Seidel. Five orchestras also performed: Al Schnabel Orchestra, Rainbow Orchestra, Cloverleaf Orchestra, Cookie and his Hi-Fi’s and Rusty Ruppel’s Rebels.

This first sausage celebration drew an estimated crowd of 2,000 (although it was big at the time, it’s a pittance of today’s crowd.)

We’ve come a long way in this article from the Sophienburg Museum and Archives to Weihnachtsmarkt at the Convention Center, and then looked at the first year of Wurstfest that was to include polka-ing at Landa Park but resulted in marching to the National Guard Armory to honor sausage. All these places and activities have something in common. Yes, “Spass Muss Sein” (fun must be) in New Braunfels. We love our town and that’s why we volunteer and tell the world about it.

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