Historian leaves no stone unturned in tracing history of Texas German buildings

There wasn't much about the antebellum South that didn't make touring journalist Frederick Olmsted cranky.

"They work little, and that little, very badly," he groused of his back-country hosts. "They earn little, sell little, buy little and they have little - very little - of the common comforts and consolations of civilized life. Their destitution is not material only; it is intellectual and moral."

Imagine then, the delight of the future designer of New York's Central Park, when, in the mid-1850s, he visited the German hamlets in the Texas Hill Country. There he found art- and book-filled houses and conversation "worthy of golden goblets." He waltzed, quaffed wine and marveled at Mozart flawlessly played on a "fine piano."

What might not be immediately apparent, though, was that Olmsted's brush with high culture occurred in the most primitive setting. His hosts lived in log cabins. Their furniture was made by their neighbors; their wine, fermented from their own grapes. Just about everything the settlers possessed was fashioned from the materials at hand.

Texas Germans' "material culture" - the houses, churches, public buildings, furniture and tombstones - is the subject of a 516-page, lavishly illustrated book by Kenneth Hafertepe, museum studies department chairman at Baylor University.

Twelve years in the making, "The Material Culture of German Texans" likely will take its place beside Houston architect Gerald Moorehead's "Buildings of Texas" and Lonn Taylor and David Warren's two-volume "Texas Furniture: The Cabinetmakers and Their Work" as a foundational study of Lone Star life in the 19th century.

"The German cultural impact on Texas was very large in the 19th century in terms of painting, literature, music and cultural things," Hafertepe said. "But it also was manifest in turnvereins (gymnastic societies), singing societies and beer gardens. There was a whole set of ways the Germans were distinctive."

German immigrants to Texas came from a variety of locales and circumstances. Most were middle-class peasants, but among them were intellectuals fleeing Old World restrictions on political or religious liberty. First arriving in the 1830s, they poured into Texas by the tens of thousands until, by century's end, they represented at least 5 percent of the state's population. Today, roughly 3 million Texans - more than 10 percent of the state population - claim German ancestry.

The pioneers' homes were situated in the so-called "German Belt" arcing from Galveston, through Austin and Fayette counties, to Mason in the Texas Hill Country.

Galveston, Houston and San Antonio all had sizable German populations, and they are represented in the new study. But most of the substantial volume is devoted to life in the small towns and rural areas - farms in the lower counties, proto-ranches in the Hill Country.

In meticulous detail, Hafertepe chronicles the building techniques and floor plans of buildings - many still standing - in the German counties. The earliest settlers mimicked their Anglo neighbors, erecting log cabins, many with two rooms separated by an open "dogtrot" hallway.

Some, in the counties in which stone was available, alternated layers of mortared rock between the logs for increased sturdiness. Hafertepe called the hybrid homes "log cabins on steroids."

"Fachwerk" structures, featuring a stone- or brick-filled wooden frames, also were common in the German settlements, as were rock houses in the Hill Country, a region bereft of substantial timber.

Beyond chronicling the earliest architectural stylings, Hafertepe details how those styles changed. By the 1870s, Victorian architecture - sometimes designed by British-born architect Alfred Giles - began appearing in San Antonio's stylish King William neighborhood.

Built of limestone - like their Hill Country antecedents - the new mansions emulated Yankee fashion, albeit with modifications to accommodate a Texas climate.

Hardscrabble as the early settlers' existence may have been, the Germanic newcomers nonetheless were attuned to the styles of the Old Country.

"There was a crazy story of a German family living near Burnet who were using pewter plates," Hafertepe said. Gossip buzzed among their less-affluent Anglo neighbors that the family was dining off "silver plates."

"Some of them brought nice stuff from Germany - silverware, linen - but they used it up pretty quickly," he said. "That was part of the story in terms of rough conditions."

Among the newcomers, though, were artisans able to produce wares that reflected the neo-classical styles of Europe. Johann Michael Jahn of New Braunfels produced furniture in the Biedermier style that has found its place in collections and museums throughout the state.

"He created some pretty sophisticated furniture," Hafertepe said. "In a sense it would have been considered out of date. He was making furniture in the 1850s and '60s that had been popular in Germany in the 1830s."

Other craftsmen fashioned furniture for themselves or their neighbors with varying degrees of skill, but - in toto - the quality of their handiwork belies the idea that the artifacts of pioneer life uniformly were primitive.

As with his treatment of houses and their furnishings, Hafertepe offers new insights into public structures - churches, courthouses, jails and social halls - and religious and secular cemeteries. The latter work builds on the seminal investigations by the late University of Texas cultural geographer Terry Jordan, offering new interpretations of the emblems incised on stones.

"The Material Culture of German Texans" comes at a time when the material past is both revered and threatened.

Tourism trading on Germanic - if generic - culture has become pervasive in New Braunfels, Fredericksburg and other communities where German openly was spoken as recently as the early 1960s.

Shops and restaurants reliant on the tourist trade - Hafertepe said he ate countless pork "schnitzel burgers" during his research - sometimes parody the culture they purvey.

The hills are peppered with Porsches as urban expatriates in search of old-time "gemutlicheit" buy up historic properties. Some revere the historic patina, then inadvertently deface it as they adapt often tiny residences for modern life.

Still, Hafertepe said he was surprised at how intact the built environment of some of the old communities - especially Fredericksburg - remains.

"I was more overwhelmed," he said. "A lot of the 19th- and early 20th-century buildings remain. It's a pretty impressive testament. These structures were built well. The old Germans weren't going to waste money. They were going to do it right the first time."