A post yesterday in Irene Adler’s blog led me to an article in The Scotsman about a so-called “princely” historian who claims to have uncovered a secret plot to create a German State of Texas in the 1840s.
Bluntly, this is a bunch of hooey. The allegations that Prince Hans (who, incidentally isn’t a prince and is not entitled to the titles he claims) makes were originally floated in the 1860s by a journalist and former revolutionary of 1848 named August Siemering; they’ve been investigated more than once and generally dismissed as moonshine by the historical community. Just to start with, the Adelsverein was organized by a bunch of German nobles with the collective business sense of a rock, who managed, not once but twice, to acquire worthless colonization contracts (one was for land that was so infested by the Comanches and Kiowas that nobody could settle safely on it, and the other was already expired when they bought it). The whole project was so starved for money that within three years it was bankrupt in fact if not in name, and within nine years everything was sold and distributed to satisfy the creditors.
And as far as claims of German soldiery and artillery being smuggled in masquerading as immigrants and their baggage—that’s the stuff of romance novels. The colonists needed arms, all right, but that was because they were being stolen blind and picked off by Comanche raiding parties, not for any plot to declare a revolutionary state. They were too busy trying not to get killed by the verdammt Indianers to worry about much else. Even a picaresque military character like Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels, who tried to stir up Queen Victoria to back his colonial ambitions by waggling the bait of “containing the Americans” in front of her, never had a prayer.
In the end, about all the German adventure in Texas left behind was two medium-sized towns (New Braunfels and Fredericksburg) and one tiny community (Castell). All the other communities disappeared before 1900. The various colonizing ventures brought about 7,000 emigrants to Texas, but they settled down and didn’t give anyone much trouble, save that most of them were staunch Unionists during the War of Northern Aggression.
So, Prince Hans von Sachse-Altenburg, this long-time Texan’s opinion is that you’ll be much better off to go back to your pipe and your beer, because when it comes to conspiracies, you aren’t even into the starting gate, much less in the running.
Hunter S. Thompson was eliminated by the Super Bowl and beats the grasshopper. Fnord.
