Posted on 09/06/2003 8:47:58 PM PDT by gd124
AN EXTRAORDINARY 19th- century plot by German nobility to take over Texas and turn it into a German country has been uncovered by a historian looking through old records of some of Germany’s oldest families.
Prince Hans von Sachsen-Altenburg discovered that in the 1840s, when Texas was still a republic, the nobles managed to raise a small fortune from the state of Prussia under cover of an economic club known as the Adelsverein, or Association of Nobility.
The association used the money to send almost 8,000 members to Texas on the pretext they were fleeing political persecution or poverty. But, according to the historian, many were wealthy aristocrats and military officers planning to take control of the republic.
"They used the clichéd image of impoverished immigrants flooding into the New World as cover to send thousands of their nobles, generals, and soldiers to Texas, to put their scheme into action," said Prince Sachsen-Altenburg.
He claims the man who hatched the plan to turn Texas Teutonic was Prince Carl von Solms-Braunfels, a German field marshal - and a blood relation of Queen Victoria - who had been hardened by European wars.
At the time, the bankrupt republic was protected by only a few hundred Texas rangers and had fewer than 40,000 people on its land.
As part of plans to win logistical aid from Britain, Prince Solms-Braunfels courted Victoria’s favour for a new "Germany in the West", claiming British economic interests in California and Mexico were threatened by a westward- moving United States.
According to the historian, the solution was to establish a German state of Texas.
From Europe, the Adelsverein had purchased more than three million acres of Texan land. But the group soon discovered it was unsuitable for farming and was occupied by some 10,000 warring Comanche Indians.
Under Prince Solms-Braunfels’s direction, the Germans established a series of forts such as Nassau, New Braunfels and Carlshafen - cities that still bear their German names.
To complement weaponry brought with them, correspondence sent back to Germany by Prince Solms-Braunfels in 1844 urgently called for more heavy artillery and rifles.
"Arms were sent over labelled only as ‘personal baggage’," said Prince Sachsen-Altenburg. "Hence it was not always documented at the US end."
The prince added that Britain considered sending military equipment overland from California. Messages between Lord Aberdeen, the foreign secretary, and the new German community were handled by William Kennedy, the British consul in Galveston.
"Unfortunately for the venture, it was this course of communication that ultimately proved their undoing and forced the US to speed up its annexation of Texas," the prince said.
"The government messenger was instructed to hand over the correspondence personally to the British consul. But instead of that, he was met by a US spy who drank him under the table and intercepted the information that was then sent to the White House."
Within weeks, James Polk, the US president, sent forces to the Texas border and Congress voted to annex the republic.
While Adelsverein diehards still aspired to establish a colony, financial and logistical support was largely withdrawn and the venture foundered several years later.
Oops....
Interesting article.
"Arms were sent over labelled only as ?personal baggage?," said Prince Sachsen-Altenburg. "Hence it was not always documented at the US end."
What US end? Texas was an independant republic in 1844!
;-)
That doesn't sound too well thought out. How were the going to carry heavy armaments across 1500 miles of desert. I-10 wasn't built till another 125 years later, and and there weren't any railroads.
Oops.
Slight miscalculations can have large consequences.
And Czech and Polish. That's one of the reasons Texas is different than the South. The white population of the South was overwhelmingly British, Scottish, and Scots-Irish. Texas has has substantial German and Eastern Euorpean immigration ever since the 1830s.
Of course, we Texans are now well aware that locations founded and settled by German immigrants are some of the finest and most colorful communities in Texas. (Schulenberg, Kerrville, New Braunfels, Lueders, Fredericksburg, etc. come to mind.)
Perhaps it is best that this plot took so long to be revealed; many of Texas' finest citizens now claim German ancestry. They are an important and well-regarded part of this folk we call "Texans". Our culture would be far less rich without them.
(FWIW, I do not count myself among them -- my ancestors were mostly Scots -- but I certainly appreciate the contributions Teutonic Texans have made to our fair State.)
In New Braunfels ist das Leben schön!
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