Volunteer Improves Access to German-Language Materials

Volunteer Lore A. Senseney.

For the past year, Lore A. Senseney has been volunteering at the DRT Library with Assistant Director Martha Utterback and Archivist Caitlin Donnelly, working to translate German-language materials held in the library’s archival collections into English. Thus far, Ms. Senseney has translated almost 200 documents, primarily letters, in the Beckmann family papers and the general correspondence series of the Conrad A. Goeth papers. The translations are being filed with the original document so they will be accessible to researchers. Lore will next be translating documents in the Frances Drennon Shaughnessy family papers.

Translating the documents requires a special and rather unique skill: the ability to read the old Sütterlin German script that is no longer used. Today, Germans cannot read this script. However, Ms. Senseney, a native of Germany, learned it during her first two years of school, as Sütterlin was commonly taught in German schools during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The first page of a letter to John C. and Regina Muller Beckmann, presumably written by Felix Muller, Regina's father.

Lore's translation of the above letter, which Felix Muller began by writing "I have waited for seven years for (a response from you) in vain, and had given up all hope to receive a letter from you ever again."

The rest of Lore's translation of the above letter.

Lore’s journey to San Antonio was an interesting one. She started learning English in 1945 when school resumed following the end of World War II. Three years later, she escaped from East Germany with her mother and joined her father in Frankfurt, West Germany. There, Lore continued her English studies as an apprentice; a student at a school of business for industrial merchants and banking; and a student in the last class of industrial interpreters at the Berlitz school. Ms. Senseney arrived in the United States on August 5, 1959, landing in New York on the USS Buttner with her husband – a career non-commissioned officer (NCO) in the U.S. Army who had been stationed in West Germany and was newly stationed at Fort Sam Houston – and their two-year-old daughter. Lore and her husband later had two more children and at various times lived in San Antonio and Germany.

Ms. Senseney has been a member of the San Antonio Needlework Guild (SANG) and the Embroiderers’ Guild of America (EGA) since 1976. She has been particularly interested in whitework embroidery, a technique in which the stitching is the same color as the foundation fabric, traditionally white linen. Lore researched this type of embroidery during trips to Germany and began teaching about the technique in San Antonio. Since 1982, Lore has been volunteering at the Witte Museum, using her expertise to help in the conservation of its textile collection.

Throughout her time at the Witte, Ms. Senseney has periodically been asked to translate German texts. Her skills have been increasingly utilized since 2006, when she began undergoing treatments for breast cancer that left her hands numb, making it difficult to hold a needle and continue her textile conservation work at the Witte. However, Lore has found the work of translating historic documents to be equally rewarding, stating “I love it. It is something I can do that I enjoy and is as much fun as restoring an old textile, so it can live another 100 years.”

Of the letters she has worked with from the DRT Library’s collections, Lore writes that they have had “the most diverse content and challenging handwriting styles.” In the course of the project, she has also “researched and learned about the Germans who arrived in Texas in the 1840s and founded a lot of the businesses in San Antonio.”

Thank you, Lore, for all of your hard work!

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“How Old Man Henry and His Family are Getting Along in America”

On October 13, 1856, Henry Baumberger, a recent immigrant and resident of San Antonio, wrote to family and friends in his native Switzerland. The document is part of a collection of eight lengthy letters written by and to Baumberger between 1856 and 1867. Written in an older Sütterlin German script that is no longer used, the letters have been translated into English.

The first page of Henry Baumberger's letter of October 13, 1856. "On this here letterhead," he told his family and friends, "you see some views etc. of our City of San Antonio."

In the letter of October 13, Baumberger described life in Texas in great detail for loved ones living very differently in Europe. “The way people live here is strange,” he wrote. “You hardly will believe me if I tell you the truth and I am telling you nothing but the truth.” On one hand, Baumberger found much to criticize in San Antonio:

An enormous rudeness is generally prevalent in this country. Nobody cares about enlightenment and education. Nobody lived intellectually. Everybody strives for money and for money only. Money is the idol that is worshipped. The officers are not in the least interested in public welfare…Every day on the streets you can see loafers by the dozens, carrying knives and pistols. They are looking for trouble and stab or shoot, as they please. Every week some people are killed in the public street. And as the officers are mostly people of the same kind, usually nothing is done about it. Every night horses, mules or cattle are stolen. In the beginning all this seemed terrible to me and I was afraid of these rascals but not now any more.

On the other hand, however, Baumberger also described circumstances in Texas that he believed and observed to be an improvement over conditions in Switzerland. He explained ways in which American women enjoyed more legal rights than their European counterparts; praised laws that protected debtors from losing all of their property and belongings as payment to creditors; and described the “very happy life” enjoyed by Texas farmers, even though they were “sometimes raided by wild Indians.” Despite his mixed feelings about life in Texas, Baumberger ultimately wrote that “in general I am doing pretty well and so far I never regretted that I have emigrated [sic] to America.”

A detail of the last page of Henry Baumberger's letter, which he closed by asking that his loved ones "don't forget" him, "now in a far away country."

Based on evidence in the letters, Henry Baumberger (born circa 1823) and his wife, Anna Weiss Baumberger, immigrated to Texas with their two daughters, Anna (born circa 1852) and Eliza (born circa 1855). In his letter of October 13, Henry marveled that his young children could “already babble [in] English.” In the same letter, he happily announced the birth of his son, Henry, and explained that the “little fellow is already now an American citizen, because everybody born here is as a matter of course a citizen of this country.” Sadly, in a letter dated July 18, 1857, Baumberger informed his relatives and friends that baby Henry had died from a fever. “God has called him away,” he wrote, “and the hearts of the parents are struck again, because this is the third boy we had to see leaving us…I had trusted to have at last a male offspring. But it was not so to be.” However, by 1867 the Baumberger expanded to include two additional children: Paulina (born circa 1858) and Charles (born circa 1863).

While Henry Baumberger had worked as a teacher in Switzerland, his letters in the DRT Library document the variety of jobs he undertook in Texas: at different times he worked as a merchant, a beer garden owner, and an owner of shipping business that transported freight by wagon from San Antonio to Mexico or Port Lavaca. The 1870 census listed Henry as a member of the San Antonio police force and the 1880 census stated that he was once again working as a teacher.

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Was a Texan the First Man to Fly in an Airplane?

It is believed that this glass plate negative shows Jacob Brodbeck's airplane after it crashed in 1865, although this information has not been verified. (SC14120)

One often repeated story of Texas history claims that German immigrant and Hill Country resident Jacob Brodbeck was the first man to fly in an airplane. Although accounts vary, the event allegedly occurred on September 20, 1865, approximately five months following the conclusion of the Civil War and almost four decades before the Wright brothers’ flight experiments on North Carolina’s Outer Banks between 1900 and 1903.

According to the Handbook of Texas Online, Brodbeck’s “aviation achievements remain shrouded in doubt.” This is primarily because documentary evidence is largely lacking, as Brodbeck’s drawings or blueprints for his airplane have not survived and descriptions from eyewitnesses (e.g. letters, journal entries, or newspaper reports) have never been found.

However, materials at the DRT Library do appear to suggest that, despite uncertainties about whether Brodbeck ever actually flew his airplane, he was working on a project aimed at accomplishing this feat.

A republished copy of Jacob Brodbeck's notice, which appeared in the Galveston Tri-Weekly News on August 7, 1865.

In her work Jacob Brodbeck “Reached for the Sky” in Texas, descendant Anita Tatsch includes a photocopy of an article written by Brodbeck that was printed in the Galveston Tri-Weekly News on August 7, 1865. In this article, Brodbeck wrote, “For more than twenty years I have labored to construct a machine which should enable man to use, like a bird, the atmospheric region as the medium of his travels.” Brodbeck’s main purpose in writing the article was to attract funding for the construction of a large “air-ship,” the design of which he intended to patent. “I have therefore concluded to collect subscriptions,” Brodbeck wrote of his financial plans.

“These subscriptions I shall not ask as donations, but as shares, to be refunded together with a part of the proceeds of the sale of the patent right, or the sale of air-ships, as the case may be. I have put the price of one share at five dollars. Every shareholder will receive a certificate, securing to him a proportionate interest in the proceeds of the enterprise.”

A document contained in the library’s archival collections demonstrates and verifies the financial strategy Brodbeck outlined in the newspaper. The document contains four stock certificates, each for a quarter share of stock that San Antonio physician Ferdinand Herff purchased in Brodbeck’s airplane venture. Discovered by Herff’s son in 1924, the stock certificates were donated to the library by granddaughter Zelime Herff Simpson in 1966.

Ferdinand Herff's stock certificates, which helped fund Jacob Brodbeck's efforts to develop an "air-ship."

At the same time, Simpson also donated a final item related to Jacob Brodbeck’s “air-ship”: a six-page typed document entitled “Detailed specifications written by Jacob Brodbeck of an airship made by him.” A note attached to the end of the specifications indicates that the copy in the library’s collections is a transcription and translation of the original, the location of which is not known. According to the addendum, the specifications were “carefully prepared and written in the handwriting of the late Jacob Brodbeck prior to the construction of his airship which worked successfully as far as it would at that time. It was translated from German to English by his granddaughter, Miss Annie Brodbeck…in 1932.”

The first page of a translated and transcribed copy of Jacob Brodbeck's specifications for an "air-ship."

While these documents offer tantalizing evidence that Texan Jacob Brodbeck spent many years working to develop, construct, finance, and patent a means for mechanical flight, whether historians can accurately consider him the first man to fly in an airplane remains a mystery.

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Germans in San Antonio: Freie Presse fur Texas

On October 28, 1945, publication of the influential German newspaper Freie Presse für Texas ended eighty years after August Siemering issued the first edition in 1865. In addition to being a newspaper editor, Siemering also worked as a teacher, writer and journalist, and public official, and he was involved in the establishment of the San Antonio Express (now the Express-News). Under Siemering’s leadership, the Freie Presse “became one of the leading Republican newspapers of the South” following the Civil War. At various times throughout its history, the Freie Presse was issued weekly, bi-weekly, tri-weekly, and daily. Each edition of the paper contained numerous advertisements for San Antonio businesses as well as works of fiction and national and international news.

Top half of the front page, Freie Presse fur Texas, March 9, 1893.

The Freie Presse was one of many newspapers serving the large German population of San Antonio and Texas during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The San Antonio Zeitung was first published in the 1850s, and, according to Glen E. Lich in The German Texans, “eighteen German newspapers were in existence by 1892.” The number of German newspapers continued to grow, reaching 29 in 1907 before declining. Lich states that “eleven papers ceased publication during World War I,” presumably due to anti-German sentiments. By 1941, when the United States entered World War II, only six German newspapers were still being published; “by the end of the war, four were left, and the last of these, Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung, ceased publication in German in the 1950s” (126).

Top half of the back page, Freie Presse fur Texas, March 9, 1893

In his essay “The Function of the German Literary Heritage,” published in German Culture in Texas, Hubert P. Heinen quotes the recollections of his grandfather, a German Texan born in 1872 who as a boy became an avid reader of the Freie Presse für Texas when he worked herding sheep:

The only reading I had access to was the Freie Presse für Texas, a German weekly published in San Antonio, which, besides current news and correspondence, carried one or more serials of novels (Romane); also volumes of German magazines, such as the Die Gartenlaube, in carefully preserved Jahrgänge (one-year volumes containing fascinating Romane and short novels) were passed from one family to the other, and, naturally, I fell for reading these stories. Having lots of time on hand, I acquired the habit of “slow-reading” (not overcome to this day), but absorbed all and lived with and through the whole story. Meanwhile, as I was thus absorbed in reading, the sheep would drift apart in all directions, and I had to spend hours trying to get them together again (169).

The sizeable newspaper collection at the DRT Library includes twenty-eight editions of the Freie Presse für Texas dating from 1871 to 1938. Additionally, the library has many books, vertical files, manuscript collections, and photographs documenting and exploring the experiences of German families, organizations, businesses, and communities throughout the history of San Antonio and Texas. Some of these materials will be featured in future blog postings. You can locate additional resources about German Texans at the DRT library by going to our online catalog, which can be accessed from the menu on the right side of this blog. Select “Power Search” and conduct a subject search for “Germans Texas” and “Germans Texas San Antonio.”

Click here for a full citation of the documents and images included in this entry.