The German Settlement of the Texas Hill Country is the first book in more than 75 years to explore the movement that brought thousands of industrious German settlers to the Texas Hill Country. Award-winning Texas historian Jefferson Morgenthaler presents a compelling picture of a bold quest for a new home on the far fringes of the turbulent Republic of Texas.

Surveying the conditions that spurred German emigration to North America, Morgenthaler tells of the Adelsverein – the emigration society formed by idealistic nobles who sought to relieve social pressure by promoting German migration to Texas. He follows the impossibly romantic and aristocratic Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels as he leads the colonists inland from Matagorda Bay while concocting plans to establish an armed and independent German colony that would block United States expansion to the west.

Beginning with the work of historians who have gone before, Morgenthaler adds new translations and archival materials, while integrating colonization material that has surfaced over the years but that has never been woven into a coherent story of the mass influx that more than doubled the population of West Texas in little more than a year.

The book chronicles the founding of New Braunfels under Prince Solms, the advance to Fredericksburg under the leadership of John Meusebach – the former Baron Johann von Meusebach – the establishment of a tenuous peace with the Comanches, and the failure of the Adelsverein colonists to reach the impossibly distant Fisher-Miller Land Grant that was meant to be their home.

Unlike any prior book on the subject, The German Settlement of the Texas Hill Country follows the German settlers farther, into the turmoil of the Civil War. Exploring unexpected divisions among Hill Country Germans, Morgenthaler analyzes the intellectual underpinnings and life experiences that brought New Braunfels to follow the Texas course of secession while firebrands in Fredericksburg, Comfort and Boerne fomented a Unionist insurrection.

This is the story of 20 historic years that evidence themselves today in German-Texan vernacular architecture, a tradition of Hill Country sausage-making, lingering turnvereins and schuetzenvereins, and continued ownership of Central Texas ranches by families with names like Marschall, Toepperwein, Holekamp and Kothmann. It is the story of pioneers venturing into wilderness far beyond the limits of settlement, seeking new lives carved from a challenging land. It is a quintessentially Texan story.

Jefferson Morgenthaler is the author of The River Has Never Divided Us (University of Texas Press, 2004), which won Southern Methodist University’s Clements Center Award for the best book of 2004 about the Southwest. He writes about Texas history for Texas Highways and other regional magazines.

The German Settlement of the Texas Hill Country (softback, ISBN 978-1-932801-09-5, $18.95) is published by Mockingbird Books of Boerne, Texas. Mockingbird Books is a non-profit press dedicated to Texas non-fiction. The book is available from bookstores across Texas, online from Amazon.com and directly from Mockingbird Books. More information is available at www.mockingbirdbooks.com.