Friedrichsburg
By: Friedrich Armand Strubberg

Translated by: James C. Kearney

Held in October, 2012, at the Social Hall.

Friedrich Armand Strubberg’s semi-autobiographical novel Friedrichsburg, published in Germany in 1867, is a fountain of information about the German settlements in the Hill Country of Texas, established in the years 1844-1848 by a corporation of German noblemen. The noblemen safely, ensconced in their comfortable estates in Germany, attempted to live up to their responsibilities and supply the settlers with basic needs, but their efforts fell woefully short. In consequence, the immigrants often were thrown upon their own devices and compelled to live from what they could learn to grow or hunt in a new land with unfamiliar climate, plants, and animals. Many hundreds perished from disease, exposure, and malnutrition. But after a painful period, the German settlements took root and began to prosper, lending a Germanic stamp to the Hill Country area of Texas that persists to the present day. In Friedrichsburg, the reader encounters many dramatic stories attendant to the foundation years of Fredericksburg, Texas, 1846-1847, when Friedrich Armand Strubberg, under the assumed name Dr. Schubbert, served as the first colonial director of the town. The situations are presented vividly and entertainingly, and although the book offers a romanticized and, in this sense, a sanitized version of the immigrants’ travails, I maintain that it contains historically accurate depictions of people and events that have been largely overlooked in other accounts of the period. The dissertation offers the first complete translation of the novel. An introduction provides an overview of German immigration in Texas, a short biography of Friedrich Armand Strubberg, and a discussion of his place in literature about Texas published in Germany in the nineteenth century. Extensive endnotes document names and episodes as they appear in the text and distinguish between what is fact and what is fiction in the novel. A bibliography of works published about Texas in the nineteenth century is supplied as an appendix.

The Great Texas Stamp Collection

By: Charles W. Deaton

Held in September, 2012, at the Vereins Kirche.

Appealing at once to devoted philatelists, Texas and U.S. history buffs, and amateur collectors of all kinds, The Great Texas Stamp Collection offers a unique vantage point from which to view our history, as well as the very nature of collecting. The book reveals how some stubborn Texas Confederate Postmasters, a handful of determined Texas Stamp Collectors, and a few of the world’s greatest philatelists (stamp collectors) created, discovered, and preserved some of the world’s most valuable postage stamps.

Among the many difficulties the newly formed Confederate States of America endured in the summer of 1861 was the failure of its post office department to provide sufficient numbers of that item most crucial to its service: the postage stamp. Faced with the resulting din of customer complaints, a handful of industrious Texas postmasters solved the problem by simply making their own homemade stamps.

In this thoroughly researched history of these rare and highly coveted stamps, The Great Texas Stamp Collection traces their journey from creation through their rediscovery years later by local, and then international, stamp collectors--a journey that culminated in the sale of a few pieces at a recent auction in New York that fetched more than $250,000. Weaving the larger contexts of Texas and U.S. postal history together with individual tales of greed, intrigue, forgery, and discovery, Deaton's book is rich with characters from European royalty to early stamp dealers to common criminals, while also providing detailed examinations of the stamps themselves, including a complete census of the stamps now known as the Texas Confederate Postmasters' Provisionals.

Photos from the Deaton book signing.

A recipient of the Phillip H. Ward, Jr., Award for Excellence in Philatelic Literature and the Distinguished Philatelic Texan Award from the Texas Philatelic Association, Charles W. Deaton is a professional philatelist and the founder and first president of the Texas Postal History Society. Among his many works on the subject are Texas Postal History Handbook, A Philatelic Guide to the 1936 Texas Centennial Celebration, and Fifty Years of Texas Philately.