Sophienburg Hill

The prince who chose this hill never returned to Texas. In 1846 he published Texas, a geography and guide, and sent Queen Victoria a fifty-nine-page memoir arguing that Britain should contain the United States through colonization, a Mexican monarchy and the emancipation of slaves. He helped recruit the Forty, the students who settled in the Fisher-Miller grant, in 1847. His military career wandered from Austria to Hesse and back; commanding an imperial corps in 1866, he was recalled and court-martialed but acquitted. He retired as a field marshal in 1868 and died at Rheingrafenstein in 1875.

What the plaque says

Sophienburg Hill During the Republic of Texas period, Europeans became interested in colonizing Texas. In the 1840s, a group of German noblemen formed the Adelsverein or the Society for the Protection of German Immigration in Texas. Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels became the Adelsverein's first Commissioner General and founded New Braunfels on March 21, 1845. Prince Carl chose this hill property overlooking the city as the site for a fortress to protect the city. He named it the Sophienburg in honor of his fiancée, Princess Sophia. Although a log structure was built to serve as the Adelsverein headquarters, a large fortress was never built. A well was dug and other structures were built on the property that served as Adelsverein storehouses and lodging. Prince Carl returned to Germany a month after the founding of New Braunfels and John O. Meusebach succeeded him as Commissioner General. The Adelsverein had financial trouble and the Sophienburg hill property was sold and divided. Eventually, the buildings deteriorated and in 1886, a storm destroyed the last remaining log structure. In 1933, a portion of the original Sophienburg property was purchased to build the first museum building that still stands at the corner of Academy and Coll. In 1938, the first city library was built adjacent to the museum with a second library built nearby in 1968. These structures house the Sophienburg Museum and archives collections. The Sophienburg Museum Association has ensured that the campus reflects the history of German immigration, the town's founding and its ongoing growth. (2017)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — steps away
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.
• Gruene Historic District — 3.1 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Natural Bridge Caverns — 13 mi
  The largest known cavern in Texas, found in 1960 by four college cavers under a ranch family's land, entered beneath a 60-foot limestone bridge and still growing.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 18 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.

More markers nearby

• Hermann Seele — steps away
• First United Methodist Church — 0.3 mi
• International & Great Northern Railroad in New Braunfels — 0.3 mi
• Johann Michael Jahn — 0.3 mi