Deutschheim State Historic Site

Deutschheim, German home, was the name early German writers gave the Missouri they were settling between about 1820 and 1860, and two houses in Hermann show what that home looked like from the inside. The town was laid out by a Philadelphia settlement society in the late 1830s, and among the society's early backers were the Pommers, makers of fine violins and pianos. Caroline Pommer's house of 1840, one of the oldest buildings left in Hermann, is solid brick in the German neoclassical style and is furnished to the 1830s and 1840s. Behind it a timber-frame barn holds gardening tools, and a traditional four-square garden grows heirloom plants the German way.

The Strehly house began around 1842 as a modest timber-frame dwelling and was enlarged over the next twenty-seven years. Carl Strehly and his partner Eduard Muehl ran a printing business in it until 1854, and a Washington hand press of the period stands in the house to show how the work was done. About 1857 a two-and-a-half-story brick winery went up beside it, with a vaulted brick cellar, a wine production room and, for a short time, a tavern. An arbor behind the house carries grapevines more than a hundred years old. The same family lived here for more than a century, and the house keeps its original look and uses.

The Hermann Brush and Palette Club, a local preservation group, gave both houses to the state in 1978. Guided tours take visitors through both, three times a day.