The following article is from our November 2009 issue.

In Hermann, a tribute to Hermann Two millennia after a tribal chief defeated the Romans, an American town dedicates a memorial to "Germany's liberator" - By Uwe Siemon-Netto

Hermann in Missouri is perhaps the most authentically German small town in North America. Now this wine-growing community has erected a statue to the Germanic hero whose name it bears.

Germans love irony and here is a marvelous one: When the Cherusci chieftain Hermann wiped out three Roman legions in the fall of the year 9 A.D., he not only fortified Germanic languages, one of which would evolve into English, against the dominance of Latin. He also saw to it that beer, not wine, remained the preferred tipple of northern European forest dwellers and their offspring; or so the Hamburg newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, recently opined.

This intoxicating detail did not faze the denizens of Hermann in Missouri, which resembles the picturesque vintners' villages lining the Rhine River in Germany. The people of Hermann celebrated Hermann, the warlord, on the 2,000th anniversary of his triumph with copious amounts of locally grown wine, notably the red, spicy "Norton" crafted from a grape variety that is indigenous to Missouri. Norton is a pricey beverage but who cares on such a day? What better way to fete the dedication of a monument to a long-gone tribal leader whom the Roman historian Tacitus called "Germania's liberator?"

The dedication turned out to be a splendid event. Hermann, his statue now standing guard on the northernmost end of Market Street, just before you cross the Missouri River, was merrily welcomed by the people of Hermann, descendants of German professionals and craftsmen who settled on the banks of the Missouri in the 1830s and 1840s. Among the crowd, raven-haired Wendy Enter from New Ulm, Minnesota stood out. She is the author of a novel about the German hero. Her hometown, New Ulm, is another very German-American place. Enter evidenced her cultural roots by wearing the kind of robe Germanic tribeswomen might have been dressed in while accompanying their men into the battle that was being commemorated this day. She also sported a spear and looked very comely; Hermann's people loved that one, too.

New Ulm possesses a Hermann statue as well. It is somewhat smaller than the original Hermann monument in Detmold near the Teutoburg Forest where the Germanic chieftain masterminded the defeat of the Roman imperial legate Publicius Quinctilius Varus, an occasion prompting Emperor Augustus, Varus' relative by marriage, to tear up his robes in fury. New Ulm's statue is significantly larger than Hermann's (pop. 2,800), however, but that's only fair given that this pretty northern town has five times Hermann's population.

Then again, does New Ulm possess luscious vineyards - does Detmold, for that matter? Can these towns pride themselves with celebrities such as John Husmann, one of the founding fathers of the Napa Valley Wine industry in California? At the OakGlenn Winery in Hermann, you can still inspect vines planted by this extraordinary immigrant from Germany. In the mid-19th century, Husmann helped develop Missouri into the second-largest grape-producing region of North America at that time, after New York State. Then he moved to California, which today produces most of America's wines.

Not that one wishes to belittle Minnesota, which gave the world walleyes and Garrison Keillor. But it wasn't beer-drinking Minnesota that saved Europe's vineyards from extinction. That honor goes to Missouri, notably Hermann. In Montpellier, France, two monuments still commemorate the 17 boxcar loads of phylloxera-resistant rootstocks shipped to the Old World in the 1860s by Missouri's German vintners to stop a blight threatening to annihilate the beverage competing with beer as the Germans' preferred drink.

So now as Hermann, the savior of beer, was being glorified in Hermann, the savior of wine, the locals reminisced with visitors from Germany about this drink's wondrous rebirth. They told their guests the hair-raising story of how in 1920, during the Prohibition, federal agents went from winery to winery demolishing their oak vats. As a result of this barbarous act, their wine flowed, like blood, down Market Street for one entire week.

Wine is back in Hermann, and a glorious wine it is, too. However, the other local casualty of early 20th-century follies, the German language, has not returned. Until World War I, almost everybody in Hermann spoke German; church services were held and school was taught in that idiom, and German was the language of two local newspapers. All this was forbidden during the 1914-1918 "Hate the Hun" hysteria, when in southern Illinois, just across the Mississippi from nearby St. Louis, a man was lynched for the "crime" of speaking his mother tongue.

But Hermann's people are trying to bring their ancestors' language back at least a trifle. They teach it at school. They have lively student exchanges with Bad Arolsen, Hermann's sister city. And though they don't all speak German, they look it and act it, especially by practicing the Old Country's most enthralling gift - music.

Show us another tiny town in America where something like this can happen at the apex of a "victory celebration" commemorating a 2,000-year old episode among the oak forest of northern Europe: A local ensemble called The Apostles' Band performed 25 pieces of music written or arranged right here in little Hermann in 1860. The manuscripts of these charming compositions, 80 in all, were found in two boxes in the attic of Hermann's Deutsche Schule (German School), which is now a museum. Again, what other tiny town rediscovers treasures like these?

As Hermann, Missouri, honored Hermann, the German, a handful of local notables assembled to ponder an even more German future of their hometown, which had been founded as a "New Fatherland" after all. All stared at the Missouri River that looks like the Rhine on this blessed spot. There was not a vessel in sight. "As we sit here, the Rhine is teaming with ships - passenger liners, cruise ships, barges," remarked Jim Dierberg, a private banker, vintner and brewer. For a while, the vintners mused about Germany's riverboats, particularly the white steamers they had admired while visiting the Old Country, ships belonging to Köln-Düsseldorfer, the oldest and largest cruise line on the Rhine. It was founded in 1827, 10 years before the first settlers set foot at this place now called Hermann. "How about asking these people to reach out to us?" one suggested.

This was just a rhetorical question but all were intrigued by the vision of Hermann, the German, as a sort of ultra-Atlantic male Lorelei holding watch over America's Rhine teaming with white ships. An inebriated specter this was not, though, just an enticing thought on a sunny autumn morning well before assembled winemakers raised their first of many glasses to the memory of Hermann, the warlord.


Picture above: The U.S. is also celebrating Hermann's victory. In Neu-Ulm, Minnesota, residents staged a major fireworks display (see below).


New Ulm also honors the Germanic warrior

Thousands of spectators gathered on a recent weekend to watch an army of re-enactors lead Hermann's German tribal forces to victory over three Roman legions. Only this time, the battle took place on a hill in New Ulm just below the Minnesota city's landmark monument to Hermann.

Building a monument to honor the Cherusci chief more than 3,000 miles away from the actual battleground was the brainchild of one man - Julius Berndt. He was secretary of the Order of Sons of Hermann both on the local and national levels. "Berndt had the vision, the energy and the political acumen to put it all together," said George Glotzbach, who co-founded the Hermann Monument Society in 2006. "Without him, it wouldn't have happened."

The Order of the Sons of Hermann was organized in New York in the early part of the 19th century to fight widespread discrimination against immigrants. Reputedly, the name "Hermann" was selected when one of the founders said what was needed was another Hermann, who would "conquer the enemies of the Germans."

An architect and engineer by trade, Berndt drew up plans for a replica of the Hermannsdenkmal (Hermann memorial) that already was under construction near Detmold. The New Ulm monument, 104-foot-high from its base to the tip of Hermann's sword, was dedicated in 1897. The city took it over from the lodge in 1929.

Hermann received national attention in 2000 when the U.S. Congress designated the monument to be an official symbol for the contributions of German-Americans. Most Hermann lodges were shuttered following the anti-German hysteria in America during and after World War I. One of the surviving lodges is the 33,000-member Hermann Sons of Texas.

Membership no longer is limited to Americans of German descent. The group sells insurance, runs youth camps and provides care for the elderly. Other much smaller Sons of Hermann lodges operate in California, Ohio and Oregon. Until recently, the Hermannsdenkmal near Detmold seemed to get less attention than its New Ulm replica. "It was as though Hermann had been abandoned, waiting for the reawakening of its people," wrote journalist Mervin Miller. He and his wife visited the monument and the actual battle site near Kalkriese in the region of Osnabrück in 2008.

New Ulm Mayor Joel Albrecht was surprised how little the Germans he spoke with during a trip to Germany knew about Hermann. "Some young Germans never even heard of him," he said in 2008.

One explanation is an aversion in postwar Germany to any kind of hero worship and patriotism. The fall of the Berlin Wall and German unification seems to have brought about a sea change in how Germans view their history.

From May through October, the Teutoburg Forest battle was commemorated in many different events. The mayor of Ulm-On-the-Danube, Günter Czisch, traveled to Minnesota for the New Ulm, Minnesota commemoration to renew their Sister Cities relationship. A delegation from Detmold also made the trip.

- Walter Pfaeffle