Friedrichsburg

Friedrichsburg is an annotated translation of a novel published by the German author, Friedrich Armand Strubberg in 1867. Using the assumed name Dr. Schubbert, Strubberg served as the first colonial director of Fredericksburg, TX, in 1846 and 1847. After a bitter dispute with Baron Otto von Meusebach, commissioner-general of the Society for the Protection of German Emigrants in Texas, the so-called Mainzner Adelsverein–a dispute that culminated in a dramatic shoot-out at Nassau Plantation in the fall of 1847–Schubbert/Strubberg returned to Germany and took up a new career writing adventure novels based on his frontier experiences in Texas and his observations of slavery in the American South. His novels have both a literary and historic significance.  In respect to literature they represent pioneering works in the new and emerging genre of the exotic novel (Abenteuer=Literatur in German) that culminated in the wildly popular novels of Karl May a generation later. Unlike Karl May, Strubberg was very much on the scene in frontier Texas. His stories have therefore an important historical and ethnographic component. This is especially true of his novel Friedrichsburg, which deals with the foundation years of the Texas town by that name. Using a third-person, omniscient narrator, the author weaves a love story and captive narrative around the storied German/Comanche treaty, signed in Fredericksburg in May 1847.  He places himself in the novel as Dr Schubbert and, as one might expect, paints himself in a very favorable light.  Except for the love story and the young lovers involved, Rudolph and Ludwina, most of the other characters and episodes in the story also have a historic basis. The depiction of the nearby Mormon settlement of Zodiac as well as the description of the important help supplied by the Delaware Indians to the fledgling and struggling settlement of German emigrants, are both of great historical interest. Friedrichsburg was released in 2012 by the University of Texas Press and garnered the Summerfield G. Roberts award for the best contribution to Texas history for the year 2012.