Enchanted Rock, Fredericksburg, Texas by Hermann Lungkwitz
Image courtesy of The Witte Museum
Modern Times
Art and Memory in a Time of Upheaval: German Texans, 1859-1866
October 18, 2020 | 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM CST
**Doors at 2:00, Lecture at 2:30
Due to complications arising due to COVID-19 we have had to move this lecture entirely online. Thank you for your understanding.
Modern Times is back! But in a new, exciting, and COVID-19 safe way! We are moving Modern Time out onto our gorgeous front lawn, and under an open tent! Plus, for the first time EVER we are taking the show online! Now you can even participate in the lecture even when you can’t be here. So let’s step back in time for Season 15 of Modern Times, America at War: 1855-1865.
Germans in Texas found themselves in a state seceding from the country to which they had emigrated over an issue – slavery – about which they were deeply uncomfortable. This talk will focus on Germans in the Hill Country and San Antonio. The most notorious incident involving German Texans in the Civil War was what has been known either as the Battle of the Nueces or the Nueces Massacre. Men from Comfort and Fredericksburg attempting to leave Texas for Mexico were attacked and many killed. This talk will focus not on the massacre itself, but its memorial in Comfort – the Treue der Union monument – and to a folk painting done as a memorial 26 years after the incident. But Germans who did not attempt to flee to Mexico also had to deal with life in the Confederacy. For some – like portrait painter Louise Wüste – the war led to a dramatic drop-off in commissions. (One of her patrons from just before the war, Hamilton P. Bee, became a Civil War general.) For another – Carl von Iwonski – it seems to have led to one of his most well-known paintings, The Terry Rangers. For yet another, Hermann Lungkwitz, it led to his great series of Texas landscape paintings: Hill Country Landscape and many views of Enchanted Rock. And in the aftermath of the war Lungkwitz painted Swenson’s Ruin, which was a rumination about an Austin loyalist whose Texas dreams ended with the Civil War.
To ensure the safety of our guests, speakers, and staff at the in person event, we request that all participate in safe social distancing and wear a mask at all times while on our site. The sides of the tent will be open to ensure open airflow, and all chairs will be spaced apart for proper social distancing. Sanitation stations will also be available to all guests.
About the Speaker
Dr. Kenneth Hafertepe is professor of museum studies and chair of the department. He has taught at Baylor since 2000, before which he was director of academic programs at Historic Deerfield, a museum of New English history and art. He is an authority on the material culture and decorative arts of the United States, especially of Texas.
He has published six books and co-edited two more. His most recent book, The Material Culture of German Texans, has been named an outstanding publication by the Southeast Society of Architectural Historians, the Texas State Historical Association, the Victorian Society in America, and the Philosophical Society of Texas. He has also published numerous articles in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, the Winterthur Portfolio, and the Southwestern Historical Quarterly. Twice he has been a speaker at the David B. Warren Symposium on American Material Culture and the Texas Experience, sponsored by the Bayou Bend Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, including the keynote address in 2017.
He served for 12 years on the board of the Committee on Museum Professional Training of the American Association (now Alliance) of Museums, the last four as chair. He also served on the program committee for two AAM annual meetings, and has served on the same committee for TSHA four times. He is a fellow of the Texas State Historical Association.
Dr. Hafertepe also teaches a course on historic preservation, that is, the preservation of historic buildings and sites. Parallel to that he is in his second term on the City of Waco’s Historic Landmark Preservation Commission. He has also received an award for preservation education from that commission.