Wends of Texas
en.wikipedia.org68 points by benbreen 5 days ago
68 points by benbreen 5 days ago
There are so many people who came to Texas from that part of Europe. German names are everywhere!
Shiner Bock, brewed by the Spoetzl brewery, also started by German immigrants, brewing the kind of beer they were used to.
And of course between Dallas and Texas, you have the Czech Stop in West, Texas (which is not in west Texas) which is a great place to stop for some kolaches on the rip.
It’s a controversial topic in Texas, especially since I live in Dallas as an adult, but since you mentioned the food and drink legacy- the immigration waves that come through Galveston/Houston continue to make absolutely amazing food scenes.
A set of my great grandparents were actually a Czech immigrant who married a German immigrant. First part of my life I thought everyone in the world ate kolaches every weekend for breakfast, lol. Also, when modern Texans say kolaches they generally mean a sausage klobasniky. The Czech stop is a well know spot, but the thing that distinguishes them and some other places in West is they still serve a wide variety of actual kolache (fruit/sweet).
6th gen Texan here with a very german sounding last name. My dad's side of family immigrated from Switzerland through Galveston. The original surname was sprinkled with umlauts. Someone tried Americanizing the name so people could pronounce but we still have pronunciation problems... and with the new spelling, French people think I'm one of their own.
As a child, I also ate them for breakfast every time I spent the night at my grandparents' house. I'm in Houston now, and this afternoon I was talking to a neighbor from the town of West (which is a few hours northwest of here). My Czech grandparents lived an hour south of Houston but the neighbor and I both agreed on how much we like prune kolaches. I also love apricot. Some places use canned fruit which might taste fine to someone who doesn't know better, but it's a terrible clash with memories of what my grandmother made (and what some of my cousins still make), and I refuse to pay for them at any shop which does that. We also talked about the poppyseed ones, and how for us it's so heartwarmingly nostalgic but often other people who didn't grow up with poppyseed struggle to understand the appeal.
I did the same at my grandparents in Crosby, just north of Baytown. That land was passed down through the family going back to our ancestors who were part of the Old 300. The Czechs that moved into the emerging area now known as Crosby passed along amazing recipes like kolaches and my grandmother befriended the wife of a Czech coworker of my grandfathers - now kolaches are absolutely part of the family recipe book.
Yes, I love those flavors and the cream cheese ones too!! If memory serves me, these ones were actually the most popular with our grands generations and they’ve become quite a rare treat these days. Many places don’t serve them and you really have to seek them out
A few years ago we did a road trip through that part of Texas, looking at the "painted churches" (https://thedaytripper.com/the-painted-churches-road-trip/ - there are other itineraries). This article sparked that memory, as one of the painted churches is actually a Wendish church.
And yes, there's a painted church in Shiner as well! :-)
I hadn't heard of Wends until today. I'm Czech Texan, and more Czechs ended up in Texas than any other state, but of course we were still outnumbered by the German immigrants, so I'm not surprised by a subset of immigrants I didn't know about coming from that region. I haven't toured the painted churches, though many people I know have done so. Their story sounds pretty interesting, and I'm quite delighted to see this come across HN.
Yep, I grew up in Texas and tons of German-Czech influence. Hruska's beats on kolaches for my money, if it's on your way :)
There are also some hidden historic dance halls that are great if you can make it by. I know one dates to 1912 and a buddy's family refurbished it last year; lovely place.
Just before New Years, we were headed to The Woodlands from my hometown in Bell County, and passed through Zabcikville. I decided to get a hostess gift for the high school friend we were visiting, so dropped into Green's Sausage House for a dozen kolaches. I figured I'd be out about $30-40, given how expensive everything else had gotten both where I live now and where I grew up.
It was still $16.
The cottage cheese and the peaches and cream are the best two, in my opinion, followed closely by the cream cheese and the apricot.
If you're eating lunch behind the wheel, their sausage and sauerkraut "kolaches" (more like sausage rolls, but made from the same dough as the sweet kolaches) are an excellent option. One is a heavy snack, two are a solid meal.
Discovering that there were kolaches over the border in Czechia after moving to Central Bavaria: happiness!
Discovering that those are more like what Americans would call a danish than a Central Texas kolache: heartbreaking.
I live in Bell County now but I spent a lot of time in and around small TX towns (smaller even than Zabcikville or Cyclone) where a lot of the residents were 3rd generation or 4th generation immigrants. Growing up we learned some Czech and "Czech identity" was (is still, at least for my "elders") a big deal.
Anyway those "sausage rolls" are called klobasneks (or Klobásniks).
It's a bit of a shibboleth since the only people that seem to know that are the Czech. ;)
Interestingly we never called anything a danish—but we did have a lot of strudels.
I mentioned it in another comment myself, but I think it’s funny how online every time I see this topic this comment about the misnomer comes up. IRL I’ve lived all over the Texas triangle my entire life and have never actually heard anyone say anything other than kolache regardless of sweet/savory. My Czech great grandmother died when I was about 10 though so maybe I just don’t remember hearing it.
My kids have learned the precise term for the savory ones from me, but you're right that most Texans, even many Czech Texans, do not know it! To be fair, the origin is that Czech Texans used the same kolache bread and stuck meat in it. People might not think it matters, but many kolaches I've had from shops do not use the bread I'm familiar with from my grandmother (and cousins). I won't name names, but their bread doesn't taste very good, and only a few shops make the same bread I grew fond of at my grandmother's house, and that same kind of bread was used for both the sausage ones and the sweet ones at my grandmother's house.
Agree that the bread is origin and makes all the difference. Especially when compared to a normal “pig in a blanket” style which usually has biscuit/croissant bread the kolache dough is much sweeter. I’ve tried making it at home a couple times and have never been able to get it quite right. It’s either not sweet enough or not airy enough. I’m not a great cook though tbh.
For me, Shipley Donuts is pretty wide spread in parts of Texas and has good kolaches. There’s found at most donut shops but there’s a thing here too now where most donut shops are owned by SE Asian folks and it seems they all use the exact same dough premix and I think it all tastes pretty bad. Also, if you like cheese in it there’s a big difference as places like Shipley puts more in there and it’s quite a good meat to cheese ratio. The other places only buy sausages with cheese already mixed inside and it’s not cheesy enough IMO.
The kolache market in Dallas is abysmal compared to Houston and Austin and up to West, and pretty everywhere inside that triangle. It seems like Czech folks never ventured north of West lol. Pretty much ever road trip I take from Dallas I’m seeking out a “good” sausage and cheese kolache
I should just learn how to make that dough. I regret not buying that Church of the Visitation (Westphalia) Altar Society cookbook I saw on the counter at Green's.
I’ve not had luck following recipes I’ve found online. Could be my execution but it never turns out right. Most of the original immigrants have passed but if you can learn from someone in person you definitely should not let the opportunity slip by you.
Sorry for your disappointment! I can't speak to that part of Czechia as my ancestors came from Moravia. When I first visited Czech relatives in 1991 (Czechoslovakia at that time), we were served fruit kolaches that looked just like the ones my grandmother had grown up with in Texas, although the Moravian ones were smaller. However, I've been back to visit my 3rd cousins multiple times and I get the impression that the specific pastry that Czech Texans are so familiar with is just one of many kinds in the old country. In the 1800s, ovens were not as plentiful in Europe, but were more common in America. Sugar, butter, eggs and white flour were more expensive in Europe, so kolaches were reserved for special occasions. But since it was easier to make them in America, Czech immigrants made them frequently and they became one of the most prominent symbols of Czech culture.
Gruene Hall is the classic example. If you’re into red dirt and have not made the pilgrimage, then you’re just doing it wrong
Gruene is good. Luckenback was always more fun for me, but I lived in Fredericksburg and enjoyed the picking circle.
Coupland was cool- cooler than Gruene, at least to me. We played there once to about 4 people and I quit the band because that night was supposed to be the "paid" gig after the band hauled me all the way from Lubbock to play the Saxon for free.
Red dirt?
Plenty of Swedes also. Creating churches and schools. German/Swede congregations helped each other. Later it was the Irish who renovated, buying up old neighborhoods, creating today's hospitals and universities.
Interestingly, the diaspora is mostly concentrated around the same area too. New Sweden and Lund, TX are located just east of Austin, which is fairly close to the area mentioned in the article (Giddings) and the original Sweden, TX and Norway, TX are located south/southeast. Those towns are not terribly close, but also given Texas size, relatively close to above.
The explosion in West, Texas in 2013 attracted a lot of attention in Czechia and I believe also some charitative help.
Prasek’s man, myself.
Hear hear! Fortunately HEB sells it so I don't have to make it all the way to a Prasek's store. Their sausage recipe is the closest flavor to the sausage my Czech Texan grandparents would make, although my grandparents often had venison mixed in as one of the meats.
Praseks has some with venison in it, too. :) Any other brands you like? I sense I can trust your tastes. I was out in the middle of nowhere near Tyler recently and got some “famous” sausage and it was the same bland, hot dog like texture I can’t stand.
My wife is a Wend, and so we visited this area in Texas. One of the things I found interesting was that there was a local paper that printed articles in German, English, and Wendish (Sorbian) – there’s a link in the Wiki article. The church we visited was so beautiful.
Try to make me go to church with the Calvinists I'll flee the country too
I appreciate the humor but this confuses me. I also read in a biography of Thomas Jefferson that he reviled Calvinists, going so far as to say their God is not the God of the Bible. I genuinely do not understand what is so reprehensible about Calvinist doctrine. There is just so much theological noise to parse through whenever I research it. Is pre-determination the biggest issue?
Yes, the predestination. It removes from humans any agency in their own salvation, and any action of consequence in their lives. Everything is predetermined, the whole world is just a mechanical puppet show.
It's an internally consistent view of the world. But it turns all the biblical events where humans appear to have agency into just silly scripted scenes, and it also turns the passion and self-sacrifice of Christ another scripted scene (with the Gethsemane episode thrown in for sadistic melodrama, apparently).
I'd say that (strict) Calvinism is the least Christian of the various sects that have attained mainstream success. Paradoxically, it produced some very sober and ultimately successful approaches to the earthly life.
Yeah, predeterminism, along with limited atonement, and perseverance of the saints, combines to form, IMO, a theology that is toxic at best, abusive at worst.
If I can massively oversimplify, it's a theology where Jesus came to redeem only the Elect that God had already chosen to be saved while he had chosen to send everyone else to hell, so that the Elect could see His mercy (to them, not those poor bastards on the down escalator).
And, perseverance of the saints is the icing on the cake, because it came to mean that if you ever disagreed with your church or its elders, well, you obviously weren't one of the Elect at all, enjoy the hellfire.
So it's a great theology if you want to run a small, obviously better than everyone else, in-group of the Saved, vs. all the unsaved sinners God has already condemned.
To see how perverse it could become in the extremes, look at the role it played in apartheid.
Man, multiple people were ready to "go in on" Calvin which really wasn't what I intended. I was recently drafting a little ten part quick and dirty comparison of Christian denominational views on the most important/relevant theological concepts and reading about the Old Lutherans in this post really made me think about how seriously they took these things because they were literally true to them. It is either an admirable or a terrifying thing depending on your perspective.
To answer your question as well as I can from their perspective, the reformed understanding of pneumatic presence vs their understanding of the sacramental union and being forced to participate in the eucharist in that heretical way, would quite literally be grounds for leaving the continent.
But why to most Calvinists influenced country?
Probably because Texas had just recently become a state at that point and because of the Adelsverein and/or the number of ethnic Germans already there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelsverein https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Germans
Das Yehaw
No, to the most explicitly religion-tolerant country. The US was really unusual in many regards at that time, compared to most of Europe.
Its funny because the original pilgrim fathers emigrated from the UK because they believed the UK too _tolerant_ of religious differences, and were worried their children would stray because of the temptation of a less strict doctrine.
And a few generations in America later, and their children and children's children had indeed strayed.
It's saying something about your religion if the only way you can get your kids to practice it is to isolate them!
Driving through Giddings you can still see signs for the annual Wendish festival. Pondering what that was all about I did some Googling and learned about the Wends as I drove through.
Related: for anyone who speaks a bit of German, check out Texas German: https://youtu.be/1_dH403pqRU?si=KuSDR51w-_ZXmTdT
Really lucky that these dialects persisted long enough that we have recordings of them.
it would be funny if they had Umgebindehäuser in Texas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Lusatian_house
Stop in at some of the antique shops in New Braunfels & you can find all Nazi medals the germans brought with em in their last wave!
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