HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Albert and Marie Kopplin House

New Braunfels, Comal County, Texas

Marker Inscription

German native Albert Kopplin (1845-1929) and his wife, Marie Caroline (Hitzfelder) Kopplin (1851-1921), built this house in 1892 as their retirement home from life on the ranch. The house reflects the folk Victorian architectural style with symmetrical facades and porches supported by chamfered wooden porch posts with intricately carved gingerbread frieze and balustrades. For a time, the couple’s granddaughters, Elsa and Thekla Pfeuffer, stayed with them to attend school and social activities in town and returned to the ranch on weekends. The Kopplin family lived here until the 1940s. (RTHL 2020)

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

German-born Albert Kopplin and his wife, Marie Caroline Hitzfelder Kopplin, built this folk Victorian house in 1892 as a retirement home after years of ranching, its porches trimmed with chamfered posts and intricately carved gingerbread. For a time their granddaughters boarded here to attend school and social life in New Braunfels, returning to the ranch on weekends. The Kopplin family kept the home until the 1940s.

Why it matters

Homes like this one document the German immigrant families who shaped the Texas Hill Country, translating Old World craft and thrift into the architecture of a new American town.

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Related people

  • · Albert Kopplin
  • · Marie Caroline Hitzfelder Kopplin
  • · Elsa Pfeuffer
  • · Thekla Pfeuffer

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

The Hofheinz House

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German native Frederick Hofheinz arrived in the New Braunfels area with his family in 1852, later settling in Kendall County and leading the Texas Sons of Hermann as its Grand Lodge president. After a run for lieutenant governor, he returned to New Braunfels and in 1906 built this Queen Anne home, its central tower and spindled porch friezes still intact. Converted to apartments during World War II, the house passed through several owners while keeping its distinctive detailing.

Johann Michael Jahn

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Johann Michael Jahn reached New Braunfels in 1845 as a colonist with the German Emigration Company that founded the town. A trained Tischlermeister, or master cabinetmaker, he built a thriving business in fine handcrafted furniture and served among the city's first aldermen. His son and grandson carried on the trade, raising this building in 1910 and keeping the company going into the 1930s, while examples of Jahn's craftsmanship reached museums including the Witte in San Antonio.

Hermann Seele

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Part of the wave of German immigrants who founded New Braunfels, Hermann Seele came from Hanover to Texas in 1843 and, in 1845, gathered fifteen children beneath elm trees to become the town's first schoolteacher. Over the following decades he helped organize its first Protestant church, its German-language newspaper, and its cultural clubs, while serving as district clerk, legislator, mayor, and postmaster and recording the daily life of the frontier settlement in his writings.

Sophienburg Hill

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During the Republic of Texas era, a society of German noblemen known as the Adelsverein organized to sponsor emigration to Texas, and their first commissioner general, Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels, founded New Braunfels in 1845. He chose this commanding hill for a protective fortress and named it the Sophienburg for his fiancee, Princess Sophia, though only a log headquarters and storehouses were ever built. Prince Carl soon returned to Germany, the venture faltered financially, and the site later became home to the Sophienburg Museum.