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Site of the Home of Dr. Ferdinand Ludwig Herff

San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Ferdinand Ludwig Von Herff (1820-1912) was the son of Christian and Eleanora (Von Meusebach) Herff, prominent citizens of Darmstadt, Germany. The younger Von Herff studied in Giessen, Bonn and Berlin, graduating with a medical degree in 1843. He served as a surgeon in the Hessian army, achieving recognition in plastic surgery, cataract extraction and tuberculosis treatment. In 1847 he joined a group known as Die Vierziger (The Forty), who founded an idealistic commune in Texas called Bettina (near present Castell). The utopian enterprise failed within a year, and Von Herff returned to Germany, where he was pressed into military service during the German Revolution. He married Mathilde Klingerhöeffer (1823-1910) in 1849, and they were on the way back to Texas by year's end. The couple dropped the title "Von" from their name when they became American citizens. They lived briefly in New Braunfels, then settled in San Antonio in 1850. Active in city, cultural and medical affairs, Herff was a city alderman from 1850 to 1851. He helped form the Bexar County Medical Society and was a charter member of the Texas Medical Association in 1853. In 1855 he built a home on this site. Herff served as city health officer in 1860. Although he was a Confederate Army surgeon during the Civil War, his Union sympathies were known. In 1869, he was instrumental in founding San Antonio's first infirmary, operated by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word. Herff served on the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners in 1880 and continued his general medical practice until 1908, performing his last surgery at age 87. He died in his home on the river in 1912. (2000)

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Ferdinand Ludwig von Herff came to Texas in 1847 as one of Die Vierziger, the idealistic "Forty" who tried to found a utopian commune called Bettina in the Hill Country. When that dream collapsed within a year, he returned to Germany, married, and came back for good, settling in San Antonio in 1850 and building this home in 1855. A German-trained surgeon of real distinction, he helped organize the county medical society, founded the city's first infirmary with the Sisters of Charity, and — though a Confederate surgeon — was quietly known for Union sympathies, practicing until he was nearly ninety.

Why it matters

Herff embodies the wave of educated German '48ers who brought European medicine and liberal politics to frontier Texas, planting institutions that outlasted the failed utopias that first drew them west.

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Related people

  • · Ferdinand Ludwig von Herff
  • · Mathilde Klingerhöeffer Herff

Related events

  • · Bettina colony
  • · Civil War

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