The following article was written by Houston Chronicle writer Joe Holley and appeared on Page A3 of the Saturday, December 24, 2016 issue of the Houston Chronicle. (joe.holley@chron.com). You can view the article and see pictures by clicking on the following link: online.
NATIVE TEXAN
Wending through Rumplich country
SERBIN — Meandering through the pleasant, wooded countryside where Rabb’s Creek trickles down from the small line of hills known as the Yegua Knobbs, I feel a little bit like my nephew Matt, a Big Foot true-believer. I know I’m not going to see one of the big guys — Matt tells me they hang out in the Pacific Northwest, mostly —but at this time of year I’d love to spot another legendary creature known in years past to haunt the stands of mature cedar and gnarled post oaks near this tiny farming community southwest of Giddings. Locals call him Rumplich, and unlike bashful Big Foot, he has a habit of making a ruckus around homes on Christmas Eve.
Rumplich arrived with the Wends, a Slavic people from Prussia and Saxony who landed in Galveston in 1854 and put down roots in Lee County. Along with the Wendish language, the immigrants brought with them their conservative Lutheran beliefs, their respect for education and hard work, and their folk customs, including intricately decorated Easter Eggs, a tasty way with noodles and black wedding dresses symbolizing the grief and hardship of marriage. (These days Wendish brides wear white.)
Treats or the sack?
The folk tradition of Rumplich — sort of a Wendish “bad Santa” — also has faded away, although Joyce Bise, executive director of the Texas Wendish Heritage Museum in Serbin, misses the rancorous fellow.
“Santa Claus is now the expectation of presents,” she says, “while Rumplich was the expectation of good behavior without rewards.”
Rumplich was one of the young men of the community chosen each Christmas to carry a large gunny sack and to disguise himself with a homemade mask and garish, striped costume. Accompanied by a half-dozen or so of his pals, also in costume, Rumplich stomped around on front porches and beat on doors and windows until allowed inside.
Children brought before the fearsome visitor faced a ritual interrogation. Could they correctly recall a Bible verse to prove they’d been good? Could they recite a prayer?
For nice children, Rumplich reached into his bag and bestowed a treat of fruit or nuts. The naughty? Well, they ended up in the gunny sack. “Der Rumplich wird kommen!” (“The Rumplich will come!”), parents warned throughout the year.
“He tried to put me in one time,” a Serbinite told the Houston Chronicle’s Sig Byrd long ago. “I lost a year’s growth, but he didn’t get me in that bag.”
“It was quite frightening,” said Bise, who encountered Rumplich in the 1950s during her childhood on the family farm between Serbin and Warda. “But it was good incentive for good behavior year-round, not just two weeks before Christmas.”
Central European roots
Most Texans, I’m guessing, have never heard of the Wends — who also call themselves Sorbs — in part because they settled among Central Texas Germans and quickly began to assimilate. Those who spoke Wendish also spoke German, the Wends’ primary language by the early decades of the 20th century.
“I grew up with the firm conviction that I was German through and through,” said Richard Gruetzner, a retired Travis County deputy sheriff who drives over from his home in Burnet one weekend a month to volunteer at the museum. His maternal grandfather revealed the family’s Wendish ties after coming to live with the Gruetzner family in Austin. “That piqued my interest,” he said,” and got me started on a genealogical search that’s still ongoing today.”
Gruetzner’s Wendish ancestors were descendants of a group of Slavic tribes that spoke a common language and in the 10th century occupied a large swath of Central Europe, despite never having a nation of their own.
By the 19th century, invading armies had forced them into a small area of eastern Germany called Lusatia. Living under Prussian rule, the Wends were forbidden to own land, were barred from membership in craft guilds and were pressured to abandon their language. When the authorities tried to combine their Lutheran churches with the Calvinist Evangelical Reformed Churches in a state-regulated Protestant body, they began seeking a place to start anew.
Settled in Lee County
In the fall of 1854, a group of nearly 600 Wends set out for Texas under the leadership of the Rev. Johann Kilian, a scholar whose translations of religious texts into Wendish helped keep the language alive.
The group traveled by rail and steamship to Liverpool, where they boarded a three-masted English vessel called the Ben Nevis. Although the emigrants didn’t realize it, a number of them had contracted cholera in Liverpool, and 15 died before the ship reached Ireland. Another 23 died during a three-week delay in Queenstown, Ireland, to remove the sick and fumigate the ship. Eighteen more died at sea. When the Ben Nevis finally reached Galveston in December, a yellow-fever epidemic was raging.
More Wends died.
The 500 or so survivors spent Christmas in Houston, where a few decided to stay, while the rest set out on a two-week trek by foot and oxcart to New Ulm, Frelsburg and Industry. Two men went on ahead and purchased a league (4,428.4 acres) of grazing land and a labor (177.1 acres) of crop land in what’s now Lee County. The newcomers set aside 95 acres for a church and school.
After erecting their tiny log church, St. Paul Lutheran, the original settlers built crude dugout dwellings, divided up the land for farms and founded Serbin. The community prospered for a few years, but decline set in when the railroad spurned Serbin for nearby Giddings in 1871.
Today, Serbin is little more than a road sign and a scattering of farm houses, but the rural church and school are thriving. The dignified house of worship is plain to the point of starkness outside, but inside it’s a riot of color. The walls and ceiling are bright blue, with gilded chandeliers and orange stenciling atop the wooden pillars. This week, two huge Christmas trees frame the high pulpit.
While Gruetzner was showing me around the museum, Mildred Moebus, 87, dropped by with her daughter, Rachel Haberer.
From 1954 to 1971, Moebus’s late husband was St. Paul’s school principal and church organist, and she taught for a couple of years in the two-room schoolhouse, first through fourth grade in one room, fifth through eighth in the other. “The people were just wonderful here,” she recalled. “They’re family here.”
Relic of hard times.
Moebus, 87, gave me instructions about cooking noodles the Wendish way: Place noodles, cold water and chicken broth in a big covered pot; simmer for about an hour, strain and enjoy. (Of course, she would have made the noodles by hand.)
Bags of dried noodles are on sale at the museum gift shop, but if you want to taste what the experts do with them, make your way to Wendish Fest, an annual celebration held at Serbin every fourth Sunday in September. A venerable Rumplich or two likely will be in the crowd enjoying a plate of noodles and sausage, but he’d never let on. Rumplich is a relic of hard times, hard lives. For the Wends, things are better now.
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