Remembering the Prussian Survivor of the Goliad Massacre
The Banner of Independence
The Banner of Independence
The new star gleaming on a blue flag over Goliad for the first time was fluttering and fighting with the winds of a raging storm.
Herman Ehrenbert
(Derrick Jeter, Yallogy) - He was an enigmatic character—soldier, adventurer, prospector, cartographer, and memoirist, even if much of his memoir is made up.
Herman Vollrath Ehrenberg was born in the village of Steuden, Prussia on November 17, 1816. At the age of eighteen he emigrated to the United States, sailing aboard the Ludwig, disembarking on the docks of New York City. He was alone. Nothing is known of his activities in New York, except a mention in his memoir of eating in John Jacob Astor’s restaurant and of the young attractive women he saw on Broadway. A year later, in 1835, he was in New Orleans volunteering to fight in the Texas Revolution as a member of the New Orleans Greys.
When he arrived in Texas, Ehrenberg took part in the siege of Béxar (1835) and fought at the battle of Coleto (1836), where he was captured with the rest of Colonel James W. Fannin’s command and sent to Presidio La Bahía (Goliad), where on March 27, 1836, Mexican soldados under the command of José de Urrea massacred the Texians. Ehrenberg was one of twenty-eight men to escape the bloodletting, receiving a