By CINDY LADAGE
Illinois Correspondent

HERMANN, Mo. — Many recount stories of the Great Depression and wars, but only old gangster movies recount some of the violence and drama of Prohibition. That history may mean the most to those in the German community of Hermann.

Prior to Prohibition, this German settlement became the second leading grape growing and wine producing area in the United States. Pre-Prohibition, Hermann was booming.

Hermann began as kind of a German utopia. Some of the immigrants included beer and wine makers who followed the old traditional methods to produce award-winning brews. At the Deutschheim State Historic Site, as far back as the early 1840s, the Carl Strehly house offers insight into the grape and wine traditions of early Hermann.

Cheryl Hoffman, interpreter at the site, said, “Carl Strehly, when he came to Hermann, benefited by one of the settlers who had bought shares and not succeeded. The settler had to leave after failing to establish a fit home in the allotted amount of time and Carl bought his lot for $10 at the courthouse.”

Out back is a garden that included the Norton wild grapes that grew wild in the woodland. “These vines are 150 years old,” Hoffman said. “Nortons are known worldwide.”

The winery area now serves as a revolving display area. When it was active, wagons would be driven into the area, unloaded and processed. Carl Strehly sold his vineyard to Stone Hill Winery, one of the earliest successful wineries in the area.

Brett Dufur, author of The Missouri Wine, wrote by 1846, many Missouri residents had produced their first wine; by 1848 Hermann wineries were producing 1,000 gallons of wine; and by 1855, 500 acres of grape were in production. Railroads further expanded distribution and the area continued to flourish until Prohibition.
“By the turn of the century, Stone Hill Winery, which the German immigrant Michael Poeschel began building in 1847, was the third largest winery in the world (second largest in the U.S.), producing more than a million gallons of wine a year. Its wines, such as Hermannsberger, Starkenberger and Black Pearl, won eight gold medals at world fairs between 1873 and 1904,” Dufur wrote.

“Hermann was warned one year in advance of Prohibition,” Hoffman said. “They were told not to produce any more. When the Revenuers arrived to find wineries still in production, they were so angry they destroyed casks, vineyards and barrels.”

She pointed out one wine press on display that shows clear burn marks. “You can see where the press was burned. They pulled it from the fire once the revenuers left.

“In the 1920s, the suicide rate was off the charts. They literally walked to the cemeteries and shot themselves. The Temperance movement had no idea the government would take it this far,” Hoffman added.

Dufur reports that part of the reason we enjoy the beautiful village of Hermann and the intact historic buildings “is largely attributed to the economic downturn caused by Prohibition. Instead of destroying older homes and building new ones, the old buildings were continually lived in and kept up, which allows us to appreciate early German construction even today.”

During Prohibition the only Missouri winery to survive was St. Stanislaus Novitiate in St. Louis, where Jesuits continued to produce sacramental wine. After Prohibition the industry was devastated and it was not until recent years that it has reestablished a bit of what it once had.