BEER BREWED IN WITTENBERG AGES AGO

Gilbert Theiss stands beside the brewery's storage cellar. At right is the entrance to the aging cellar. The cellars extend 60 feet into the rock bluff, located near the end of Route A in Wittenberg.

The wooden doors are at the entrance to the storage cellar of the brewery. At left is a beer garden built by George Loebs, who operated the business from about 1889 to 1899.

One hundred and forty-six years ago a brewery was carved into a rock bluff in Wittenberg and stout German beer was barreled there for 50 years.

From 1849 until 1899, several German immigrants ran the brewery, and the nearby Mississippi River was used to transport the brew to destinations near and far.

Gilbert Theiss, whose grandfather emigrated from Germany and settled in Wittenberg in 1837, has lived in the area all his 70-some years.

Theiss, something of a local historian -- he wrote the book, "The 150th Anniversary of the Saxon Lutheran Churches of Perry County" -- says what he knows of the old brewery he had been told by others.

Although the wooden structures that housed some brewery functions are long gone, four storage cellars carved 60 feet into a rock bluff are still there. Also surviving are a well that was hand-dug to supply water to the brewmaster, and some stones marking the location of a work shop.

Theiss says the brewery was built in 1849 by Frank Brener, a brewmaster from Germany. Assisting Brener was another German immigrant, Eberhardt Anheuser.

Anheuser, the story goes, soon left Wittenberg and opened his own brewery in St. Louis in 1851. While in St. Louis he married the daughter of Augustus Busch and the great Anheuser-Busch beer company was born.

"People say the Anheuser that was in Wittenberg is the same one that started the big brewery in St. Louis," said Theiss.

A spokesman for Anheuser-Busch said there is no real estate listing for an Eberhardt Busch in the Wittenberg area; however, records only go back to the early 1900s.

A reporter's attempts to contact the Anheuser family in St. Louis produced no historical information.

Theiss said the Brener Brewery was quite an enterprise. Workers dug four cellars into a rock bluff near the end of what is now Route A.

One cellar was used to store yeast and other ingredients, and the other cellars were used for the fermentation process, aging and storage of the beer. At least one air vent was dug, and it is still noticeable on top of the bluff.

Since beer was transported from the brewery to the nearby river by horse and wagon, a blacksmith shop was built at the location. Also built was a "cooper shop," where very large oak barrels were made.

"Those barrels look bigger than the wagon wheels," said Thiess, looking at a faded photo of the brewery taken before the turn of the century. "They look bigger than a 'hogshead,' which is about 52 gallons."

By the Civil War, Wittenberg was a thriving steamboat town with a church, a flour mill, a three-story hotel, a brewery and a tavern. The population exceeded 100.

In about 1889 Brener died and his brewery was bought by St. Louis brewer George Loebs. Loebs and his brother had come to America from Bavaria. Loebs married a girl from the Wittenberg area.

Loebs built a beer garden, or tavern, near the Wittenberg brewery; he also had a brewery in St. Louis, and his brother started one somewhere out West.

The Loebs brothers, says Theiss, brought with them from Bavaria their own special beer recipe and they called their brew Bavarian Beer.

"The story is, and there may be no way of proving it, that the beer recipe they brought with them in about 1890, they sold to Mr. Anheuser in St. Louis," said Theiss. "That's where you get the name Busch Bavarian Beer."

Theiss said Anheuser was the brewmaster who had the recipe for the beer that became known as Michelob, "which is the best beer money can buy ... the only beer I ever drank that tasted as good as home brew. It's the Cadillac of beers."

Theiss said that during Prohibition a lot of "people in the hills around here" were making home brew. Some even made raisin jack whiskey.

George Loebs died in about 1899 and no more beer was brewed at the brewery.

In 1901, Loebs' wife built a gracious three-story house on a hill behind the brewery. Its rock foundation is still there, overgrown with trees and thistle.

During the Depression, she sold the lumber used to build the brewery and moved to Jackson to live with a daughter.

Theiss says Wittenberg was not the only small town in the area to have a brewery -- there were also breweries at Altenburg and Old Appleton.

They were all started by Germans who started settling the area in the late 1830s. A wave of Saxons settled in eastern Perry County in 1839. Some Bavarians also came about that time.

The Saxons' journey from St. Louis to the area was called "the sojourn," says Theiss, who is a retired farmer. His forebears, who came from western Germany near the French border, joined the sojourn.

The Saxons named Wittenberg after the town in Germany where Martin Luther was born.

"The pastors of the churches in the towns would name them after the towns they came from," Theiss said. "If there wasn't a pastor the families there chose the name."

Theiss says the population of Wittenberg reached a high of 269 in 1920. Although the brewery had been closed for over 20 years, a furniture factory was a major employer.

The factory went out of business in 1926, because in order to keep up with demand furniture was made from green wood. As the furniture dried the wood cracked and splintered. The company had given itself a bad reputation.

Census records compiled by Theiss shows the population of Wittenberg has steadily declined over the years -- six people live there now. That includes a family that owns the rock bluff into which industrious Germans carved a beer brewery 146 years ago.

Editor's Note: If anyone has additional information about the old Wittenberg brewery contact Jim Obert at 335-6611.