August von Bibra-Irmelshausen – The American Connection

Link to Agnes von Bibra Page, August’s wife, includes a lot of information on August’s family and the Queen of Romania

BIBRA, BARON AUGUST LUDWIG KARL GEORG FRIEDRICH VON (1808-1894)
By Jeanne R. Willson

August von Bibra, who as director of the business affairs of Hermann, sovereign prince of Wied, became general manager of the Verein zum Schutze Deutscher Einwanderer in Texas (later the Adelsverein), was born in Germany on January 30, 1808, a lesser member of an old line of the German nobility. He was privy from its inception to the development of the verein, the emigration enterprise first organized by a group of German noblemen in 1842 that resulted in the founding of New Braunfels, Fredericksburg, and other German communities in Texas. The prince of Wied purchased a share in the society against his and Bibra?s better judgment because he was engaged to the sister of the Duke of Nassau, the protector of the society; but he took no active part in the society until 1847, when debts and dissension made it apparent that, if the noblemen hoped to save the honor of their names and possibly some of their investment, a new approach must be taken by more businesslike minds. From that point on Bibra was intimately involved in the affairs of the verein; and in 1851, when the prince was elected president, he took over complete management. For more than ten years thereafter, he struggled to repay the verein debts and to revitalize the emigration program, always with the thought that what had been accomplished had been of great value to Texas and to the Germans who had gone there. In 1864, when he drafted a pro memoria entitled ?The Texas Enterprise with Reference to Its Results,? he still held the faint hope that the land the verein had controlled might eventually prove valuable to its members. Little else is known about Bibra. He died in Germany in 1894.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Gothaisches genealogisches Taschenbuch der freiherrlichen H?user, Vol. 9 (Gotha: Perthes, 1859). Wied Archives, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.

Handbook of Texas Online, Jeanne R. Willson, “BIBRA, BARON AUGUST LUDWIG KARL GEORG FRIEDRICH VON,” accessed April 01, 2020, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbi27.

Uploaded on June 12, 2010. Modified on December 6, 2018. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.

Learn more about August von Bibra on the English Wikipedia, German Wikipedia.
Learn more about August von Bibra’s cousin’s son Count Ludwig Joseph von Boos-Waldeck.