Drawing of four German singers traveling in the mud to San Antonio, ca. 1865 (UTSA Special Collections Library)
Beethoven Hall, built in 1895, burned in 1913 (Beethoven Maennerchor Inc.)
Members of Beethoven Maennerchor, 1893. (UTSA Special Collections Library)
Members standing on stage, 1936. (UTSA Special Collections Library)
Society program, ca. 1954. (Beethoven Maennerchor Inc.)
Stop in for Oktoberfest, one of the society’s largest annual events. (Beethoven Maennerchor Inc.)
German-Texan singing societies helped preserve German culture and language and strengthened community at a time when surviving on the frontier could be difficult. As German-Texan men returned to San Antonio from fighting in the Civil War, Beethoven Maennerchor was founded in 1867 – an offshoot of an earlier singing society, Maennergesang-Verein. Poet and musician Sidney Lanier visited a practice that first year, exclaiming that “Great pipes were all afire… they all swung into such a noble old full-voice lied [song] that imperious tears rushed to my eyes.”
The society’s first performance space was built in 1894 on South Alamo Street, but it was later destroyed in a fire. The pipes of the Maennerchor – which now features choirs for women and children – are still afire today in their dozens of performances every year, performed in their current venue on Pereida Street.
Beethoven Mannerchor
- Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 5 p.m. – midnight
- Check website for program and performance information
- 422 Pereida St., San Antonio, TX
- 210-222-1521
- Visit Website
