Built in 1897. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
From the record
“The Hermann Heights Monument is a statue erected in New Ulm, Minnesota, United States. The statue depicts Arminius, an ancient Cheruscan, but locals refer to the statue as Hermann the German.”
Wikipedia article Hermann Heights Monument, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 38 National Register listings published here for Brown County · listed in 1973 · category: Structure · built in 1897.
National Register reference number.73000965- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
What happened here
An account from the chapter on New Ulm city. The inset identifies its exact
source book and publication year.
New Ulm was incorporated in March, 1857, and William Pfaender was elected its first president. Later it was incorporated as a borough, with Charles Roos as mayor. A city charter was granted New Ulm on February 24, 1876, with Charles Roos as mayor and Jacob Nix as clerk. Since the place was incorporated into a city the records are all intact, but on account of the Indian depredations during the massacre in August, 1862, the early village records were all destroyed or lost.
New Ulm, the seat of justice of Brown county, on the right bank of the Minnesota river, was named by its founders after an important city and an old fort standing on the shore of the Danube in Wurtemberg - Ulm - which word is a combination of the initials of the old Roman legend, " Ultra limites militares," which, translated into our language signifies 6 i Beyond the military border/ ' as the Romans usually called the territory adjoining their possessions in distant countries. It will be understood by the reader from what has already been noted, this place in Brown county was first settled and has always been almost exclusively a German town, hence it was but natural that the founders named it from Ulm, in Wurtemberg, and added the prefix "New," making it New Ulm.
The object in laying out New Ulm was stated in a resolution passed by the company or colony that headed the enterprise in the following words: "The object of the German Land Company is to procure a home for every German laborer, popish priests and lawyers excepted, in some healthy and productive district, located on some navigable river." With the passing years, both priest and lawyer have here found a welcome and have been numerous, as well as truly law-abiding citizens of a sprightly city whose history reads not unlike a romance from the early fifties on down for more than a third of a century, which covered the awful baptism of blood during the 1862 massacre, as well as that never-to-be-forgotten summer in 1881, when the city was destroyed by a cyclone of fearful velocity.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 13 fires within 5 miles of Hermann Monument
between 2001 and 2015, burning about 17 acres in total. None started naturally. 2 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Debris and open burning
6
Recreation and ceremony
2
Arson/incendiarism
2
Smoking
1
Equipment and vehicle use
1
Fireworks
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
3 workings within 5 miles of Hermann Monument: 3 producers.
All of them still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Crushed/Broken. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
New Ulm, the town this property stands in, in 57 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 29 thunderstorm wind, 21 hail, 2 lightning, 2 flash flood.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
4,000 trees blown down. 10 businesses lost portions of their roof. Mobile home destroyed. Maintenance hangar at airport destroyed, damaging several airplanes. 400 ft TV tower blown down. Poultry bldg levelled at fairgrounds. Reception hall lost its roof. Large trees blown down at local cemeteries. The statue of Hermann the German damaged. Estimated 5% of crops or about 50,000 acres in county destroyed. Damage estimate for entire county.
Numerous county roads around New Ulm were closed due to flooding. Monetary costs were based on FEMA, State, and Local assistance which includes the following categories; emergency protective measures and road systems and bridges.
Thunderstorm winds estimated at 60 mph snapped several large trees snapped at their base in German Park, downed a dead, 2 foot diameter tree along 5th North Street, and downed several trees near the New Ulm Medical Center.
Widespread street flooding occurred. Several cars stranded around New Ulm. The cooperative observer in New Ulm measured 6.82 inches as of 0630 CST August 19.
Numerous trees were downed onto yards and roads. The most concentrated area of damage was in an east-west path between 12th North and Center streets. One large tree pulled up the sidewalk and a portion of the curb on South Minnesota Street.
Trees and large branches down on west side of city. Estimated windspeed. About one and one half inches of rain in one half hour resulted in minor flooding at a mobile home park.
Thunderstorm winds blew down several large trees in the city of New Ulm. Hail and strong winds damaged several hundred acres of crops in the Springfield area.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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