Sophienburg Museum and Archives
68 episodes listed below
New Braunfels history, remembered aloud.
NB Reflects presents archival conversations from the Sophienberg Museum and Archives, centered on New Braunfels and nearby Texas history. Its episodes move patiently through remembered farms, ballparks, pools, war service, Juneteenth gatherings, and changed communities.
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NB Reflects is an oral-history podcast rooted in New Braunfels, Texas, and the collections of the Sophienburg Museum and Archives. It works with archival Reflections recordings rather than polished studio interviews. That choice gives the show its character. Episodes often begin with a brief museum-style setup, then settle into the older tape: patient questions, long answers, small confirmations, and stories that circle back when a name or place needs correcting. The history is local, but the themes are wide. Gus Hans remembers Hancock before the creation of Canyon Lake, including school, farming, family land, and the practical shock of losing a homestead. Other episodes follow a baseball couple through Pittsburgh, the Pirates, San Antonio, and New Braunfels, or return to a spring-fed pool when aquacades, pageants, and summer crowds made it a civic stage. A Juneteenth episode gathers several voices to describe a small Black community, scattered across town but drawn together for picnics and celebration. A Memorial Day installment stays with Albert Fischbeck through infantry life, cold weather, censored mail, scarce bathing, and the losses around D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge. The show can be tender. It can also be blunt about how much has changed and what was pushed aside. Its best passages come from the plainness of memory: the day school ended and cotton work began, the long trip into town before modern roads, the way a nickname or swimming show can carry a whole social world. NB Reflects does not rush to turn these recordings into neat lessons. It gives them room. For listeners drawn to archival voices, Texas history, African American local memory, war recollections, and the texture of everyday life, it offers a steady, intimate record of a place remembering itself.
Made for: For listeners who like local history, archival interviews, museum collections, and patient first-person recollection. It especially suits anyone interested in Texas history, African American local history, wartime memory, and changed civic landmarks.
What sets it apart: NB Reflects stands apart by letting archival recordings remain conversational, imperfect, and human. The show’s value is not a heavily produced narrative but the preserved grain of memory itself.
Each episode of NB Reflects is a sample of a Reflections recording. Reflections is a vast collection of oral histories recorded and stored at the Sophienburg Museum and Archives in New Braunfels, Tx.
A swimming pool hides beer and aquacades; press play when local memory beats polished history.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A local pool becomes a stage for pageants, aquacades, and community memory.
Atlanta Park Pool comes through as a civic stage for New Braunfels community life, recalled in a 1990 conversation about the 1940s and 1950s. The episode situates the spring-fed pool within a busy park culture shaped by bus and train arrivals, public events, and the practical…
Albert Fischbeck's wartime memory is grounded in cold, delayed mail, censorship, and the small surviving remnant of his original company.
This Memorial Day review follows Albert Fischbeck from the draft into training, transport to England, and then the long stretch from D-Day through the Battle of the Bulge.
Pearl Booverie's memories make titles, village life, and Texas travel feel personal and close.
Pearl Booverie's long bond with New Braunfels gives this oral-history episode its center. Born and raised in England, she remembers visiting her daughter in Texas from 1955 on, then slowly coming to see New Braunfels and the surrounding area as a second home.
A wartime worker's memories make secrecy feel like an everyday workplace system.
Leon Neshob's memories turn a wartime assignment into something almost office-like, which is what makes them unsettling. The agency is simply "the customer," colleagues are known by code names like Pigpen and the Silver Fox, and instructions come from men whose real names remain…
Taiwan, remembered through conversation.
Gus Hans recalls an airplane flying low over Hancock to drop the San Antonio Light every Sunday morning.
NB Reflects S3 #14 uses Roger Reniger, Tommy Ortiz, and Bucky Warwick-Smith to reconstruct Atlanta Park's Spring Fed Pool in New Braunfels during the 1940s and 1950s.
NB Reflects uses Scott Cowan's Memorial Day framing to present Albert Fischbeck's World War II memories from Omaha Beach on June 7, 1944 to the Battle of the Bulge near Bastogne.
NB Reflects season 3 episode 8 centers on Pearl Bouverie, born in London in 1895, in a Reflections number 314 interview recorded on March 17, 1983.
This episode explores the history of German Freethinkers who settled in Texas after the 1848 revolution, focusing on their utopian philosophy and settlements in Comal and Kendall counties.
This episode explores the 1947 Iben and Fisher fire through multiple witness reflections, detailing its impact on the town.
This episode explores the history and terminology of the Schuetzen Verein, a shooting club founded in 1849 in New Braunfels, based on a 1982 interview with members.
This episode features a 1983 interview with Lucille Garcia discussing Black history topics including Landon Park integration, sharecropping, and Reconstruction-era labor systems in New Braunfels.
This episode features a 1984 interview with Mary Millett Johnson and Eddie Millett discussing their family history from slavery in Alabama to life in Texas through World War I.
["NB Reflects opens Season 3, episode 2, with Leon LeCham describing Air America flights in Laos and Vietnam as a civilian job tied to the CIA and later echoed in the film Air America with Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr.", "LeCham tells Herb Skoog that pilots took whatever the customer needed, from ammunition and rice to recovery missions, and that they could refuse a flight or be fired for misconduct.", "He describes foxholes, canned food, safe houses, and cooks named Abdu in Luang Prabang and Mr.