Born in 1842 in the village of Haina, near the town of Römhild, Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen, Christian was the third of four children born to Casper and Marguerite Heurich. Christian's father was the local innkeeper which included being a butcher and brewer. Christian learned the trade from his father, in addition to several apprenticeships in his youth. By the time Christian was fourteen years old, both of his parents had died, leaving him orphaned. He traveled throughout Europe until his older sister, Elizabeth Jacobsen, who was living in Baltimore, Maryland, convinced him to emigrate to the United States, where he would have a better chance of fulfilling his dream of starting his own brewery; he arrived in June 1866, initially joining his sister in Baltimore.
Christian Heurich, the Brewer
In 1872, Christian went into a partnership with a man named Paul Ritter. Together, they leased a brewery from George Schnell at 1219 20th Street, NW Washington, D.C. Within a year, Mr. Schnell had died and the partnership between the two men had dissolved. In his 1934 autobiography, Aus meinem Leben, Heurich writes that he was the one who did most of the labor of brewing, while Schnell entertained customers. Christian married the widow of Mr. Schnell, Amelia Mueller Schnell on September 9, 1873. In 1884, Amelia died of pneumonia. In 1887, Christian married for the second time to Mathilde Daetz. It was with Mathilde that he built their lavish mansion at 1307 New Hampshire Avenue NW. Mathilde worked very closely with the interior designersof the house, The Huber Brothers, NYC. Sadly, due to miscarriage and a carriage accident, Mathilde died in 1895, leaving Christian a widower once again. Christian threw himself into his work, creating an empire in the capital city. In 1894 he opened his new, fireproof brewery which had a capacity for 500,000 barrels of beer a year. The brewery, which rested on the Potomac River is now the site of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The Christian Heurich Brewing Company was the second largest employer in Washington D.C. during this time, apart from the Federal Government. In 1899, Christian married Amelia Louise Keyser, the niece and namesake of his first wife. He was more than twenty years her senior, and together they had four children, three of whom survived into adulthood: Christian Heurich Jr, Anna Marguerite, Anita Augusta, and Karla Louise. They had a long marriage until Christian Heurich Sr died in 1945 at the age of 102.
