The multi-lingual elder Spiess had been instrumental in founding the Offenbach public school system, and was a musician, pastor and writer.
Hermann returned in 1835 and enrolled in the Gymnasium in Darmstadt, where he met Ferdinand Ludwig Herff.
Spiess and Herff were approached in Wiesbaden by Adelsverein Vice President and Executive Secretary-Business Director Count Carl Frederick Christian of Castell-Castell,[2] who made a deal with them to colonize two hundred families on the Fisher–Miller Land Grant territory in Texas.
Spiess went to New Braunfels, and Herff went to Indianola at the end of April 1847 to await the arrival of the other colony members.
[5] John O. Meusebach and Spiess chose the location for Bettina in 1847 on the banks of the Llano River.
The commune was named in honor of Bettina von Arnim, an early feminist activist and a personal friend of the Meusebach family.
[7] In 1846, John O. Meusebach designated Dr. Friedrich A. Schubbert the director of the colony at Fredericksburg, recommended by Henry Francis Fisher.
[10] He and Henry Francis Fisher worked in tandem to entice immigrants away from the Verein settlements to the St. Gabriel colony he had established in Milam County.
In 1848, Spiess, Ludwig Bene and Louis Cachand Ervendberg[14] established the Western Texas Orphan Asylum.
Spiess owned property at Waco Springs, four miles north of New Braunfels, where he built a sawmill and a shingle mill.