Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Cullman, AL

Cullman is the largest city in and the county seat of Cullman County, located along Interstate 65 about 50 miles north of Birmingham and 55 miles south of Huntsville.

The city was founded in 1873 by Colonel Johann Gottfried Cullmann, a Bavarian immigrant and veteran of the German Revolutions of 1848-49 who dreamed of establishing a colony for German immigrants in the American South.

Cullmann negotiated an agreement to serve as land agent for a 349,000-acre tract owned by the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, and the first five German families arrived to settle the colony in March 1873.

Cullmann used his military engineering training to lay out the town with rectangular blocks, half-acre lots and streets 100 feet wide, and he promoted the colony through lectures and a bilingual newspaper, Der Nord Alabama Colonist.

Cullmann is credited with bringing some 20,000 German immigrants to settle in the Cullman area, and the town, incorporated in 1875, was named for him with the spelling Americanized from Cullmann to Cullman.

Cullman County was created by the Alabama legislature in 1877 from parts of Blount, Winston and Morgan counties and was also named in Cullmann's honor.

Before the German colony, the site was crossed by the Black Warrior's Path, a Cherokee trail, and during the Civil War the future site of Cullman saw the Battle of Day's Gap on April 30, 1863, part of Streight's Raid.

Cullman's principal tourist attraction is the Ave Maria Grotto on the grounds of St. Bernard Abbey, where Brother Joseph Zoettl built 125 miniature reproductions of some of the world's most famous religious structures.

The former St. Bernard College campus is now St. Bernard Preparatory School, a Benedictine boarding and day school serving grades 9 through 12.

The city celebrates its German roots with an annual Oktoberfest at the Festhalle Market Platz, complete with an honorary Bürgermeister, and since 1987 it has maintained a sister-city relationship with Frankweiler, Germany, Cullmann's hometown; for many years the Oktoberfest served no alcohol because Cullman was dry, but beginning in 2011 the festival was able to offer beer after voters ended the city's dry status.