Utilizing his childhood memories of northern Baden, Bayer located and purchased 11,300 acres of east-central Missouri land for the Society for a price of $1.38/acre. He believed he had found land suitable to grow wine grapes similar to those cultivated in the German Rhineland. Key members of the Society were closely aligned with the weltanschauung of German Romanticism; they and Bayer looked forward to the creation of a German-speaking section of Missouri that would be liberated from the sinful temptations of English-speaking cities. The leaders laid out a planned capital for the new province and named it "Hermann," in honor of Arminius, the ethno-Romantic figure who had successfully led German rebels against legions of the invading Roman Empire in 9 CE.