Hermann Daniel Hermes (24 January 1734 – 12 November 1807) was a Prussian protestant theologian.^[1][2] Towards the end of his life he became caught up in the campaign for a return to religious orthodoxy pursued by the Rosicrucian politician Johann Christoph von Wöllner, being employed as an "inquisitor" in 1794 in Halle,^[3] and elsewhere.

Life

Hermann Daniel Hermes was born in Petznick, a village near Stargard in Western Pomerania. His father was a Protestant pastor. His mother, Lukrezia, was the daughter of another Protestant pastor, Heinrich Becker from Rostock.^[4] His siblings included the successful popular novelist Johann Timotheus Hermes.^[1]

After attending school in Wernigerode, in 1750 he commenced a study period at Halle University after which he took a teaching post at the Realschule (school) recently set up in Berlin by Julius Hecker. In 1756 he moved on to a position as a (Protestant) minister at Dierberg near Ruppin, north of Berlin. A succession of church promotions followed. At this stage, there was no sign of the obsessive hostility to new thinking which would become a defining feature of his work after he came under the influence of Wöllner.^[1] Eventually, he became senior minister at St. Mary Magdalene in Breslau. He was later identified as a "Prussian inquisitor" and was removed from office without formal explanation.

Much of his later career awaits further modern research, although his prominent role in the anti-enlightenment fundamentalist government mandated "crusading" of the 1790s has recently formed the basis for an historically based novel (in Polish) by the Breslau/Wrocław writer Henryk Waniek.^[5]

References