Background
Hermann Daniel Hermes was born in Petznick, a village near Stargard in Western Pomerania.
Hermann Daniel Hermes was born in Petznick, a village near Stargard in Western Pomerania.
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. A succession of church promotions followed. There was at this stage 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.
Eventually he becvame senior minister at Saint Mary Magdalene in Breslau.
He was later identified as a "Prussian inquisitor" and 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.