HERMANN I. (d. 1217), landgrave of Thuringia and count palatine of Saxony, was the second son of Louis II. the Hard, landgrave of Thuringia, and Judith of Hohenstaufen, sister of the emperor Frederick I. Little is known of his early years, but in 1180 he joined a coalition against Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, and with his brother, the landgrave Louis III., suffered a short imprisonment after his defeat at Weissensee by Henry. About this time he received from his brother Louis the Saxon palatinate, over which he strengthened his authority by marrying Sophia, sister of Adalbert, count of Sommerschenburg, a former count palatine. In 1190 Louis died and Hermann by his energetic measures frustrated the attempt of the emperor Henry VI. to seize Thuringia as a vacant fief of the Empire, and established himself as landgrave. Having joined a league against the emperor he was accused, probably wrongly, of an attempt to murder him. Henry was not only successful in detaching Hermann from the hostile combination, but gained his support for the scheme to unite Sicily with the Empire. In 1197 Hermann went on crusade. When Henry VI. died in 1198 Hermann’s support was purchased by the late emperor’s brother Philip, duke of Swabia, but as soon as Philip’s cause appeared to be weakening he transferred his allegiance to Otto of Brunswick, afterwards the emperor Otto IV. Philip accordingly invaded Thuringia in 1204 and compelled Hermann to come to terms by which he surrendered the lands he had obtained in 1198. After the death of Philip and the recognition of Otto he was among the princes who invited Frederick of Hohenstaufen, afterwards the emperor Frederick II., to come to Germany and assume the crown. In consequence of this step the Saxons attacked Thuringia, but the landgrave was saved by Frederick’s arrival in Germany in 1212. After the death of his first wife in 1195 Hermann married Sophia, daughter of Otto I., duke of Bavaria. By her he had four sons, two of whom, Louis and Henry Raspe, succeeded their father in turn as landgrave. Hermann died at Gotha on the 25th of April 1217, and was buried at Reinhardsbrunn. He was fond of the society of men of letters, and Walther von der Vogelweide and other Minnesingers were welcomed to his castle of the Wartburg. In this connexion he figures in Wagner’s Tannhäuser.
See E. Winkelmann, Philipp von Schwaben und Otto IV. von Braunschweig (Leipzig, 1873–1878); T. Knochenhauer, Geschichte Thüringens (Gotha, 1871); and F. Wachter, Thüringische und obersächsische Geschichte (Leipzig, 1826).
HERMANN OF REICHENAU (Herimannus Augiensis), commonly distinguished as Hermannus Contractus, i.e. the Lame (1013–1054), German scholar and chronicler, was the son of Count Wolferad of Alshausen in Swabia. Hermann, who became a monk of the famous abbey of Reichenau, is at once one of the most attractive and one of the most pathetic figures of medieval monasticism. Crippled and distorted by gout from his childhood, he was deprived of the use of his legs; but, in spite of this, he became one of the most learned men of his time, and exercised a great personal and intellectual influence on the numerous band of scholars he gathered round him. He died on the 24th of September 1054, at the family castle of Alshausen near Biberach. Besides the ordinary studies of the monastic scholar, he devoted himself to mathematics, astronomy and music, and constructed watches and instruments of various kinds.
His chief work is a Chronicon ad annum 1054, which furnishes important and original material for the history of the emperor Henry III. The first edition, from a MS. no longer extant, was printed by J. Sichard at Basel in 1529, and reissued by Heinrich Peter in 1549; another edition appeared at St Blaise in 1790 under the supervision of Ussermann; and a third, as a result of the collation of numerous MSS., forms part of vol. v. of Pertz’s Monumenta Germaniae historica. A German translation of the last is contributed by K. F. A. Nobbe to Die Geschichtsschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit (1st ed., Berlin, 1851; 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1893). The separate lives of Conrad II. and Henry III., often ascribed to Hermann, appear to have perished. His treatises De mensura astrolabii and De utilitatibus astrolabii (to be found, on the authority of Salzburg MSS., in Pez, Thesaurus anecdotorum novissimus, iii.) being the first contributions of moment furnished by a European to this subject, Hermann was for a time considered the inventor of the astrolabe. A didactic poem from his pen, De octo vitiis principalibus, is printed in Haupt’s Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum (vol. xiii.); and he is sometimes credited with the composition of the Latin hymns Veni Sancte Spiritus, Salve Regina, and Alma Redemptoris. A martyrologium by Hermann was discovered by E. Dümmler in a MS. at Stuttgart, and was published by him in “Das Martyrologium Notkers und seine Verwandten” in Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte, xxv. (Göttingen, 1885).
See H. Hansjakob, Herimann der Lahme (Mainz, 1875); Potthast, Bibliotheca med. aev. s. “Herimannus Augiensis.”
HERMANN OF WIED (1477–1552), elector and archbishop of Cologne, was the fourth son of Frederick, count of Wied (d. 1487), and was born on the 14th of January 1477. Educated for the Church, he became elector and archbishop in 1515, and ruled his electorate with vigour and intelligence, taking up at first an attitude of hostility towards the reformers and their teaching. A quarrel with the papacy turned, or helped to turn, his thoughts in the direction of Church reform, but he hoped this would come from within rather than from without, and with the aid of his friend John Gropper (1503–1559), began, about 1536, to institute certain reforms in his own diocese. One step led to another, and as all efforts at union failed the elector invited Martin Bucer to Cologne in 1542. Supported by the estates of the electorate, and relying upon the recess of the diet of Regensburg in 1541, he encouraged Bucer to press on with the work of reform, and in 1543 invited Melanchthon to his assistance. His conversion was hailed with great joy by the Protestants, and the league of Schmalkalden declared they were resolved to defend him; but the Reformation in the electorate received checks from the victory of Charles V. over William, duke of Cleves, and the hostility of the citizens of Cologne. Summoned both before the emperor and the pope, the elector was deposed and excommunicated by Paul III. in 1546. He resigned his office in February 1547, and retired to Wied. Hermann, who was also a bishop of Paderborn from 1532 to 1547, died on the 15th of August 1552.
See C. Varrentrapp, Hermann von Wied (Leipzig, 1878).
HERMANN, FRIEDRICH BENEDICT WILHELM VON (1795–1868), German economist, was born on the 5th of December 1795, at Dinkelsbühl in Bavaria. After finishing his primary education he was for some time employed in a draughtsman’s office. He then resumed his studies, partly at the gymnasium in his native town, partly at the universities of Erlangen and Würzburg. In 1817 he took up a private school at Nuremberg, where he remained for four years. After filling an appointment as teacher of mathematics at the gymnasium of Erlangen, he became in 1823 Privatdozent at the university in that town. His inaugural dissertation was on the notions of political economy among the Romans (Dissertatio exhibens sententias Romanorum ad oeconomiam politicam pertinentes, Erlangen, 1823). He afterwards acted as professor of mathematics at the gymnasium and polytechnic school in Nuremberg, where he continued till 1827. During his stay there he published an elementary treatise on arithmetic and algebra (Lehrbuch der Arith. u. Algeb., 1826), and made a journey to France to inspect the organization and conduct of technical schools in that country. The results of his investigation were published in 1826 and 1828 (Über technische Unterrichts-Anstalten). Soon after his return from France he was made professor extraordinarius of political science of the university of Munich, and in 1833 he was advanced to the rank of ordinary professor. In 1832 appeared the first edition of his great work on political economy, Staatswirthschaftliche Untersuchungen. In 1835 he was made member of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences. From the year 1836 he acted as inspector of technical instruction in Bavaria, and made frequent journeys to Berlin and Paris in order to study the methods there pursued. In the state service of Bavaria, to which he devoted himself, he rose rapidly. In 1837 he was placed on the council for superintendence of church and school work; in 1839 he was entrusted with the direction of the bureau of statistics; in 1845 he was one of the councillors for the interior; in 1848 he sat as member for Munich in the national assembly at Frankfort. In this assembly Hermann, with Johann Heckscher and others, was mainly instrumental in organizing the so-called “Great German” party, and was selected as one of the representatives of their views at Vienna. Warmly supporting the customs
