Person

Herrman, Louis

1883-1980

Louis Herrman was born in Southampton, England on 11 October 1883 and died in Cape Town, South Africa in 1980, aged 97 years. He was the son of Isaac Herrman, a draper, and Bertha Rachel Herrman formerly Silverman. After qualifying as a schoolmaster at the Hartley University College, Southampton in 1905 and teaching in that city for two years, he came to South Africa as Vice Principal of the Hopemill Hebrew Public School in Cape Town. When Hopemill went out of existence, he was English master At Cape Town High School from 1921 1930, graduating M.A. (with distinction in Zoology) at the University of Cape Town in 1928. He obtained his doctorate in 1932 at London University, for research into the Genetic Status of Intelligence in Twins and subsequently was appointed Principal of Cape Town High School, from which post he retired on pension in 1943. For nearly 40 years more he was active as a lecturer, broadcaster and writer. Among his other activities he was Literary Secretary to the International University Society and Examiner in English for the Joint Matriculation Board. Dr. Herrman had an encyclopaedic knowledge and his mastery of the English Language and the diversity of his interests is evident in the leading articles he wrote for the Cape Times from 1933 1940, articles for various publications and in the subjects of his lectures. Many of his contributions can be found in the Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa, the Dictionary of South African Biography and the Oxford English Dictionary. Eminent South Africans he counted among his friends included Olive Schreiner, Sarah Gertrude Millin, Moses Kottler and Irma Stern. Dr. Herrman's second wife Lea, whom he married after the death of his wife Ethel, Lea's sister, died in 1976. Miss Zelda Friedlander, his sister in law, looked after him in his later years.

BC695