Bernard Hermann 1785-1857
Herman as born to Austrian parents in Human, a small town in southern Russian (at that time Poland) in 1785. His father was a believing Jew who raised him to love the Messiah of Israel. It seems Bernard was raised with a strong Jewish identity, as by the time he was grown he was fluent in Hebrew and able to teach the language at the University of Cambridge.
In 1825 Bernard moved to England and eventually found employment in Cambridge as a private teacher (1830). In 1837 he succeeded to the post “Præceptor Linguæ Sacræ”.
He died at Cambridge, aged seventy-two, on Nov. 15, 1857, after teaching there with marked success for twenty-seven years.
Works
The Creed and Ethics of the Jews Exhibited in Selections from the Yad ha-Ḥazaḳah of Maimonides (1832)
Ha-Menahel (The Guide of the Hebrew Student), 1839.
Me Menuḥot (Still Waters), an easy, practical Hebrew grammar, in two volumes, (together with P. H. Mason – afterward fellow and president of St. John’s College)
Lectures on the Book of Job, edited by his former pupil, Frank Chance (afterward a member of the Old Testament Revision Committee), appeared in one volume in 1864, but the editor’s promised appendix was never published.
Sources
Bernstein, A. Jewish Witnesses for Christ. New edition 1999 by Keren Ahvah Meschichit, Jerusalem.
Thompson Cooper, ‘Bernard, Herman Hedwig (1785–1857)’, rev. Gerald Law, first published Sept 2004, 160 words
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/2243
http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/cemetery/listed.htm (Hermann’s tomb has Hebrew engraving on the bottom)