Hermann Schoenfeld

Born in Oppeln, Germany, on January 21, 1861, he studied at the universities of Berlin, Breslau, and Leipzig before moving into teaching in the United States. Early in his American career he taught modern languages in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, then joined Johns Hopkins University in 1891.

In 1893, President Grover Cleveland appointed him U.S. consul at Riga, and he was also sent to investigate higher education in Russian, Austrian, and Prussian Poland. From 1894 onward he served as professor of Germanics at Columbian University, later known as George Washington University, while also contributing to German and American magazines and encyclopedias.

His published work shows a broad range of interests. It included studies such as Brant and Erasmus, Erasmus and Rabelais, and Higher Education in Poland; editorial work on Schiller and Bismarck; and larger historical books including Women of the Teutonic Nations. He also wrote extensively on European affairs in the years around the First World War, especially on Slavic and Near Eastern topics.