William Hermanns (1895-1990) was born in Koblenz, Rhineland, Germany, to Michael and Bertha Hermanns, née Wolff, and was the third child of four siblings (Hans, Gretel, William, and Hildegard). After he was orphaned at ten years old, Hermanns was raised by his aunt, Veronika Hermanns. Hermanns was of Jewish ancestry, and later converted to Christian Science, then to Catholicism. In 1914, he enlisted in the Kaiser’s army at the beginning of World War I and became one of the longest-living survivors of the Battle of Verdun in 1916. After Germany’s loss, Hermanns was captured by the French and held prisoner for forty months. Following his release, he returned to Germany to study at the Universities of Berlin, Munich, and Frankfurt, where he received a doctorate in Sociology by 1926.

Soon after, he met Albert Einstein, who would be the subject of some of Hermanns’s most significant works. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, he became a prolific poet and activist, working with the League for Human Rights, Walter Rathenau Society, and Alexander von Humboldt Club. He witnessed the rise of Hitler and was forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1934, staying in Lisbon, Paris, and London before being granted entrance into the United States. From 1937 to 1939, he worked for the New York Institute for the Blind and lectured at Harvard University. When the US entered World War II, Hermanns briefly aided the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) until 1945. After the war, he moved to California and worked after learning of the death of his sister, niece, and thirty-five other relatives.

By 1946, Hermanns was teaching again, appointed as a Professor of German Language and Literature at San Jose State College, where he remained until his retirement in 1965. Post-retirement, he continued to write German and English works while increasing his political contributions by creating the Einstein-Hermanns Foundation, which was incorporated in 1983 and inaugurated in 1988 in Sweden.

Hermanns had written many manuscripts, poems, radio broadcasts, plays, and songs over his nearly seventy-year career. Of his published works, his book