Herman George Scheffauer

Herman George Scheffauer (born February 3, 1876 in San Francisco, US; died October 7, 1927 in Berlin), was a German-American poet, architect, writer, dramatist, journalist and translator.

Very little is known about Scheffauer's youth, education and his early adult years in America, or, about his parents and siblings. His father was Johann Georg Scheffauer, a cabinet maker ("Tischler"), probably born in 1842 in the village of Unterkochen, Württemberg, who, according to Hamburg passenger lists, had first immigrated to America in 1868, returning again to Germany where he married Maria Theresa Scheffauer (née Eisele) in Augsburg, and who then came back with him to America in 1872. His brother was the civil engineer, Frederick Carl Scheffauer, born in 1878 and he had another younger brother, Walter Alois Scheffauer (1882–1975). The family was related to the German painter and sculptor Philipp Jacob Scheffauer (1756–1808) who it was said was his great grandfather, and who went to the same school as the poet Friedrich Schiller.

Educated in public and private schools, it appears he attended a Roman Catholic Sunday school in San Francisco (probably St. Boniface Church-Franciscans), where services were conducted in German. He later wrote about the role of the nuns there and a certain Father Gerhard, instilling into the youth of this school terrifying and hellish religious imagery. His parents were not orthodox, in fact he spoke of being shocked by his father's indifference and scepticism. He discovered that he was a poet from about the age of ten, on a school outing, where they ascended Mount Olympus in the Ashbury Heights neighbourhood of San Francisco. He impressed his school friends with his ability to recount the ascent, as he put it:

"Suddenly I burst forth into a jog-trot doggerel. I chanted the heroic deeds of the day – the ascent of the peak, the routing of a belligerent bull, the piratical manoeuvres on a pond. The delivery of this improvised epic was volcanic. My companions regarded me with awe and suspicion. Thus, primitively and barbarically, I began. The climate had had its will of me – that marvellous "Greek" climate of California which works like champagne upon the temperament. I was fated to become one of the native sons of song."

From then on he only wanted to write poetry but his parents insisted that he pursue a proper job. He began his career as an amateur printer, printing a broadsheet called 'The Owl' while he was still at school writing satires on his teachers. He went through a youthful period, through which he thought all young poets with an imaginative cast of mind must inevitably pass, namely a combination of what he termed "idealistic fanaticism and Byronic romanticism". He studied art, painting and architecture at the Arts School of the University of California (The Mark Hopkins Institute). He later worked as a teacher of draughting and a water colourist in an architectural capacity.

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