1834: "Parre Herrmann" irritates Offenbach
"The Herrmann is free again!" The news spread like wildfire through the streets of Offenbach. The excitement revolved around the farmer Johann Peter Herrmann from the Großer Biergrund. He is one of the bizarre figures who kept old Offenbach in suspense time and again.
In 1834, hardly anyone still called Johann Peter Herrmann by his first name. He was generally known as "Parre Herrmann" because he knew how to preach like a fiery pastor. Sometimes from a window of his house at Großer Biergrund 33, sometimes in the courtyard of the estate, he used to rant like a thunderstorm against the church and the clergy.
His fellow citizens would listen to him en masse, some amused, others moved. To some, he may have seemed like a reincarnation of Martin Luther or the revolutionary Thomas Münzer. But perhaps he simply replaced much of what we know today for the people of Offenbach in 1834: The mass experience at the soccer station, at rock and pop concerts, the cinema and probably also television.
It came as it had to come. The riots in the Großer Biergrund opened the ears of the authorities to Herrmann's attacks. The eloquent farmer was arrested and locked up in a lunatic asylum. They only released him when he promised to mend his ways after a few weeks. This was the second sensation at the regulars' tables after the arrest.
Perhaps "Parre Herrmann" would still have been forgotten had he not shown remarkable public spirit at the end of his life. Before he died in 1886 at the age of 76, he bequeathed a farmstead from his estate to the city of Offenbach at Schlossstraße 17. The city used this inheritance to extend Ziegelstraße. When the Hofreite was demolished, Ziegelstraße could be connected to Schlossstraße.
Some in the town were grateful for this and suggested giving Ziegelstraße the name Herrmannstraße. This did not happen. But one year after the death of the testator, a street in the new quarter south of the railroad line was given the name. Today, Hermannstraße bears the name with one R instead of two. This in turn gives rise to the assumption that it actually honors Hermann the Cheruscan, who defeated the Romans two thousand years ago.
Whether one R or two, whether Cheruscan prince or farmer from the Biergrund, there is at least one certainty in Parre Herrmann's story: In 180 years, the sensations of the present have evaporated.
Lothar R. Brown
