Hollmann was born in
Berlin,
Germany. He entered the
Prussian Navy in 1857 and made his first trip as a cadet aboard the sailing
training ships SMS
Amazone, and . In 1859–1862 he took part in the
Eulenburg expedition to the
Far East along with
Karl Eduard Heusner, whom he would follow years later as Secretary of the German Imperial Naval Office. In 1863 he was appointed to the Central Division () of the
Prussian Navy Department. During the
Second Schleswig War in 1864 he commanded the gunboat , and then (1864–1867) served as a Lieutenant aboard the cadet school ship . From 1867 to 1869 he was assigned to the
Naval Academy Mürwik in Kiel. In the
Franco-Prussian War in 1870–1871, Hollmann was a (Captain Lieutenant), then (1871–1873) served the expedition to North and South America aboard the screw frigate . During this voyage, he led a landing party ashore in
Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in a successful attempt to force the Haitian government to pay a debt owed to a German merchant. Between 1874 and 1881, he returned to the Central Division of what was now the
German Imperial Admiralty. During this period, he commanded the cadet ships and from 1876 to 1878, and then captained the academy frigate of the on its global tour from 1881 to 1883, the year the
Krakatoa volcano erupted. On 20 May 1883 the German ship was stationed in the
Sunda Strait, observing the ongoing eruption. In 1886–1887, he was president of the Ship Examination Board () and in the subsequent two years, Chief of Staff of the Admiralty. Now a (rear admiral), Hollmann commanded the squadron which accompanied the Kaiser and Kaiserin on their royal visit to Greece and Turkey from 1889 to 1890. On 22 April 1890, Hollmann became a member of the Federal Council (}, the upper house of the Parliament and State Secretary of the
German Imperial Naval Office () in the cabinet of Chancellor
Leo von Caprivi, following the resignation of
Karl Eduard Heusner. Here he planned naval construction and maintenance programs, directed the procurement of naval supplies, and represented the navy in the . In the same year he was appointed vice admiral and in 1896, finally, admiral. He was conservative in his attitude to war and especially horrified when he heard talk of war with Britain. In the mid-1890s, the quest for a German naval base in the
Far East was uppermost in the minds of the naval leaders of the German Empire. Many saw the
First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) as an opportunity to act. For Hollmann, bases were "an absolute necessity for overseas naval operations." In the heated discussions as to where the base should be, he preferred
Amoy on the
Taiwan Strait. Nevertheless, when the Kaiser demanded that the navy take territory on the
Shandong peninsula in September 1895, he demurred because of the uncertain reaction of Japan, Britain and Russia. In the struggle over the Kaiser's naval expenditures, he admitted in February 1896 that "there are not 10 people in the Reichstag in favor of our great future fleet plans." He resigned in June 1897 because he could not prevail in getting the Kaiser's desired increases in the 1897 budget of the navy through the Reichstag. He promoted a navy of mainly
cruisers as opposed to the heavy battle fleet sought by his successor,
Alfred von Tirpitz. ==Later life==