Rudolf Hercher was born in
Rudolstadt to the grammar schoolmaster and later financial advisor Johann Andreas Hercher. He attended grammar school in his home city from 1830 until 1838, where he especially came under the influence of the Latin teacher
Lobegott Samuel Obbarius and of the Greek teacher
Christian Lorenz Sommer. Before tertiary education, he deepened his education even further, according to his father's wish with a year in the senior class of the Grammar school. He particularly focussed further on German literature, drawing, and English. In the Summer semester of 1839, Hercher moved to
Leipzig University, where he studied for three years alongside
Gottfried Hermann and
Moriz Haupt. In 1842 he went for two further semesters at
Humboldt University of Berlin, where the celebrated textual critic,
Karl Lachmann instructed him. After gaining his doctorate at
Friedrich Schiller University of Jena (1844) Hercher became house teacher to
Hartwig Julius Ludwig von Both, member of the
Oldenburg bundestag, later in the same year. After a year, he quit this position and traveled for many months to relatives in
Manchester and
London; after a short stay in Rudolstadt, he worked from
Easter till
Autumn 1846 as house teacher to an Irish family in
Dublin. Subsequently, he travelled for a month in London and in the
Netherlands. After his summer teaching position of 1846 was over, Hercher was offered a position as a Collaborator at the Grammar school in Rudolstadt in December of the same year, which he took up in 1847. After seven years of employment he became a schoolmaster in 1854. In the following years, Hercher repeatedly received the opportunity to go on long sabbaticals: He spent further months in
Paris and went to
Italy for a year in 1859; this stay was extended for a further year because of an eye illness. He owed a call to the local
Joachimsthalsches Gymnasium in Berlin to his friendship with
Immanuel Bekker and
Gustav Parthey (1798–1872), which he took up in Autumn of 1861. Soon thereafter he was enrolled as a Member of the
German Archaeological Institute in
Rome, entering its central governance in 1865. He undertook further sabbaticals to
Ithaca and
Corfu (1863) and to
Paris (1867). In Berlin, Hercher interacted with the leading ancient scholars, including Moriz Haupt, Immanuel Bekker, and
August Meineke; with
Theodor Mommsen and
Adolf Kirchhoff he founded the journal
Hermes: Zeitschrift für classische Philologie (Hermes: Journal of Classical Philology) in 1866, which continues to this day. The interaction with his colleagues was so important to Hercher, that he rejected three job offers from foreign universities. On 14 July 1873 he was enrolled as an ordinary member in the
Prussian Academy of Sciences, on 19 December 1875 as a corresponding member in the
St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In his later years, Hercher came to suffer from
neurasthenia, which developed into a serious affliction at the beginning of 1878. On 26 March of that year he died in
Berlin after a
brain haemorrhage, aged 58. == Works ==