Hans Hess OBE (1907–1975) was a German museum curator and art historian who worked in Leicester and York.

The artists Feininger, Kandinsky, Klee, and Pechstein were family friends as well as people like Otto Bamberger [de] who lived in the town where his mother was born and raised.

He moved to London in 1935 and co-founded the Inside Nazi Germany magazine and, in 1938, helped to launch the 'Free German League of Culture'.

He lived with his wife (and fellow German refugee) Lillie Williams and their daughter Anita at 56 Skeldergate in York.

[6] Throughout his life Hess was an active Marxist and contributed articles to Marxism Today, the theoretical magazine of the Communist Party of Great Britain.