He emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1886, taking a position at the newly founded Bryn Mawr College, where he stayed for 20 years.

[1]: 1–2 Following his graduation from the Johanneum Lüneburg, Collitz attended the University of Göttingen where he studied classical philology with particular attention to Iranian, Slavic, and Germanic.

Through the Grammatical Society and under the supervision of Fick, Collitz received practice in independent research and supplemental instruction in comparative Indo-European philology.

[12] That same year he was selected alongside Eduard Sievers to represent the field of Germanic Philology at the International Congress of Arts and Sciences held during the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.

Collitz left Bryn Mawr in 1907 for the Johns Hopkins University where he was appointed to the newly created chair in Germanic Philology.

[14]: 2  The vision Collitz had for the Linguistic Society was at the time archaic and in tension with the goals of other founding members such as Leonard Bloomfield.

[14]: 14–15 [15] The imminent publication of this address in the first issue of Language led Bloomfield, the author of the 1924 call, to write "Why a Linguistic Society" at the urging of George Bolling and Edgar Sturtevant who were his colleagues on the organizing committee.

[14]: 13  Bloomfield's work appeared first in the volume and served as a foil to the ideas expressed by Collitz, emphasizing instead the primacy of scientific observation over the study of literature.

[19] If Hermann Collitz were alive today, he would certainly not ignore the pertinence of a structural approach in modern comparative Indo-European linguistics.

[2]: 69  He was survived by his wife Klara, and upon her death in 1944 she bequeathed his papers to the Johns Hopkins University and the bulk of their estate to the Linguistic Society of America.

[20] In life Collitz had amassed one of the best private collections on comparative and Germanic linguistics, and this library was included in the bequest.

In 1963 Mary Haas convened a committee of former holders to determine policy around the appointment of the Collitz Professorship, particularly regarding whether scholars using structuralist approaches to historical linguistics were eligible for the chair.