Born in the Alsace region by a twist of fate, as both the Ehrmann and Weber families were originally from Alsace but had left after the 1871 loss to Germany, it just happened that Mulhouse, then Strasbourg, were the first assignments of his father, an Engineering graduate from "École Polytechnique".

The family, including his older brother Jean-Daniel (JD), came back to Paris in 1939 and he graduated from the Lycée Henri IV with a Baccalauréat in 1949, then studied at the Sorbonne where he obtained a Licence-des-Lettres in 1953.

He was called to military service from 1953 to 1955 and served in the "Régiment de Tirailleurs Algériens", and later as a translator in Germany for the US headquarters.

Concurrently working as a freelance correspondent for France Presse he was offered a full-time assignment in New York City at the same time as he was invited to join the Yale University Faculty.

He was very involved in academic activities including lectures, conferences, and colloquia ... and continued to work through a long illness until his premature death on 11 June 1972.