He was a noted scholar in East Germany (GDR) who specialized in Slavic archaeology, but with ambivalent legacy, as his career and research was politically motivated because of which he "deliberately distorted the view of history".
In 1932, Herrmann was born in the village of Lübnitz in the district of Bad Belzig, Germany to a farming and milling family.
In 1956, Herrmann became a research assistant at the Institute for Prehistory and Early History of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin (DAW).
Later, he was appointed head director of the newly created Central Institute for Ancient History and Archaeology (ZIAGA) at the renamed Academy of Sciences of the GDR (AdW).
The so-called "Herrmann Era" from 1969 to 1990 was "characterized by the attempt to anchor the communist state ideology in research and teaching and by a more intense broad effect".
[24][25] However, this research was also ideologically and politically motivated; based on Marxist archaeology, historical materialism, anti-Ostforschung, and pro-socialist bloc Pan-Slavism.
He "deliberately distorted the view of history for political reasons...stubbornly holding on to the old interpretation even after the dendrochronological dating of the constructions became known".
[26][27][28][29] Hermann's scholarly research is best summarized in a five-volume monograph on the excavations in the Slavic period settlement chamber at Ralswiek on Rügen Island.