Hermann von Schmidt

Hermann von Schmidt, Marian’s fiancé and later husband, is a bicycle mechanic whose dealings with Martin Eden trace a sharp reversal: he first condemns Martin’s poem about his sister as indecent and rejects him as a wastrel, then turns Martin’s literary fame into a source of publicity and business opportunity. His practical ambition is consistent, but his estimate of Martin changes with Martin’s social value. Through Hermann, the novel makes that change visible in ordinary transactions: a poem, an unrepaired bicycle, a newspaper interview, a dinner invitation, and a business loan.

Identity and Ambition

Hermann is introduced as an industrious young mechanic of German extraction. After learning his trade thoroughly, he establishes a bicycle-repair shop and secures an agency for a low-grade make of wheel; the agency makes him prosperous. His trade and commercial initiative distinguish him from Martin, whose writing has not yet brought reliable income or public recognition. Hermann’s confidence rests on work that can be seen, sold, and measured, and he regards financial advancement as evidence of sound judgment.

His connection to Martin begins through Marian. She first visits her brother to announce her engagement, playfully examines his palm, and tells his fortune. On a later visit she brings Hermann with her. Martin welcomes them and congratulates the couple in language so graceful that it puts Hermann off. The strain increases when Martin reads a light, delicate set of verses he has written to commemorate Marian’s earlier visit. He calls the poem The Palmist; Hermann does not receive it as an affectionate family tribute, and Marian watches her fiancé anxiously as Martin reads.

The Poem and the Family Rupture

Several evenings later, Marian returns alone and reproaches Martin. She is mortified and tearful, explaining that Hermann has called the poem obscene and insists that Martin destroy it. He will not have his future wife’s name attached to writing that other people can read, Marian says, and considers its existence a disgrace. Martin retrieves a carbon copy and offers it to her so that she can identify what she considers offensive. She waves the manuscript away, relying instead on Hermann’s judgment: he says so, and he ought to know.

Martin begins to dismiss the demand as nonsense, then changes course when he sees Marian’s unhappiness. He thinks persuasion futile and decides to surrender, although he considers the situation absurd. The episode reveals a conflict not simply over literary taste but over who is entitled to define decency and protect Marian’s reputation. Hermann’s authority over his fiancée outweighs Martin’s effort to have the poem judged on its own terms. Martin’s compliance prevents an argument from becoming a direct confrontation, but it does not settle the larger estrangement that follows.

Rejection and Public Denunciation

After Martin earns money from several short stories, humorous verses, and jokes, he has enough to pay some bills and redeem his black suit and bicycle. The bicycle needs repair, so, partly as a friendly gesture toward his future brother-in-law, he sends it to Hermann’s shop. Hermann has it delivered that afternoon, an unusual favor that Martin initially reads as friendliness. On inspection, however, Martin discovers that no repair has been made. When he telephones, Hermann says he wants nothing to do with Martin in any form.

Martin threatens to come to the shop and punch him. Hermann answers that he will call the police and accuses Martin of being a loafer who expects to sponge off him merely because he is marrying Marian. He challenges Martin to earn an honest living. Martin’s philosophy checks his anger, and he hangs up with incredulous amusement; the amusement gives way to loneliness. Hermann’s refusal is especially consequential because Martin is already estranged from his family and feels that almost no one has any use for him.

The rupture becomes public when a newspaper reporter investigates Martin’s family after his socialist speech is misrepresented. The resulting account presents Bernard Higginbotham as a respectable businessman condemning Martin’s views and quotes him calling Martin lazy and unwilling to accept work. Hermann, interviewed as Marian’s husband, calls Martin the family’s black sheep and claims that he had tried to sponge off him. His account turns the earlier telephone quarrel into a public indictment, casting Martin’s independence and literary struggle as simple unwillingness to work. Martin is furious, and he expects the story to give Ruth Morse’s family grounds to end their engagement.

Fame, Reversal, and Financial Help

Later, when Mackintosh’s Magazine publishes The Palmist with decorations by Berthier and two pictures by Wenn, Hermann abandons his former condemnation. He claims that Marian inspired the poem, makes sure a reporter hears about it, and sits for an interview accompanied by a photographer and an artist. The Sunday supplement devotes a full page to photographs and idealized drawings of Marian, intimate details of Martin’s family, and the poem’s complete text, reprinted with the magazine’s permission. The publication causes a neighborhood stir. Hermann sees its publicity as free advertising and decides to order a new lathe.

He then invites Martin to dinner. The guests include a wholesale butcher and his wife, as well as the superintendent of the Pacific Coast agencies for the Asa Bicycle Company, from whom Hermann hopes to obtain the Oakland agency. Martin’s presence helps attract these influential visitors. Hermann now recognizes his famous brother-in-law as a business asset, although he still cannot understand why people buy Martin’s books and poems. At night, while Marian sleeps, he reads some of Martin’s work and concludes that the public is foolish to purchase it. His new hospitality therefore does not amount to a conversion in literary taste: he can exploit Martin’s standing without sharing an understanding of his art.

Martin understands the practical purpose of the dinner and privately imagines striking Hermann, but he also notices that Hermann has hired a servant to relieve Marian of heavy household work. Despite his resentment, Martin speaks with the bicycle-agency superintendent and backs Hermann financially in establishing a well-equipped bicycle store in Oakland. He also advises Hermann to watch for an automobile agency and garage, believing he could operate both businesses successfully. The man who had accused Martin of seeking support now receives substantial assistance from him. Hermann mentions interest, but Martin becomes angry when it is raised again and refuses to treat the advance as an ordinary business loan.

Relationship and Narrative Significance

At their parting, Marian embraces Martin in tears and tells him that she has always loved him. Martin notices a hesitation in her declaration and takes it as an unspoken request for forgiveness for the period when she had doubted him and urged him to get a job. Hermann’s household thus participates in a wider pattern of belated recognition: Martin is welcomed when his success can improve the family’s prospects, after having been rejected when his writing brought neither income nor respectability.

Hermann’s arc is not a simple transformation from hostility to admiration. His treatment of Martin shifts from suspicion and repudiation to opportunistic welcome, while his private opinion of Martin’s books remains dismissive. The change is instead a measure of Martin’s altered standing. A poem once called indecent becomes useful publicity; the brother-in-law once denounced as a loafer becomes a means of attracting customers and financing expansion. By making Hermann practical, ambitious, and responsive to advantage, the narrative sharpens its criticism of a social world that recognizes literary labor most readily after fame has made it profitable.