Broch de Rothermann, H. F.

Hermann Friedrich Broch de Rothermann was born in Vienna on October 4, 1910, the only child of Hermann Broch and Franziska von Rothermann Broch. He attended schools in Vienna, Switzerland, Great Britain, and France and received diplomas from Haute École des Sciences Politiques et Financières in Paris and the Academy of Commerce in Vienna. During the 1930s he travelled, served as secretary of the International Literary Agency, and worked as a correspondent for the Neue Freie Presse of Vienna. He was a patient in Sanatorium Löw in Vienna recovering from a skiing accident at the time of Anschluss. In June 1938 he was adopted by his uncle Rudolf von Rothermann in Hungary.

Broch de Rothermann left Austria in March 1939, lived in French internment camps from September 1939 to June 1940, spent a year in the French Foreign Legion, and emigrated to the United States in September 1941. Shortly thereafter he married Eva Wassermann, but was divorced in 1949. In 1942 he became head of the Short Wave Listening Post for the New York Daily News and from 1943-46 served in the United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Italy and Austria, leaving that service with the rank of lieutenant colonel. After 1947 he held a number of conference interpreter positions for the United Nations and on a free-lance basis. He married Sachiko Yoshizawa in 1961.

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