Irmgard and Helmuth Hormann Student Memorabilia Collection
Helmuth Hormann
Helmuth Hormann, the second child of Rev. Arthur and Maria Hormann, was born in 1909. In 1916, Rev. Hormann became pastor of the Lutheran Church of Honolulu in 1916, and the family, including Helmuth and his older brother Bernhard, moved to the city. Helmuth began studies at University of Hawaiʻi in 1925, graduating in 1929. After a brief enrollment in the Max Reinhardt School of Theatre in Berlin, he returned to Hawaiʻi when the Nazis came to power in 1933. He re-entered UH, receiving an M.A. in 1935. Helmuth’s scrapbook documents his work with Honolulu community theater and some plays of his students while he taught at Hilo and Kalākaua Intermediate Schools and Kahuku High School as well as plays at the University of Hawaiʻi, including programs and photographs of casts of House of Rimmon, Icebound, and Twelfth Night.
Helmuth also studied at the Yale School of Drama and at Cornell University, from which he received his PhD in 1941. He received a Fulbright fellowship in 1955-1956, researching theater arts in Munich. His teaching career included various public schools, Chaminade University and Leeward Community College in Hawaiʻi; Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas; and seventeen years at the Pasadena Playhouse College of Theatre Arts in Pasadena, California.
Irmgard Hormann
Irmgard, the younger sister of Helmuth and Bernhard, was born in Honolulu in 1917 shortly after the Hormann family moved here. She attended Punahou School; then began University of Hawaiʻi in 1933 and graduated in 1937. During her student years at UH, Irmgard participated in the IPR Youth Conference and the Asilomar Conference. She served on the staff of the Hawaiʻi Quill for three years, including a year as vice president and a year as president. A scrapbook and other photographs from the Asilomar and IPR Youth conferences include fellow students and UH faculty. Several issues of Hawaiʻi Quill to which Irmgard contributed are in the collection.
After graduating from the University of Hawaiʻi, Irmgard attended Columbia University where she earned her degree in librarianship. She then began a long career with the Hawaiʻi State Library, retiring in 1973 as statewide consultant for Young Adult Services.
