Hermann Goldschmidt was born Chaim Meyer in 1802 in Frankfort-am-Main. He studied in Munich under Schnoor, travelled to Holland in 1832, arriving in Paris in 1836 (the year the Circourt salon opened). He spent time in Rome from 1842 to 46 (the year Neptune was discovered) and it seems it was soon after this that he began his amateur astronomy pursuits in earnest. In Rome he probably made contact with the remaining disciples of the Nazarenes there, the group of German painters who had moved to Rome in the early decades of the century, amongst whom was his teacher, Schnoor.

There are records of nine paintings made by Goldschmidt in 1847/8 for Louis-Philippe, and perhaps his patronage suffered after the Revolution of 1848, although Mérimée's letter to Arago mentioning Hermann's paintings dates from 1858, and he met Delacroix in 1854 (probably not for the first time).
His letters and articles to the Astronomische Nachrichten from 1848 to his death provide much insight into his whereabouts and his personality. He was more than a colleague to his aged compatriot, Alexander von Humboldt, and probably frequented the same salon in Paris for a while - that of the Circourt's which was very popular with immigrants, and with Norman Pogson at the Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford. Certainly he would have known Francois Arago, sometime Director of the Observatory in Paris. He died at Fontainbleau in 1866.
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