'To the present generation of Tasmanians perhaps the name of Frederick Sefton Delmer is unknown, but it is one that should have an everlasting place in Tasmanian history as that of a brilliant scholar and an impeccable patriot...' (R.V. Kearney in The Mercury, 15 July 1931).
The son of a Battery Point mariner, Frederick Delmer taught at Wynyard, Exton and Cressy and Officer College Hobart, before leaving Tasmania to study at Melbourne University in 1889. He cultivated lifelong friendships with artists such as Arthur Streeton and Tom Roberts, and spent several years touring Europe. In 1901 he became a lecturer in English at Berlin University and in 1910 published English Literature from Beowulf to Bernard Shaw, a work that became a standard textbook on the subject in German schools for many years. In 1914, Delmer was briefly held by the Germans in the Ruhleben civilian internment camp. Delmer's son, Sefton (1904-1979), became a celebrated journalist who gained some notoriety as head of the British black propaganda unit during World War II and was also the first British reporter to interview Hitler.
