Painter, mural artist, printmaker and teacher, born in Berlin, where he was trained in the old master tradition at the Koniglichen Kunstakademie. After graduating he won the Rome Prize and spent 1910–12 in Italy. Returning to Berlin he established a fine career as a portrait painter, broken by a period during World War I as a war artist. As life became hard for Jews in Nazi Germany, Hersch with his wife left for England in 1939 where, after a period of internment in the Liverpool area, he began to reshape his career. Showed at RA, PS, RP, Whitechapel Art Gallery and elsewhere and completed a large mural Triptych in Blue for Wandsworth Town Hall. His final work, which took five years, is a huge mural of twelve paintings: A Requiem to Comfort the Bereaved.