Hermann Schloffer was born in 1868 in Graz and received his doctorate there in 1892. He followed his chief, Anton Wölfler, to Prague and completed his habilitation in 1900. Two years later he became professor, and in the following year—1903—he was appointed Ordinarius in Innsbruck. He remained there for eight years.

During this period, he enabled the establishment of a department of maxillofacial surgery, headed by the director of the dental institute. In 1911, he succeeded his deceased teacher to the chair of the Surgical Clinic at the German University in Prague.

His life encompassed the collapse of the Austro‑Hungarian Empire and the founding of Czechoslovakia, whose government was hostile toward the German University. After his death at the age of 62 in 1936, the chair was not filled again until 1944, when it was taken over by the Silesian surgeon Professor Hohlbaum. With his death, the illustrious history of the German Alma Mater in Prague and its German Chair of Surgery came to an end.

We owe Schloffer, and his predecessor Hacker, many important surgical contributions, especially in the field of intestinal surgery. The term “Schloffer’s operation” referred to staged intestinal resection. To this day, however, his name is chiefly associated with the “Schloffer tumor”, which denotes granulation tumors or suture granulomas, occurring particularly after appendectomies and hernia operations.