Wolfgang Kermer (born 18 May 1935 in Neunkirchen, Saarland) is a German art historian, artist, art educator, author, editor, curator of exhibitions, art collector and professor. From 1971 to 1984 he was repeatedly elected Rector of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart and thus the first scientific and at the same time youngest teacher in this position in the history of the university.Wer ist wer?: das deutsche Who's Who; Bundesrepublik Deutschland = The German who's who = Le who's who allemand. LII 2015/16. Lübeck: Schmidt-Römhild, 2015 , p. 487 Under his rectorate, the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart was reformed in 1975Gesetz über die Kunsthochschulen im Lande Baden-Württemberg (Kunsthochschulgesetz). In: 6: Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart: für die Zeit vom 1. April 1974 bis 31. März 1975. Ed. Wolfgang Kermer. Stuttgart: Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, Mai 1975, pp. 8–20 (complete print in German) and 1978Gesetz über die Kunsthochschulen im Lande Baden-Württemberg (Kunsthochschulgesetz–KHSchG). In: 8: Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart: für die Zeit vom 1. Juni 1976 bis 31. Oktober 1977. Ed. Wolfgang Kermer. Stuttgart: Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, März 1978, pp. 46–80 (complete print in German) on the base of two new university laws of the State of Baden-Württemberg and thus, for the first time in its history, authorized to set up diplomas for all courses.Wolfgang Kermer: ″1968″ und Akademiereform: von den Studentenunruhen zur Neuorganisation der Stuttgarter Akademie in den siebziger Jahren. Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 1998 ( / ed. Wolfgang Kermer; 9) One of the accents of his work was the promotion of talented graduates of the academy: In 1978 he organized the first of the so-called ″debutant exhibitions″, an ″unconventional contribution to the promotion of young people″, supported financially by the State of Baden-Württemberg.Wolfgang Kermer: Ein unkonventioneller Beitrag zur Nachwuchsförderung (1978). In: Wolfgang Kermer: ″1968″ und Akademiereform; von den Studentenunruhen zur Neuorganisation der Stuttgarter Akademie in den siebziger Jahren. Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 1998 (= Beiträge zur Geschichte der Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart / ed. Wolfgang Kermer; 9) , pp. 71–72
Wolfgang Kermer′s focus is the history of Visual arts education, the art of Willi Baumeister and the history of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart and its predecessor institutions.Nikolai B. Forstbauer: Dem Kunsthistoriker Wolfgang Kermer zum 70. Geburtstag: für das Geschichtsgewissen der Stuttgarter Akademie. In: Stuttgarter Nachrichten, Nr. 112, 18. Mai 2005, p. 16 He was the founder, publisher and editor of the publication series (1972–1978), (1975–2004), (1996–2006)Wolfgang Kermer: Schriftenreihen der Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart: Akademie-Mitteilungen 1972–1978; Beiträge zur Geschichte der Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart 1975–2004; Werkstattreihe 1996–2006. Impression ESPAO-MdS / www.espao.fr, 2008 and ″Die Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart im Spiegel der Presse 1970/1971″ (2008).Glückwunsch. In: Stuttgarter Nachrichten, 17. Mai 2010 On the occasion of his 75th birthday, the Stuttgarter Nachrichten called Wolfgang Kermer ″the memory of the Stuttgart Art Academy″.Glückwunsch. In: Stuttgarter Nachrichten, 17. Mai 2010 In 2025, he was honored as one of Stuttgart′s most important personalities.Nele Hofmann: Stuttgarter Macher: Die wichtigsten Persönlichkeiten der Schwaben-Metropole. FlipFlop, München 2025, , pp. 70−71
Biography Life and education Born as the son of the Moravian-born Austrian Kapellmeister Franz Kermer (1893 Znojmo – Neunkirchen, Saarland 1936), Wolfgang Kermer spent his childhood and youth in Neunkirchen, Saarland, where he attended elementary school (Bachschule) and high school (Gymnasium am Krebsberg). His father – the paternal ancestry originates from Všestudy (Chomutov District)Family register (private collection). – died as a result of an injury from World War I, when Wolfgang Kermer was only one year old. The Viennese piano teacher Marie Kermer (1882 Znojmo – Vienna 1957), who studied from 1897 to 1901 with Leopold Landskron and Julius Epstein at the Conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna,Studierendenliste des Konservatoriums der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, Buchstaben I bis L was his aunt, the engineer Alois Kermer (1894 Znojmo – Vienna 1967), who designed the first Austrian record-breaking glider after World War I in 1923 (located in the Vienna Technical Museum), was his uncle. Wolfgang Kermer's childhood memories include a long stay in 1938 with relatives in Stargard in Pomerania. At the end of World War II he lived in Montabaur, where his family had fled after losing their home in Neunkirchen in a bombing raid at the end of 1944 and where he escaped a fighter plane attack on broad daylight and witnessed the American invasion of the city on 26 March 1945. During the air raids, the hand luggage he was assigned to carry to the bunker always included his late father′s favorite violin.
From the age of six he received piano lessons, which made him waver in his professional ideas between music and art. For several years he was a pianist in the Krebsberggymnasium school orchestra under Josef Rein and, with a bassist (Gerhard Reinhardt) and a drummer (Horst Linn), formed a jazz trio, that performed publicly in Saarland until the mid-1950s. Even in his old age, playing the piano is a vital necessity for him, fascinated by the unattainable depth of musical sensivity and expressiveness of such greats as Vladimir Horowitz, Emil Gilels, Lazar Berman, Evgeny Kissin.
In 1954 his first solo exhibition with paintings and drawings took place in the municipal library of his hometown. The Saarbrücker Zeitung wrote: °Wolfgang Kermer has exhibited an interesting collection, and judging by it, one can speak of a ′hope′ in his work that may perhaps fulfilled on the difficult path that art prescribes for its disciples."Hans Staut: Wolfgang−Kermer−Ausstellung im Lesesaal. In: Saarbrücker Zeitung, 7. Dezember 1954 (translated from German).Hans Staut: Der junge Wolfgang Kermer stellt aus. In: Saarländische Volkszeitung, 8. Dezember 1954. After graduating from high school in 1956, he studied visual arts education at the Staatliche Schule für Kunst und Handwerk Saarbrücken and at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart; art history, philosophy, educational sciences, prehistory and cultural geography at the universities of Saarbrücken, Stuttgart and Tübingen.
The beginning of his studies was marked by three semesters in Saarbrücken and the encounter with the photographer Otto Steinert: From 1956 to 1957 he studied two semesters with the designer Peter Raacke and he completed a one-semester basic course with Oskar Holweck,Biographische Daten. In: Wolfgang Kermer: Publikationsverzeichnis. Impression ESPAO-Mds, 2008, p. 1 who further developed his teaching on the instructions of his teacher Boris Kleint, an Itten student. Otto Steinert made it possible for Kermer to use the abundant photo workshops at the Saarbrücken School of Arts an Crafts for his experimental photographic work (photograms).Regarding his encounter with Otto Steinert, Kermer said in an interview in 2006: ″In 1957 i studied art education at the School for Arts and Crafts in Saarbrücken. I also became interested in photography and showed my works to Dr. Otto Steinert. He confirmed this to me to continue and made a laboratory space available to me. These photographic experiments, in addition to my paintings and drawings, have given me a great deal of visual experience.″ (Translation from German) See: gm (= Gerd Meiser): Herzschlag für die Stadt, in: Neunkirchen – Eine Stadt volller Leben, Beilage der Saarbrücker Zeitung, 28. Juli 2006, p. 13
After he had passed the entrance examination in 1957, Wolfgang Kermer studied for two semesters at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart with Hannes Neuner, an Albers and Kandinsky student at the Bauhaus,Hannes Neuner und seine Grundlehre: eine Weiterentwicklung des Bauhaus-Vorkurses. Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin 1973 (with images of various works by Wolfgang Kermer, as in other cases without naming the author)Wolfgang Kermer / Hannes Neuner: Fragen – Antworten: Hannes Neuner, dem Lehrer und Freund zum Gedächtnis. Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart: Institut für Buchgestaltung, where he encountered an open form of teaching that remained exemplary for him throughout his years as a university lecturer.
In the winter semester of 1958/59 he sat in the academy's bronze workshop under Herbert Heinzel, where he met the sculptors Emil Cimiotti, Otto Herbert Hajek and Paul Reich and their working methods. In 1959 he stayed in Paris for a period of time and studied as a scholarship holder of the French government at the École du Louvre. After passing the exams in ″Werktechnik″ in 1959,Wolfgang Kermer: Werkbuch (Zulassungsarbeit zur praktischen und theoretischen Prüfung in Werktechnik, Künstlerisches Prüfungsamt des Kultusministeriums Baden-Württemberg an der Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart) 1959, Württembergische Landesbibliothek in art education in 1961, in philosophy and additionally in education science in 1962 in Stuttgart, he was awarded in 1966 the title PhD by University of Tübingen magna cum laude with the dissertation Studien zum Diptychon in der sakralen Malerei; von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts. Mit einem Katalog.Studien zum Diptychon in der sakralen Malerei; von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts. Mit einem Katalog on WorldCat From 1961 to 1962 he was at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart artistic and research assistant (Faculty of architecture, Chair of Professor , a student of Johannes Itten). From 1963 to 1965 he worked as an artistic assistant for photography at the Art History Institute of the University of Tübingen.Wolfgang Kermer: Publikationsverzeichnis, Impression ESPAO-MdS, 2008, p. 2 At this time, after more than a decade of artistic work, that includes paintings, drawings, graphics, photographs related to Informalism, he stopped his exhibition activities to devote himself entirely to his scientific research.During his academic studies in the mid-1960s, he destroyed part of his artistic work because it did not meet his standards. He completed long study visits to museums and collections in various countries to compile a critical catalog of medieval painted diptychs as a basis for the temporal, regional and iconographic interpretation of this pictorial form, which was at times highly valued in private devotion.