Wolfgang Kermer

The Viennese piano teacher Marie Kermer (1882–1957), who studied from 1897 to 1901 with Leopold Landskron and Julius Epstein at the Conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, was his aunt, the Viennese engineer Alois Kermer (1894–1967), who designed the first Austrian record-breaking glider after World War I in 1923 (located in the Vienna Technical Museum), was his uncle.

Born as the son of the Moravian-born Austrian Kapellmeister Franz Kermer (1893–1936), Wolfgang Kermer spent his childhood and youth in Neunkirchen (Saar), where he attended elementary school (Bachschule) and high school (Gymnasium am Krebsberg).

His father died as a result of an injury from World War I, when Wolfgang Kermer was only one year old.

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.

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.

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 and a drummer, formed a jazz trio, that performed publicly in Saarland until the mid-1950s.

In 1954 his first solo exhibition with paintings and drawings took place in the municipal library of his hometown.

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, 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).

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, 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, 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''.

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).

Wolfgang Kermer was last present with prints in the traveling exhibition ″Neue Deutsche Graphik″, which started in 1962 and was shown in 28 cities in the Federal Republic of Germany, with paintings in 1964 in the Galerie Elitzer Saarbrücken (with Horst Linn) and at the annual exhibitions of the Baden-Württemberg Artists′s Association and the Saarland Artists′ Association.

From 1963 to 1965 he worked as an artistic assistant for photography at the Art History Institute of the University of Tübingen.

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.

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.

Teaching art history since 1966, Wolfgang Kermer worked more than thirty years at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, from 1972 as professor and chair holder.

After various art-historical articles for the Saarbrücker Zeitung and the Stuttgarter Zeitung, he published a critical report on the state of the Stuttgart Academy during the protests of 1968 and called for a reform of the training of art teachers Since 1969 he has been active in university politics as an elected member of the Academy Senate and as a member of various university bodies in Baden-Württemberg.

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.

He was the founder, publisher and editor of the publication series (1972–1978), (1975–2004), (1996–2006) and ″Die Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart im Spiegel der Presse 1970/1971″ (2008).

In order to avoid conflicts of interest, he gave up his work as chairman of the art educators association Württemberg (today: BDK [Bund Deutscher Kunsterzieher] Baden-Württemberg) after two years in 1972 after being elected rector of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart in 1971.

These elections took place for the first time in the history of the university with the participation of all university groups, professors and lecturers, assistants, technical teachers and representatives of the administration.

He founded and edited the series of publications (1972–1978), (1975–2004) and (1996–2006) and has also written articles and books on modern artists and art education.

Internally, with his ″Notices from the Rector′s Office″ (″Mitteilungen des Rektoramts″), Kermer created an organ to promote the flow of information between the university management and the various university groups.

1973, 1976 and 1980 confirmed by the university committees in this position, he remained rector of this institution until 1984, where he made profound content and organizational reforms after the students protests in the late sixties against backward training conditions, against unlawful admission procedures for studies and the lack of examination and study regulations, against nepotism and the Nazi Past of professors.

The legal status of the academy has been clarified, the inner structure was reorganized, diploma degrees were introduced for all programs and new regulations for admission to studies were created.

New types of support for students have been introduced.

Kermer promoted international exchanges with artists and art educational institutions in Australia, Austria and South Korea.

His special attention was on previously neglected public relations.

Under his rectorate, the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart was reformed in 1975 and 1978 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.

On the occasion of his 75th birthday, the Stuttgarter Nachrichten called Wolfgang Kermer ″the memory of the Stuttgart Art Academy″.

He has been the curator of numerous exhibitions and high school events and founded in 1975 the Academy Collection, which he built up over the course of more than two decades with works by current and former teachers as well as alumni.

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′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.