Wolfgang Kermer

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. 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. 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. He was the founder, publisher and editor of the publication series de (1972–1978), de (1975–2004), de (1996–2006) and ′′Die Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart im Spiegel der Presse 1970/1971′′ (2008). On the occasion of his 75th birthday, the Stuttgarter Nachrichten called Wolfgang Kermer ′′the memory of the Stuttgart Art Academy′′. 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. The Viennese pianist 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.