Dictionary of Art Historians

Herrmann, Wolfgang

Full Name
Herrmann, Wolfgang
Gender
male
Date Born
1899
Place Born
Berlin, Germany
Home Country
Germany
Subject Area
architecture (object genre)
art theory
nineteenth century (dates CE)
sculpture (visual works)
twentieth century (dates CE)
Career
curators
Overview

Museum Curator, architectural historian and theorist of the 19th and 20th centuries. Hermann first studied engineering at the Eidgenössischen Technischen Hochschule in Zürich before switching to art history and philosophy at the University of Freiburg. After sojourns at Wilhelm Humboldt University in Berlin and the University of Munich, he was granted a doctorate from Leipzig in 1923/4 under Wilhelm Pinder. Other scholars under who Hermann studied included Adolph Goldschmidt, Hans Jantzen and Heinrich Wölfflin His formal career began as assistant keeper of prints and drawings at the Staatliches Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin in 1925. He served there, advancing to keeper, until 1933 when he fled to London because of Jewish persecution. Hermann pursued a career as a manufacturing entrepreneur until 1950 when he returned to architectural scholarship. During this period he produced some of his most notable works, including monographs on Gottfried Semper and architectural theory in general.

Selected Bibliography
Laugier and Eighteenth-Century French Theory. London: A. Zwemmer, 1962; Gottfried Semper: In Search of Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984; The Theory of Claude Perrault. London, A. Zwemmer,1973.
Sources
KMP, 4; Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 292-4; Journey from Berlin: Wolfgang Hermann. Oral History Collection, Dept. of Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles Library, 1992.