Gestalt-Archive “Hans Herrmann” e.V.
P.O. Box 1132 Landsberger Strasse 19
86938 Schondorf am Ammersee, Germany, Germany
www. Gestalt-Archiv.de
The Gestalt Archive is a regional and nationally significant institution. The art educator Hans Herrmann (1899-1981) founded the archive as a center for art education. He produced a theoretically worked out pedagogy for art education (1) that acknowledges the importance of developmental stages for the visual configuration in the work of children that appeals holistically to all peoples. He recognized that free visual configuration plays an important role in the personality development of the child. He believed that aesthetic perception and the configurational forces that rest within every human being, whether child, youth, or adult, should be awakened, promoted, and maintained in all areas of visual art as well as applied art so that all may be led to their individual forms of expression.
The archive in Schondorf houses a specialized library and a collection of more than 10,000 color slides. The archive also maintains a collection of some 50,000 examples of student work from all ages and from all types of schools that includes drawings, paintings, silhouettes, linoleum block prints, textiles, school games, and complete sets of student work produced by entire classes dating from 1920 to the present.
The archive provides access to its collection of student developmental work and teaching examples for students and teachers with explanations of the differences in aesthetic quality for research purposes to teachers, students, and interested lay persons. In addition to the above, the collection also contains illustrative material for lettering and color configuration, architectural consideration and furniture as well as comparison series for formed objects, for example, plates and containers of all kinds, a textile collection with historical examples, folk art, and the work of children and lay persons. Each year, the archive exhibits changing displays of work from the archive’s collection.
In the 1930’s, Hans Herrmann founded die Gestalt, the oldest existing German language journal for art education. In 2012, the journal appeared in its 78th year offering suggestions for teachers and interested lay persons with contributions from teachers from their school classes and information on current exhibitions and new publications. (Articles from recent editions are here.)
The archive also offers single day classes with different offerings in artistic techniques: drawing, painting, lettering, linoleum block printing, silhouette making as well as working with paper, clay, wood, metal, soapstone, plaster molding, and textile techniques such as embroidery, weaving, braiding, etc.
The archive offers workshops, projects, and guided tours for children, kindergarten classes, and schools.
(1) Hans Herrmann was an associate of Professor Henry Schaefer-Simmern and Dr. Egon Kornmann. All three based their work on the empirical theory of art of Gustaf Britsch.
The Editor