Michael Herrmann (General Manager)

Michael Herrmann, 2011

Michael Herrmann (born February 4, 1944 in Wiesbaden ) is a German culture and music manager. He is co-founder of the Rheingau Music Festival and has held the post of artistic director and managing director since it was founded. Since July 2008 he has also been the managing partner of the PRO ARTE Frankfurter Konzertdirektion, which organizes the concert season in the Alte Oper Frankfurt. Since 2018 he has also been the managing director of Wiesbaden Musik GmbH, which organizes concerts in the state capital Wiesbaden.

Life

In the early 1970s, Michael Herrmann sang in choir concerts at Eberbach Monastery , which gave rise to the idea of holding a music festival within the walls of the former Cistercian monastery .

After completing an apprenticeship in bookselling in Wiesbaden, Herrmann switched to the hotel and tourism industry. In 1982 he returned to Germany after ten years of work and worked in concert management. In 1985 he founded the Michael Herrmann concert and artist agency. In 1987 the Rheingau Music Festival was founded, where he holds the position of artistic director and managing director.

After completing an apprenticeship in bookselling with Otto Harrasowitz in Wiesbaden, he began training as a singer and attended the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main for a short time. During this time Michael Herrmann founded his first concert agency, Konzertdirektion Michael Herrmann, and initiated the “Wiesbaden Baroque Ensemble” with trumpeter Wolfgang Basch and violinist Rainer Kussmaul. The now well-known columnist Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich wrote in the Wiesbadener Tagblatt on December 11, 1967, “One can believe the initiative of the young manager [Michael Herrmann] that in the creation of the“ Wiesbaden Baroque Ensemble ”fashionable agility was the decisive factor [... ], but an artistically relevant concept. In any case, the debut concert made people sit up and take notice and promise a lot for the enrichment of our urban musical life. ”Michael Herrmann does not finish his studies, but goes to the Canary Islands , where he works in the hotel and tourism industry. In Gran Canaria he met Justus Frantz and Leonard Bernstein , with whom he was close friends until his death in 1990. Michael Herrmann returned to Germany in 1982, worked for the Rudolph Wylach (Wuppertal) and Concerto Winderstein GmbH (Munich) concert management team and organized a tour for the Luxembourg RTL Symphony Orchestra. In 1985 he founded the Michael Herrmann concert and artist agency in Munich with artists such as Ludwig Güttler, Eckart Haupt and Peter Schreier. Two years later he returned to Wiesbaden and realized his original festival idea: as early as the early 1970s, when he was singing in choir concerts in the Eberbach monastery, he had the vision of a festival in his home country. Enthusiastic about the unique acoustics of the basilica of Eberbach Monastery, the idea arose to bring a music festival to life within the walls of the old Cistercian monastery.

After a trial run in the summer of 1987 with two concerts in the Eberbach monastery, Herrmann and a few friends and music enthusiasts founded the Rheingau Musik Festival eV on November 23, 1987 , which organized the Rheingau Music Festival until 1992. Since then the legal form of the Rheingau Musik Festival has been a GmbH.

Michael Herrmann was a board member of the Association Européenne des Festivals from 1998 to 2012 and its vice president from 2005 to 2012 and from 2014 to 2017.

As a member of the “Citizens' Action PRO Airport” in Frankfurt am Main, he has been supporting the expansion of Frankfurt Airport for years.

Michael Herrman lives in the Johannisberg district of Geisenheim .

honors and awards

• Hessian Order of Merit (1997)
• Goethe plaque of the state of Hesse (2002)
• Tile of the Hessian Prime Minister (2012)
• Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2014)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ New runway: “Talking about advantages too” , Frankfurter Rundschau, December 27, 2011
2. ↑ Wiesbadener Kurier from February 6, 2014: Kurhaus celebration for the 70th birthday of the RMF director Michael Herrmann ( memento of the original from January 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ^ FAZ of August 3, 2013: Michael Herrmann. The general manager dragging chairs
4. ↑ Cross of Merit for Walter Renneisen , morgenweb.de, viewed on September 5, 2014, also Bergsträßer Anzeiger, September 5, 2014 (picture of the award winners, the second part of the article honors Michael Herrmann's distinction.)