Start of the winter semester at Korbinians College

Professor Dr. Wilhelm Vossenkuhl – Truth in the Arts and How We Can Understand It.

Tegernsee, October 17, 2025 – A premiere that was at the same time a farewell – this is how the Korbinians Kolleg at the Spa & Resort Bachmair Weissach began its new winter semester. The evening became an emotional highlight of the popular lecture series and offered a preview of further spectacular dates around this year’s overarching theme: “The Natural and the Artificial: Dimensions of Humanity”, which will once again see some of the most distinguished thinkers of our time gather at Lake Tegernsee this winter – with free admission for the audience.

The opening evening on October 17 in the Festsaal of the Spa & Resort Bachmair Weissach began in a highly emotional way. Korbinian Kohler bid farewell with moving words to Professor Wilhelm Vossenkuhl, who is stepping down after eight years as founder and leading curator of the lecture series – shortly before his 80th birthday, Professor Vossenkuhl, whose name is closely linked to the event, will continue to accompany it in the future as “Honorary President.” Korbinian Kohler paid tribute to his philosophical mentor and friend as a brilliant yet charming visionary and source of inspiration whose mind seems forever young.

After this very personal expression of gratitude, Professor Vossenkuhl’s successor introduced himself to the approximately 250 guests. Professor Dr. Karsten Fischer heads the Chair of Political Theory at LMU Munich and, as a scholar of international standing, is a perfect successor to lead the interdisciplinary lecture series. In his introduction, Professor Fischer emphasized his long-standing connection with Vossenkuhl and also pointed out some lesser-known achievements of his celebrated colleague in the fields of art and aesthetics – such as Vossenkuhl’s long-time exchange with designer Otl Aicher or his advisory role in the redesign of the Berlin Reichstag building by Norman Foster. This special introduction took place for good reason, because afterwards, the honored Professor Wilhelm Vossenkuhl stepped up to the microphone once again to give a lecture on the topic “Truth in the Arts.”

It was a novelty in the eight-year history of the Kolleg that Vossenkuhl himself was the main speaker – it was, in a sense, an inaugural lecture at his farewell. Many of the invited guests from academia and the arts – including photographer and author Herlinde Koelbl, Dr. Franz Georg Strauß and political scientist Professor Dr. Edgar Grande – were or are companions and friends of Vossenkuhl and enjoyed this excursion by the luminary into the field of art history.

With his characteristically entertaining rhetoric and many concrete anecdotes, Vossenkuhl introduced the approximately 250 guests in the auditorium to the complex question of how truth in the arts is to be understood. He vividly explained that art, unlike science for example, is free and creative; its works may fail but cannot be “wrong.” Its truth cannot be measured or proven; it arises from the work itself and reveals itself in its effect. Artistic truth therefore does not appear as the result of arguments, but as an experience – individual, often contested and sometimes hidden.

A successful work of art, Vossenkuhl said, brings something true to light that would not be visible or recognizable without it. In this way, art opens up an important space in which the hidden takes shape. From Caravaggio to Beuys, the lecturer provided evidence in this sense and primarily drew on the reflections of philosopher Martin Heidegger as a guide on the subject. The conclusion: There is no single truth, but the formula holds that the encounter of the beautiful and the true is perceived by the viewer as good. “Unlike science and law, art is not obligated to truth. Precisely because of this, however, it enables unique experiences and insights,” Vossenkuhl said. Aesthetic experience can provide impulses that reach beyond art itself. It broadens one’s perspective by enabling new forms of understanding. In this freedom lies the special truth of art – one that cannot be proven, but can be experienced.

After the lecture, invited guests and friends gathered for a gala dinner, where the topics addressed were further deepened and personal experiences of those at the table with the teachings of “Willi” Vossenkuhl were shared. The person so honored was at times at a loss for words and showed himself deeply moved by the circle of companions and admirers who had come together that evening at Bachmair to appropriately honor his farewell from the Korbinians Kolleg.

Host Korbinian Kohler, who by the way had just successfully completed an Ironman triathlon in Barcelona, emphasized several times how important the exchange is to him that the Korbinians Kolleg now brings back to his house every month. Discussing the big questions but also getting to know people from very different fields personally is exactly the kind of training that keeps the mind as agile as the body.

At the Korbinians Kolleg at the Spa & Resort Bachmair Weissach, among Kohler’s guests were, among others, Prof. Edgar Grande (political scientist at LMU), Birgit and Dr. Franz Georg Strauß, artist Herlinde Kölbl and Suse Kohler, Dr. Stephan Meier (Café Luitpold), Dr. Elvire Meier-Comte (Airbus Defence and Space), Nanette and Max von der Leyen, Max Scharnigg (author and journalist), Beatrice von Thurn und Taxis, Dr. Nikolaus Zwick with Nicola Disko, Katharina Vossenkuhl (Director, Sammlung Goetz), Mirijam and Dr. Martin Mihalovits (Board, Kreissparkasse Miesbach-Tegernsee), Mateja Mögel (Burda) with her husband Markus, Monsigneur Walter Waldschütz, Ferdinand Kohler (eldest son of Suse and Korbinian Kohler), Bachmair Weissach regular guests Torsten Waack and Silke van Wasen, Elisabeth Stangl and many more.