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Hubertus Kohle is a German art historian who studied art history, philosophy, Romance studies, history, and urban studies in Bonn, Paris, and Florence. He received his doctorate in 1986 with a dissertation on Denis Diderot’s concept of art and completed his habilitation in 1996 on Adolph Menzel’s paintings of Frederick the Great. After academic positions in Bochum and Cologne, he became Professor of Medieval and Modern Art History at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 2000, a position he held until his retirement in 2025.
His research focuses on the visual arts of the 18th and 19th centuries up to classical modernism, especially in France and Germany, as well as media theory, the history of theory, and digital art history. Kohle is considered one of the pioneers of digital art history in German-speaking academia and played an important role in developing digital scholarly reviewing, founding the online journal KUNSTFORM in 2000 and later co-editing sehepunkte. He also contributed to public art education through the television series Stil-Epochen, produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk. In 2024, he and his wife, historian Gudrun Gersmann, founded a charitable foundation to support young people in education and training.