100 Notable alumni of Berlin University of the Arts

Fritz Bamberger was a German painter, primarily of landscapes.

Per Hüttner is a Swedish visual artist who lives and works in Paris. He is mostly known for his photographic work and for his interactive, changing and travelling exhibition projects. A number of monographs about his practice has been published including Per Hüttner, 2003; I am a Curator, 2004; Repetitive Time 2006, Xiao Yao You2006, Democracy and Desire 2007. The...

Coenraad Valentijn Bos was a Dutch pianist, most notably as an accompanist to singers of lieder. His peers such as Gerald Moore considered him the doyen of accompanists in his day.

Winfried Muthesius is a German painter, photographer and installation artist.

Johanna Keimeyer is a German artist known for her experiential work. She has designed lighting fixtures and experimented with various photography techniques. Her work often integrates technology with art, fashion, and design.

Thomas Eller is a German visual artist and writer. Born and raised in the German district of Franconia he left Nuremberg in 1985 to study fine art at the Berlin University of the Arts. After his forced dismission he studied sciences of religion, philosophy and art history at Free University of Berlin. During this time he was also working as...

Adolfo Odnoposoff was an Argentine-born-and-raised cellist of Russian ancestry who performed in concerts for 5 decades in South, Central, and North America, the Caribbean, Europe, Israel, and the former USSR. He had performed as principal cellist in the Israel Philharmonic and many of the important orchestras of Latin America. He had soloed with major orchestras under conductors that include Arturo...

Carla Henius was a German operatic soprano and mezzo-soprano, voice teacher and librettist. She played a decisive role in promoting recent works by composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luigi Nono for the stage. She wrote the libretto for an opera by Aribert Reimann.

August Grahl was a German portrait painter and miniaturist.

Otto Altenkirch was a German Impressionist painter and set designer.

Andrea Scrima is an American novelist, essayist, and artist living in Berlin, Germany. An extensive essay on her experiences as an American living more than half her life abroad appeared 3 July 2018 in The Millions. In 2021, these observations were continued in the essay “On the Weaponization of Language in a Traumatized Nation,” published in LitHub.

Susanne Alt is a German jazz saxophone player and composer based in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Theodosia Ntokou is a Greek classical pianist.

Suzanne Eisendieck was a German Post-Impressionist painter native of Danzig.

Ruthild Hahne was a German sculptor. Her most productive phase coincided with the early years of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

Sascha Pohflepp was a German artist, designer, and writer whose work focused on the role of technology’s influence on the environment, often collaborating with scientists and other artists to explore this theme.

Shahla Aghapour, also known as Shahla Aghapour–Benakohell is an Iranian visual artist, author and gallery director living in Germany. She works both as a writer and poet, as well as a painter, sculptor, performance artist and director of Galerie-Benakohell.

Ioannis Constantinidis, also known by the pen name Kostas Giannidis (Greek: Κώστας Γιαννίδης; 21 August 1903 – 17 January 1984), was a Greek composer, pianist and conductor.

Johannes Haarklou was a Norwegian composer, organist, conductor, and music critic.

Caroline Fischer is a German pianist. She has performed globally and has received numerous awards and prizes.

Ignatz Waghalter was a Polish-German composer and conductor.

Anton Hermann Stilke was a German painter; associated with the Düsseldorfer Malerschule. He is best known for his scenes from the life of Joan of Arc.

Wolf Hartmut Hilbertz was a German-born futurist architect, inventor, and marine scientist. Notable contributions to science include the discovery of artificial mineral accretion / biorock and its use to create artificial reefs and other structures using electricity to attract materials already found in ocean water.

Myron Michailidis is a Greek conductor who serves as Artistic Director of the new Cultural and Conference Center of Heraklion, Crete, Greece since 2019 and the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra since 2026. He is regarded today as one of the most important Greek conductors.

Carl Adolph Wilhelm “Willy” Burmester was a German violinist.

Filipa César is an artist and filmmaker. She lives and works in Germany, and studied at the Faculty of Arts in Porto and Lisbon (1996–99) and the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich (1999–2000). She obtained an MA in "Art in Context", from the Berlin University of the Arts (2007). Since April 2021 César has been a professor at Merz Akademie...

Hugo Wilhelm Ludwig Kaun was a German composer, conductor, and music teacher.

Josephine Meckseper is a German-born artist, based in New York City. Her large-scale installations and films have been exhibited in various international biennials and museum shows worldwide.

Robert Hausmann was a German cellist who premiered important works by Johannes Brahms (including the Double Concerto) and Max Bruch (including Kol Nidrei). He was the cellist for the Joachim Quartet and taught at the Berlin Königliche Hochschule für Musik.

Nathan "Tossy" Spivakovsky, a Jewish, Russian Empire-born, German-trained violin virtuoso, was considered one the greatest violinists of the twentieth century.

Katharina Szelinski-Singer, born as Katharina Singer was a German sculptor. She lived in Berlin from 1945 until her death.

César Klein was a German Expressionist painter and designer, probably best known as one of the founders the November Group and the Arbeitsrat für Kunst. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting.

Milena Glimbovski is a Russian–German entrepreneur, author and zero-waste activist. Glimbovski is mostly known for founding of the Berlin-based "Original Unverpackt" zero-waste grocery store.

Avitall Gerstetter is the first female hazzan (cantor) in Jewish Renewal and the first female cantor in Germany.

Louis Tuaillon was a Prussian sculptor. From 1879 to 1881, he attended the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Berlin, then worked in the studio of Reinhold Begas. In Vienna, he spent two years in the studio of Rudolf Weyr. He then spent the years 1885 to 1903 in Rome. From 1906, Tuaillon was once again in Berlin, as Professor in...

Marwan Kassab-Bachi was a Syrian painter. Born in Damascus, he first studied at Damascus University before moving to Berlin, Germany, where he enrolled in the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar. He stayed there for most of his life, and was appointed full professor in 1980.

Julian Charrière is a French-Swiss conceptual artist currently living and working in Berlin. He uses several artistic approaches including photography, performance, sculpture, and video, to address concepts relating to time and human's relationship to the natural world.

Eduard Franck was a German composer, pianist and music pedagogue.

George Georgescu was a Romanian conductor. The moving force behind the Bucharest Philharmonic Orchestra for decades beginning shortly after World War I, a protégé of Artur Nikisch and a close associate of George Enescu, he received honors from the French and communist Romanian governments and lived to make recordings in the stereo era.

Helen Hyde was an American etcher and engraver. She is best known for her color etching process and woodblock prints reflecting Japanese women and children characterizations.

Else Berg was a German-born Dutch painter of Jewish descent; associated with the Bergense School. She was married to the Dutch painter, Mommie Schwarz. She and her husband were both murdered in the Holocaust.

Rudolf Wagner-Régeny was a composer, conductor, and pianist. Born in Transylvania, Kingdom of Hungary, since 1920 Romania, he became a German citizen in 1930, and then East German after 1945.

Felicitas Kukuck was a German music educator and composer of opera and other works.

Aram Bartholl is a Berlin-based conceptual artist known for his examination of the relationship between the digital and physical world. His works often deal with anonymity and privacy. Aram Bartholl is currently Professor for art with digital media at HAW Hamburg.

Ingo Kühl is a German painter, sculptor and architect.

Julius von Bismarck is a German artist currently living and working in Berlin, Germany. He attended the Berlin University of the Arts and the Hunter College in New York City.

Dea Loher is a German playwright and author.

William Landry Aronson is an American composer and writer for musical theater.

Peter Schumann is the co-founder and director of the radical puppet theater company Bread & Puppet Theater. Born in Silesia, he was a sculptor and dancer in Germany before moving to the United States in 1961. In 1963 he founded Bread & Puppet in New York City, and in 1970 moved to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, eventually settling in...

Mehmet Aksoy is a Turkish sculptor. His sculptures often contain sensual figurative elements, but he is strongly rooted in a modernist sensibility with strong conceptual and abstract elements in his work. He works primarily in stone but also incorporates other material, fusing metal or differing stones in a single sculpture. He presently resides and works in a studio of his...

Eduard Julius Friedrich Bendemann was a German-Jewish painter.

Karl Ferdinand Sohn was a German painter of the Düsseldorf school of painting.

Carl Joseph Begas, or Karl Begas, was a German painter who played an important role in the transition from Romanticism to Realism. He was the first in a multi-generational "dynasty" of artists.

Oliver Mark is a German photographer and artist. He lives and works in Berlin. His work focuses in particular on portrait photography as well as serial, conceptual projects in the context of fine art.

Jacques Rossi was a Polish-French writer and polyglot. Rossi was best known for his books on the Gulag.

Rudolf Belling was a German sculptor. His work was part of the sculpture event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics.

Karl Leister is a classical clarinet player from Wilhelmshaven, Germany. At a very young age, he learned to play the clarinet from his father, also a clarinetist, and later studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. As a teenager, he was accepted into the Komische Oper Berlin under Václav Neumann and Walter Felsenstein as clarinet soloist.

Arnold Ludwig Mendelssohn, was a German composer and music teacher.

Grete Trakl was an Austrian pianist and sister of the Austrian poet Georg Trakl.

Gotthard Graubner was a German painter, born in Erlbach, in Saxony, Germany.

Norbert Bisky is a German artist based in Berlin. He is one of the most important representatives of a new figurative painting in the 21st century.

Raúl Aguayo-Krauthausen is a German disability rights activist. He was awarded the Order of Merit of Germany and is an Ashoka Fellow.

Jenő Hubay de Szalatnya, also known by his German name Eugen Huber ( pronounced [ˈɔʏɡeːn ˈhuːbɐ, ˈɔʏɡn̩ -]), was a Hungarian violinist, composer and music teacher.

Kanichi Shimofusa was a Japanese composer.

Maria Franck-Marc, née Bertha Pauline Marie Franck, was a German artist. She is also known as the wife of the painter Franz Marc.

Agi Jambor was a Hungarian-born pianist.

Farrah El-Dibany is an Egyptian mezzo-soprano. She is the first Egyptian and African singer to join the Paris Opera Academy in 2016.

Gudrun Gut is a German electronic musician, DJ, presenter, music producer and founder of the Monika Enterprise record label.

Adolf Rosner, known professionally as Ady Rosner and Eddie Rosner, was a German, Polish and Soviet jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Known as the White Louis Armstrong, he was one of the most outstanding jazz trumpeters of his generation.

Farhang Sharif was an Iranian musician and renowned tar player.

Aribert Reimann was a German composer, pianist, and accompanist, known especially for his literary operas. His version of Shakespeare's King Lear, the opera Lear, was written at the suggestion of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who performed the title role. His opera Medea after Grillparzer's play premiered in 2010 at the Vienna State Opera. He was a professor of contemporary Lied (art song)...

Jasper Morrison is an English product and furniture designer. He is known for the refinement and apparent simplicity of his designs. In a rare interview with the designer, he is quoted as saying "objects should never shout."

Leopold Mordkhelovich Godowsky Sr. was a virtuoso pianist, composer and teacher, born in what is now Lithuania to Jewish parents, who became an American citizen in 1891. He was one of the most highly regarded performers of his time, known for his theories concerning the application of relaxed weight and economy of motion within pianistic technique – principles later propagated...

Isang Yun, or Yun I-sang, was a Korean-born composer who made his later career in West Germany.

Uwe Kröger is a German actor, singer, and guitar player. He is a musical star in the German-speaking countries of the world. Besides starring on stage, Kröger has taken part in galas and concerts, as well as making television and film appearances. He has released cast recordings and solo CDs. He also played Captain Von Trapp singing in German and...

Otto Nossan Klemperer was a German conductor and composer, originally based in Germany, and then the United States, Hungary and finally, Great Britain. He began his career as an opera conductor, but he was later better known as a conductor of symphonic music.

Friederike Becht is a German actress.

Dame Olga Maria Elisabeth Friederike Schwarzkopf, DBE was a German-born Austro-British lyric soprano. She was among the foremost singers of lieder, and is renowned for her performances of Viennese operetta, as well as the operas of Mozart, Wagner and Richard Strauss. After retiring from the stage, she was a voice teacher internationally. She is considered one of the greatest sopranos...

Vera Rust, known as Vera Tschechowa, was a German producer, director, screenwriter, and actress of Russian descent. She appeared in more than 50 films between 1957 and 1996. She was widely known as Elvis Presley's companion, particularly in connection with his Oral Poliomyelitis Vaccine (OPV) public booster-advocacy and which they both undertook during Presley's first year in Germany with the...

Joachim Sauter was a German media artist, designer and technology entrepreneur. He was appointed Professor for New Media Art and Design at the Universität der Künste Berlin, UdK (Berlin University of the Arts) in 1991, and in 1993 he created Terravision (computer program), before pursuing a lawsuit against Google for infringing the patent. He became an adjunct professor at UCLA,...

Hossein Alizadeh is an Iranian musician, composer, radif preserver, researcher, educator, and a prominent performer of the tar, shurangiz and setar. Alizadeh has collaborated with numerous vocalists and instrumentalists, including Shahram Nazeri, Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, Alireza Eftekhari and Jivan Gasparyan. He has also performed with various orchestras and ensembles, both in Iran and internationally, contributing significantly to contemporary interpretations of Persian...

Inka Friedrich is a German actress.

Moritz Moszkowski was a German-Polish composer, pianist, and teacher. His brother Alexander Moszkowski was a famous writer and satirist in Berlin.

Adriana Altaras is a German actress, theatre director and author.

Antonia Louisa Brico was a Dutch-born American conductor and pianist.

Holger Bernhard Bruno Mischwitzky, known professionally as Rosa von Praunheim, was a German film director, author, producer, professor of directing and one of the most influential and famous queer activists in the German-speaking world. A pioneer of Queer Cinema and gay activist, von Praunheim was a key co-founder of the modern lesbian and gay movement in West Germany and Switzerland....

Sascha Lobo is a German blogger, writer, journalist, Audiobook-narrator and copywriter. Lobo's work is primarily concerned with the Internet and with the social effects of new technology.

Claudio Arrau León was a Chilean and American pianist known for his interpretations of a vast repertoire spanning the baroque to 20th-century composers, especially Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Brahms. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century.

Wotan Wilke Möhring is a German actor.

Max Raabe is a German jazz singer. He is best known as the founder and leader of the Palast Orchester.

Tanja Wedhorn is a German actress. She studied acting at the Berlin University of the Arts and lives in Berlin. She has two sons.

Melika Foroutan is a German-Iranian actress.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German and American architect, academic, and interior designer. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. He is regarded as one of the pioneers of modern architecture.

Günter Wilhelm Grass was a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Martina Gedeck is a German actress. She achieved international recognition due to her roles in films such as Mostly Martha (2001), The Lives of Others (2006), and The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008). She has won several awards, including two Deutscher Filmpreis, in 1997 for Supporting Actress in Life is All You Get, and in 2002 for Actress in Mostly Martha.

Marina Chiche is a French classical violinist.

F. W. Bernstein was a German poet, cartoonist, satirist, and academic. He worked for the satirical biweekly pardon. After teaching at schools, he was professor of caricature and comics at the Berlin Academy of the Arts from 1984 to 1999. He was one of the founding members of the Neue Frankfurter Schule, which published the satirical magazine Titanic.

Toshio Hosokawa is a Japanese composer of contemporary classical music. He studied in Germany but returned to Japan, finding a personal style inspired by classical Japanese music and culture. He has composed operas, the oratorio Voiceless Voice in Hiroshima, and instrumental music.

Şeyda Kurt is a German journalist and author.