Armin Abmeier

As many of you will already have read, Armin Abmeier passed away on Tuesday. The news left me, at first, completely without words. I knew he had been ill, of course, but when we met in May he seemed calm, even happy — pleased that the opening of the exhibition had gone so well. I am very grateful that, just before that exhibition, he took the time to answer the questions for our short interview.

I sent the questions over by email and he replied to each one in turn, sitting at his typewriter. Even by email, you could feel the careful attention he gave every sentence. He did not write quickly. He wrote exactly.

For those who do not know his work: Armin Abmeier was the German collector, publisher and editor behind Die Tollen Hefte, the small-format series of artists’ books that he founded in 1990 with his partner Rotraut Susanne Berner. Each issue paired a writer with an illustrator, and was printed using traditional letterpress and stencil techniques. The booklets are very small physical things, hand-made in feel, often with a single colour added by hand. They look like nothing else.

Over more than three decades, Armin invited dozens of writers and artists to contribute — a quietly extraordinary roll call. He had an unerring eye for the kind of work that does not need to shout, and an old-school publisher’s patience for projects that might take years to come together.

If you have never seen a Tolle Hefte, please do go and find one. They are not easy to track down outside Germany, but they are worth the effort. Holding one in your hand is the best possible introduction to what Armin spent his life caring about.

Goodbye, and thank you.