The quintessential assistant, Hermann masterminded German football’s greatest triumphs from the shadows, leaving an indelible mark on Leverkusen and Bayern Munich during a legendary forty-year coaching career.
Peter Hermann spent much of his career standing a few steps away from the spotlight. He was rarely the manager whose name appeared above the team sheet, rarely the figure delivering the defining press conference. Yet across four decades in German football, his influence reached some of the sport's biggest clubs, coaches and players.
Hermann died Saturday at 74 after a long illness with ALS.
He joined Leverkusen in 1976, after two seasons at Alemannia Aachen. He made 235 competitive appearances for Die Werkself, scoring 35 goals, and was part of the side that secured promotion to the Bundesliga in 1979.
But it was as a coach that Hermann established his reputation.
After ending his playing career, he returned to Leverkusen in 1989 as an assistant to Jürgen Gelsdorf. From there, his career became a tour through the upper levels of German football. At the club, he worked alongside Erich Ribbeck, Christoph Daum, Berti Vogts and Klaus Toppmöller, among others. He later became a trusted assistant to Jupp Heynckes at both Leverkusen and Bayern Munich.
The trophies came largely while he occupied the second seat. With Heynckes at Bayern, Hermann was part of the team that won the Bundesliga, DFB-Pokal, and Champions League in 2013. He returned to Munich with Heynckes in 2017 and won another German championship the following year.
His reputation was built less on public profile than on his work with players.
Stefan Kießling, the former Leverkusen captain, recalled Hermann as a particularly effective motivator who knew how to handle individual players. Klaus Toppmöller, whose Leverkusen team reached the 2002 Champions League final with Hermann as his assistant, once described him as the best assistant coach he had worked with.
Hermann also became the kind of figure clubs called when circumstances deteriorated. In 1996, he took temporary charge of Leverkusen after Ribbeck was dismissed and helped the club avoid relegation on the final day. Twenty-five years later, he returned, joining Hannes Wolf's staff for the final eight matches of the 2020-21 season as Leverkusen pursued European qualification.
His final coaching position came at Borussia Dortmund, where he worked under Edin Terzić before illness forced him to retire in December 2022.
Leverkusen, however, remained his lasting reference point. He continued attending matches and watching the club's youth teams, and he was a regular at the BayArena during the historic 2023-24 season, when Die Werkself won their first Bundesliga title.
In a 2025 interview, Hermann offered a simple description of his relationship with the sport:
I owe everything to football.
The sentiment worked in both directions.
German football gave Hermann a career largely conducted out of view. In return, he became one of its most enduring examples of how much influence can reside in the role just behind the manager.
Rest in peace, Peter Hermann.
