In 1982, the private studio glass collection of art historian Wolfgang Kermer, which had often been created in personal contact with the artists since the 1950s and excerpts of which had already been shown in special exhibitions in 1975 and 1976/77, was donated to the Frauenau Glass Museum together with large parts of his specialised library thanks to his friendly connections with Erwin Eisch and Alfons Hannes. As the Bayerische Staatszeitung correctly noted in 2009, it is "an important cornerstone of the museum's permanent exhibition".

The collection comprises around 350 objects from almost 200 glass artists and manufacturers. In its chronological orientation - the focus is on the 1950s to 1970s - and including the countries that set the tone for the state and development of the time, it vividly reflects the change from glass design that was designed and not executed by the designer himself to free-spirited creations made directly by the artists at the furnace. As the collector focussed on innovative design impulses and solutions from the outset, the collection contains a whole series of incunabula from the studio glass movement that began in the early 1960s, which at the time was still of little interest to museums and collectors.

Since the 1990s, Wolfgang Kermer has dedicated himself as a collector primarily to the production of glassworks in eastern France (in today's Grand Est and Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region). In 2017, under the title "Hommage au verrier anonyme", the couple France and Wolfgang Kermer donated more than one hundred hand-blown utility glasses to the museum with examples typical of the once numerous, long-lost forest glassworks in the Vosges. The surviving remnants of what was once mass production now often have a unique character.