Hermann Vaske first studied at the Universität der Künste in Berlin, before enrolling in the director's class at American Film Institute. After working as a creative director for an ad company in London, he founded the production company Hermann Vaske's Emotional Network in Frankfurt am Main. With his company, Vaske created numerous ad campaigns, documentaries and TV features.

For ZDF/Arte, he helmed documentaries on David Bowie, Anthony Quinn und Yohji Yamamoto. A recurring theme in his work is the focus on different notions of creativity. His semi-documentary drama "The Ten Commandments of Creativity" (2000), starring Dennis Hopper and Sir Peter Ustinov, won the Jury Special Prize at the Venice Television Festival. Vaske also made over hundred episodes of the Arte network series "Why Are You Creative?" (TV 2002/2003), in which renowned artists talk about their work and inspirations. In 2003, he directed the short "Who Killed the Idea?", starring Harvey Keitel, Debi Mazar and Nadja Auermann. The same year, he completed the documentary "Das kleine Fernsehspiel - reloaded", which recounts the history of the eponymous television format and features interviews with seminal filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch, Mike Leigh, Tom Tykwer, Edgar Reitz and Alexander Kluge.

For his feature-length documentary "Invasion der Ideen" (2005), Vaske talked with famous scientists – including Deepak Chopra, Wolf Singer and Stephen Hawking – about the phenomenon of the idea itself. Also in 2005, he created his multi-award winning ad campaign "Blixa Bargeld liest Hornbach" (2005).

In his documentary "Die Kunst des Fußballs" (2006), Vaske accompanied British comic John Cleese on an unusual trip into the realm of football, which garnered him a nomination for the 2007 Grimme Award.

Following the documentaries "Der radikale Gärtner - Grenzgänge in Kunst und Werbung" (TV, 2009), "The Digital Bomb" (TV, 2011), and "Balkan Spirit" (2013), Vaske portrayed cult actor and art lover Udo Kier in the documentary "Arteholic", which premiered at the 2014 Munich Film Festival and was released theatrically in the fall of the same year.