Winfried Remy was born on March 21, 1924 in Breslau, Silesia (now Wroclaw, Poland) and grew up in Berlin. He studied geology at the University of Berlin, the later Humboldt University in East Berlin. One of his teachers was Walther Gothan who supervised his Ph.D. research. However, due to political reasons he got his doctorate in 1952 from the University of Tübingen on a dissertation on pteridosperm fructifications. After Gothan's death in December 1954 Remy became leader of the research institute of palaeobotany and coal science of the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin. In the 1950s and early 1960s he published a large number of contributions on Carboniferous and Permian plants, dealing with biostratigraphy, fructifications, in situ spores and pollen, and cuticular analysis. Several of these papers were co-authored by his wife Renate. In addition, two richly illustrated books on Palaeozoic floras were published; the first with Gothan on the floras of the paralic coal basins (1957) and the second with his wife Renate on the floras of the limnic basins (1959). An updated synthesis covering both the paralic and the limnic basins was published by Remy and Remy in 1977 as "Die Floren des Erdaltertums".

After the construction of the Berlin wall in 1961 the Remy's moved to Münster where Winfried Remy got a lectureship in the geology department. In 1965 he became professor and three years he later head of the newly instituted 'Forschungsstelle für Paläobotanik'. In the mid-1970s his interests shifted to the earliest land plants, thereby concentrating on the anatomically preserved material from the Rhynie Chert and on compression floras from the Lower Devonian of western Germany. In the early 1980s he published several papers on anatomically preserved gametophytes from the Rhynie Chert. Other papers dealt with the general and functional morphology of the sporophytes, in situ preserved algae and fungi, and the ecology of the Rhynie Chert biotope. Several of his later publications are listed on our Rhynie Flora Literature Page and our Publications Page.

Winfried Remy officially retired in 1989 but he continued to work until shortly before his death. He published three books and more than 120 papers. He was corresponding member of the Botanical Society of America, honorary member of the Paleobotanical Section and the first recipient of the Jongmans Medal. Winfried Remy passed away after a long illness on December 31, 1995.