After graduating from the state humanistic high school in Cologne-Mülheim in 1949, he studied classical philology and philosophy with the professors Josef Koch, Günther Jachmann and Josef Kroll and received his doctorate in 1955 with a dissertation on Philon's theory of ideas and logos, in which Bormann explained Philon's concept of the logos in critical examination of Harry Austryn Wolfson's interpretation.

From 1954 to 1959, Bormann was a research associate for Josef Koch at the Thomas-Institut of the University of Cologne, then until 1965 an assistant at Paul Wilpert's Philosophical Seminar.

In 1967 Bormann became head of the Cologne office of the Cusanus Commission of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, which oversees the edition and translation of the works of Nicholas of Kues.

Characteristic of Bormann's work is the sober and fact-oriented manner of presentation based on a thorough and precise, philologically sound text analysis, while avoiding extensive philosophical speculations.

[5] Bormann supported efforts to open a beatification process on diocesan level for the Monheim martyr priest Franz Boehm, who was deported to the Dachau concentration camp because of his resistance to the Nazi regime, where he died in February 1945.