Gerhard Schoenberner (1931–2012)

Gerhard Schoenberner was born in Neudamm, Germany, present-day Dębno, Poland. His father was a pastor and his paternal uncle was the editor and writer Franz Schoenberner. Gerhard attended high school in Küstrin and passed his Abitur in Berlin in 1949. He studied German and theater at the Free University of Berlin, and took political science courses at night. In 1956, he married Mirjana (Mira) Bihaly, who became a close colleague in his work. He held numerous influential positions in his career, many of them involving film and history. From 1973 to 1978, he was director of the Goethe Institute in Tel Aviv. On behalf of the Institute, he gave lectures and seminars on film history and the use of film as a means of political propaganda at numerous universities. He was the curator of major film series in Germany and abroad, and advisor to foreign film festivals. From 1976, Schoenberner was a member of the West German PEN Center; from 1991 to 1995, he served as vice president and commissioner of its Writers in Prison initiative. In 1983, Schoenberner became founding chairman of the Aktives Museum, Fascism and Resistance in Berlin to encourage dealing with the Nazi past and its effects on the present. He also served as scientific advisor in the creation of Berlin's Topography of Terror history museum. He was the founding director and head of the House of the Wannsee Conference memorial and educational site from 1989 to 1996. Schoenberner also was the author of numerous books, documentaries, and exhibitions. These included the landmark book The Yellow Star: The Persecution of the Jews in Europe 1933-1945 (1960), the first photographic account of the Holocaust. He later wrote the script for the documentary film adaptation released in 1981. In 1969, Schoenberner produced a 12-part series on "Film in the Third Reich" for the German ARD network. In addition, he was a poet whose collection Fazit: Prosagedichte, was published in 2011.