Herbert Achternbusch (né Schild; 23 November 1938 – 10 January 2022) was a German film director, writer and painter.

[4][7] In the early 1970s, Achternbusch wrote the prose Die Alexanderschlacht,[4] an important novel for the literary avant-garde of the time.

[12] Also notable were the actresses Annamirl Bierbichler [de] and Margarethe von Trotta,[13] as well as actor and painter Heinz Braun and cinematographer Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein.

[15] The 1977 film Bierkampf [de] (Beerfight) caused attention with numerous drunk Oktoberfest visitors as involuntary amateur actors.

[16][17][18] His anarchist surrealistic films are not known to a wide audience in Germany, although one of them, Das Gespenst (The Ghost), caused a scandal in 1983 because of its alleged blasphemous contents,[19] including a scene where Christ climbs down from the cross and later goes bathing with a nun.

[15] Federal Minister of the Interior Friedrich Zimmermann halted the funding for the film as it was deemed to have violated the "religious feeling of large parts of the population".

"Filmbook" is the word used to describe the unique, quasi-novelistic form in which Achternbusch wrote works for both publication (whether alone or within a larger volume) and filming.

[20] Werner Herzog, a director of the New German Cinema, based his film Heart of Glass on a story by Achternbusch.

[25] Achternbusch wrote novels, poetry, children's books and also theatre reviews for the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

[32][33] Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier described Achternbusch in a letter of condolence as a "unique universal artist" and that he "invaluably enriched the German cultural landscape, also because he provoked and polarized".