Herbert Tobias

In 1948, while staying in the area of Heidelberg he fell in love with, and began a relationship with, a civilian employee of the American Forces of Occupation.

There Tobias met the famous German photographer Willy Maywald, for whom he worked as a retoucher and who gave him his first contacts in the world of fashion.

From October 1953 his fashion photographs began to appear in West German magazines and in November, out of over 18,000 entrants, he won first prize in a highly lucrative competition for the front-page photo of the Frankfurter Illustrierten Zeitung.

Through publication of his work in many high-class magazines Herbert Tobias had become by 1956 an established figure in West German fashion.

His contacts in the worlds of fashion and film led in the following years to many photo-portraits of the famous, including Hildegard Knef, Zarah Leander, Valeska Gert, Amanda Lear, Klaus Kinski, Tatjana Gsovsky, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and Andreas Baader.

Tobias bequeathed his photographic estate to the Berlinische Galerie[3] (Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst, Fotografie und Architektur), which gave his work a large retrospective from May to August 2008, with 200 exhibits,[4] also displayed in 2009 in the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg.