Fred Halbers Collection

The actor, artist, and writer Fred Halbers was born as Fritz Josef Halberstaedter in Berlin, Germany, on July 6th, 1894, the son of Ernst Wolfgang and Gertrude (née Wienskowitz) Halberstaedter. He had an older sister, Hertha Johanna, as well as a younger brother, Werner. Beginning in 1912 Halbers studied two years at the Max Reinhardt drama school in Berlin. In 1914 he volunteered as a soldier for Germany, but was not accepted in the military until 1915. Due to an injury in Russia, Halbers spent several months in a military hospital in Belgium and worked afterwards as an interpreter in Belgium until he was dismissed from the German army in 1918. His brother Werner was killed in Russia in 1916.

After World War I Halbers was active as an actor, director, and a stage designer in several theaters in various German cities, including Munich, Coblenz, Duesseldorf, Bremerhaven, and Berlin. In 1933, when Jewish actors were subjected to a stage ban, Halbers was forced to find a new profession and established a house painting business. In 1935 he married Johanna Archenhold. The couple emigrated in 1939 via London to La Paz, Bolivia, where Fred Halbers worked first as a house painter and restorer, and later as an artist. Moreover he had his own radio broadcast once a week called La voz alemana, managed an amateur theater, and helped at the University San Andres de La Paz to translate the works of the German philosophers Martin Heidegger and Nicolai Hartmann into Spanish. In addition, Halbers traveled widely in Bolivia, giving lectures and producing films and slide shows about his travel experiences. In 1948 he was divorced from his wife. He did not remarry.

In 1954 Halbers left Bolivia and moved to New York, where his sister Herta had been living since her marriage to Walter Gimple, an American, in 1922. Living in Astoria, Queens, Halbers worked again as a painter and restorer. He became a U.S. citizen in 1960. After having spent about 16 years in the U.S. he moved to Cordoba, Argentina, where Elsbeth Ahlfeld, the widow of his cousin Ernst, was living. After the death of Ernst in 1969 Fred Halbers and Elsbeth Ahlfeld developed a close relationship.

Halbers discovered his talent for painting and drawing already as an adolescent, when he tried to create his first drawings and watercolors. In Bolivia Halbers began to focus on etchings, oil paintings, and drawings, finding his inspiration on various trips around the country. As an artist Halbers achieved considerable success. He was not only able to sell many paintings and etchings to private collectors in Europe, South America, and the U.S., but also participated on various exhibitions in La Paz (1948-1954), New York (1958-1960), and Berlin (1968), and received the Gold Medal for Etchings of the American Artists Professional League in 1958 as well as other awards. He sold several etchings for a permanent display to the New York Public Library, the Museo de Arte in Madrid, the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, and the Bezirksamt Neukoelln von Berlin.

Another passion, which Halbers had cultivated since his youth, was writing. Throughout his life he worked on various manuscripts for novels, poems, and plays. Apart from a few exceptions the main topic of his literary work was the New Testament character of Judas, who was the subject of his novel, Der geheiligte Judas, as well as the subject of many of his Judas poems. While some of his poems were published in newspapers, Halbers was never able to find a publisher for his main work.

The year of Halbers' death is unknown. The last documents of Halbers' life found in this collection originate from 1987, when Halbers lived in the Adolf Hirsch Heim, a home for the elderly, in Buenos Aires.