Albrecht Becher

Born: Unknown 1906, Thale, Germany

Albrecht Brecher was born in the small German town of Thale and was raised with two older brothers.  His father was a baker who ran his own bakery. He went to school in Thale, and studied to become a teacher in Wurzberg. At the age of 18, in Wurzberg, he met the director of the German State Archive, who was his first love and with whom he lived for 10 years. He introduced Albrecht to the German art world and it Albrecht became involved with acting, directing and photography. Albrecht then became an avid photographer and with his first exhibition held in Vienna. His work gained enormous popularity with his unique world-view and works reflecting his love of life.

In 1935 he was arrested for homosexuality based on Section 175 of the new German Criminal Code, forbidding sexual relationships between same-sex couples. He spent three years in prison in Nuremberg, released in 1944. At the end of the war Germany desperately needed more soldiers so prisoners who were "not considered dangerous" were sent to the Eastern front (Ukraine, Russia). After the war he worked as a photographer and director. He wrote about his experiences during the war in a memoir entitled Paragraph 175, published in 2000. He died in 2002 in Hamburg.