Features on these issues provide subjects for discussion and enhance the conversation on Talking Germany. The two discuss, among other things, the young F.C. Gundlach's experiences during World War II. They touch upon how fashion reacts to developments in society. A further topic is the neglect of the cemetery as a cultural institution and the mausoleum he recently had built for himself.
Short Biography
Franz Christian Gundlach was born in 1926, in the village of Heinebach in Hessen, where his parents ran a restaurant. After passing his school-leaving exams during World War II, he enlisted in a Luftwaffe support unit in the last months of the war, and barely survived that time and his subsequent imprisonment. He spent a year and a half in a sanatorium recovering from the tuberculosis he had contracted. Afterwards he trained as a photographer against his father's wishes. He soon found widespread recognition with his austerely composed photographs for magazines such as Brigitte and Stern. He also organizes exhibitions and collects contemporary photography. To help establish the medium as an independent art form and make it accessible to a larger public, in 2003, he founded the International House of Photography in Hamburg. F. C. Gundlach lives in Hamburg and Berlin.