Charged with Patricide

He was amongst the world's best photographers, his portraits of the rich and the beautiful adorning the covers of Life and Vogue, his pictures exhibited in the most important collections. When Philippe Halsmann died in New York in 1979, he was a very famous man. One event, however, had a traumatic impact upon his life. On September 10, 1928, his father, 48-year-old Jewish dentist Morduch Max Halsmann, was killed on a mountain trip. On the same day, his son was arrested on suspicion of murder.

In the explosive political climate of the years between the wars, the spectacular criminal case soon developed into an international affair. Philipp Halsmann became both a scapegoat and a hero, his case reflecting social divisions. Intellectuals from Sigmund Freud to Albert Einstein, from Jakob Wassermann to Thomas Mann, stood up for Halsmann who was sentenced first for murder, then for manslaughter, and finally pardoned by the Austrian Federal President in 1930. Martin Pollack has followed the traces of the Halsmann Case and recorded them in a gripping documentary novel.

"Martin Pollack reports with the accuracy of the passionate historian and the powerful imagination of the storyteller." (Christoph Ransmayr)