This collection documents the personal and professional life of the actor, writer, and artist Fred Halbers. Among the papers in this collection are personal, professional, and some official papers, correspondence, manuscripts, a large amount of notes, drafts, and research material, exhibition programs, awards, travel material, and clippings. In addition, the collection also holds genealogical material, such as family trees and a family chronic. The foundation of the arrangement of this collection was the existing original order created by Fred Halbers himself. Since this order was not equally elaborated for every part of the collection, several minor changes were made. Still, the preservation of Halbers' original arrangement led sometimes to subseries with rather mixed contents. Moreover, documents of similar natures are located in different areas in this 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 Halbers 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 1916 in Russia. After World War I Halbers was active as an actor, director, and a stage designer in several theaters in various German cities, such as Munich, Coblenz, Duesseldorf, Bremerhaven, and Berlin, among others. 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 got married to Johanna Archenhold. The couple emigrated in 1939 via London to La Paz, Bolivia, where Fred Halbers worked first as a house painter and restorer, 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; he gave speeches and produced films and slide shows about his travel experiences. In 1948 he was divorced from his wife. After that he never married again

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, Halbers worked again as a painter and restorer and became a 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 a youngster, when he tried to create his first drawings and watercolors. In Bolivia Halbers began to focus on etchings, oil paintings, and drawings while he found his inspiration on his 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), 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 his literary ambition. 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, for whose rehabilitation he strived in a novel, Der geheiligte Judas, as well as in various compilations of 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

Photographs removed to Photograph Collection

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