Sibylle Boden-Gerstner

Sibylle Boden-Gerstner (Breslau, 1920 – Berlin, 2016) was a German costume designer, painter and fashion writer whose career spanned Nazi Germany, France and the German Democratic Republic. She is best known for founding the arts and fashion magazine Sibylle in 1956, which she edited until 1961.

Born into a German-Jewish family in Breslau, she studied in Berlin and, briefly, at the Academy of Arts and Crafts in Vienna, until the annexation of Austria in 1938 ended her studies. In 1940 she reached Paris illegally, thanks to the help of Karl-Heinz Gerstner, whom she married in 1945. There she resumed painting at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts and sketched the latest designs at Haute couture shows.

After the war she taught at a private fashion academy in Berlin. From 1949 she worked mainly on costumes for the DEFA film studio and East German television, collaborating with the director Wolfgang Staudte. Her magazine, with its minimalist covers and print runs of up to 200,000 copies, was a success, yet in 1961 it was judged "too French for Socialism" and she had to resign.

Her legacy lies in fashion publishing in the Eastern Bloc and in films such as Wolf Among Wolves, which also reached West German audiences.