Sibylle Boden-Gerstner
| Sibylle Boden-Gerstner | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Sibylle Boden 17 August 1920 Breslau, Silesia, Germany |
| Died | 25 December 2016 (aged 96) |
| Nationality | German |
| Occupation | Costume designer Graphic artist Fashion journalist Magazine editor |
| Spouse(s) | Karl-Heinz Gerstner (1912–2005) |
| Children | Daniela Dahn (writer & journalist; born 1949) Sonja Gerstner (1952–1971) |
Sibylle Boden-Gerstner (17 August 1920 – 25 December 2016) was a German costume designer, artist and fashion writer. In 1956 she founded the East German arts and fashion magazine which bore her name, , working with the publication as its editor in chief till 1961.
Sibylle Boden was born in Breslau (since 1945 known as Wroclaw) into a German-Jewish family. Her father was a furrier and merchant who probably later died in a Silesian prison during the Shoah. Her mother was a businesswoman. Her grandfather, Moritz Boden, was Jewish and his wife converted to Judaism for her husband's sake. In the 1930s this meant Sibylle Boden was classified as a "jüdischer Mischling" (sometimes translated, loosely, as "Jewish mongrel"). Between 1926 and 1936 she was educated first at a private school and then at the in Breslau. In 1936 she moved to Berlin where she studied at the Textiles and Fashion Academy. Her teachers included and . She briefly attended the Berlin Arts Academy where she studied painting and illustration. However, the Nazi government came to power at the start of 1933. In 1936 it became impossible for Boden to progress with her studies due to her Jewish background. She was able briefly to pursue her studies at the Academy of "Arts and Crafts" in Vienna, where her studies focused on painting, graphic art and theatre costume design, until Austria was merged into an enlarged Nazi state in March 1938, and she left.
Boden first met the government lawyer (and, later, journalist) Karl-Heinz Gerstner at a ski resort in the Riesengebirge (literally "Giant Mountains) in southern Silesia. War had broken out a few months earlier, but Gerstner was excused military service due to the effects of his childhood spinal paralysis. The couple fell in love and eventually married after the war, in 1945.
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