Max Scheler

Max Scheler arrived at photography through Herbert List

Max Scheler was born Max Georg Scheler in Cologne on 28 December 1928. The son of the famous philosopher Ferdinand Scheler (1874-1928), he initially wished to follow in his father’s footsteps and began studies in art history and literature in Munich where he met the photographer Herbert List (1903-1975) in 1941, and became his assistant for a time. He accompanied List, his lifelong friend and mentor, on trips through Italy, Spain and Greece and learnt the craft of photography from him. From 1951 to 1952, Scheler studied for a short time at the Sorbonne in Paris where he met the Hungarian-American photographer Robert Capa (1913-1954), who recognised the young artist’s talent and encouraged him to publish his pictures through the newly-founded agency Magnum Photos, which Scheler did in 1956.

Years of work for the Hamburg Stern magazine

From 1954, Max Scheler live in Rome and published his pictorial reportages on political and social events in Italy in international magazines such as ParisMatch, Picture Post (London), Look (New York), Münchner Illustrierte, and Epoca (Milan), whilst a portrait of himself and his work appeared in the important Yearbook of US Camera during a six-month stay in the USA in 1956. In 1957, he photographed Romy Schneider (1938-1982) while filming Sissi – Schicksalsjahre einer Kaiserin and her attendance at the film festival. After working for a time as a freelance photographer in Rime, Scheler moved back to Germany and began a number of years of exclusive work for Stern in Hamburg where he significantly shaped the magazine with his journalistic style alongside Thomas Höpker (born 1936), Robert Lebeck (1929-2014) and Stefan Moses (1928-2018). On behalf of Stern, Scheler travelled to the USA, Poland, France, Vietnam, Korea and the GDR and created multi-part pictorial essays. 

The person as the centrepoint of photographic work

Max Scheler was interested above all in people and their world. He strove for as private a view as possible of the everyday lives of the people in the countries he visited, but also photographed the important personalities of contemporary history, including Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon, Konrad Adenauer, Heinrich Lübke, Willy Brandt, Queen Elizabeth, Pope Paul VI, Indira Gandhi, King Hussein and Giovanni Agnelli. Together with his colleague Astrid Kirchherr (1938-2020), he documented the rampant Beatlemania and the filming of the British mocumentary A Hard Day’s Night (Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!) by the British director Richard Lester (born 1932), and launched the journal Geo with his colleagues Rolf Gillhausen (1922-2004) and Rolf Winter (1927-2005). After the death of his friend and mentor Herbert List, he took care of the estate and curated several exhibitions of List’s work. 

Max Scheler died in Hamburg on 7 February 2003.