Gunter Sachs

Gunter Sachs - Glittering playboy with a brilliant education

Gunter Sachs was born on 14 November 1932 in Mainberg, the younger son of the industrialist Willy Sachs, and was related to the Opel dynasty through his mother which is why he formerly went by the name Gunter Sachs von Opel. His parents separated early, and Gunter grew up together with his older brother primarily with his mother Elinor von Opel in Switzerland. He attended the exclusive boarding school ‘Auf dem Rosenberg’ in St. Gallen, studied economics and maths in Lausanne and completed training as a banker and precision mechanic, as well as earning a diploma as a French interpreter. Following his father’s suicide, Gunter Sachs and his brother Ernst-Wilhelm joined the board of the Sachs Group, before his brother died in an accident in 1977. Gunter Sachs’ had a son, the furniture designer Rolf Sachs, with his first wife Anne-Marie Faure, but Anne-Marie died as a result of an anaesthesia mistake in 1958. Sachs would become known as a playboy, propagating free love as much as possible, with up to five women by his side simultaneously. Alongside diverse affairs, including with the former Persian queen Soraya, he was married to the French actress Brigitte Bardot and the Swedish model Mirja Marsson. At the same time, he made his name as an art collector, documentary film maker and a photographer.

Photographer, gallerist, and patron of the arts

Gunter Sachs reached extreme fame as a photographer in the 1970s, attracting attention in 1973 with the first nude picture in the French magazine Vogue and making his international breakthrough as a photographer in 1974 at the Photokina trade fair where he not only designed the official advertising poster, but also organised a comprehensive special exhibition. As a wealthy industry heir, he was financially independent and therefore emerged as a patron alongside his work as an artist. The planned construction of a museum for modern art in Munich failed due to bureaucratic hurdles, which led Sachs to move his activities to Hamburg. There he founded his ‘Galerie an der Milchstrasse’, handing the management to the portrait photographer Angelika Platen. When hardly any works were sold at an exhibition of his long-term friend Andy Warhol, Sachs secretly purchased around a third of the works by the American artist to spare his friend’s disappointment. Even at a young age, the well-connected Sachs had begun to build up an extensive collection of important works of art, with the value estimated at many millions of euros. 

World-renowned nude photographer; numerous exhibitions; interest in astrology

As an artist, Gunter Sachs focused on Surrealist nude and landscape photography. His works have filled seven photo books and over 40 international exhibitions, and retrospectives of his work are among the greatest successes of the hosting museums. He was celebrated success as a bobsledder and documentary filmmaker, whilst his engagement in the field of astrology culminated in the immensely successful book Die Akte Astrologie, in which he incorporated the results of comprehensive statistical investigations initiated and financed by himself. Gunter Sachs received prizes and honours for his work, including the Medal of Honour of the Land of Carinthia, presented to him by Jörg Haider in 2007. 

Gunter Sachs took his own life on 7 May 2011 in Gstaad, convinced that he was suffering from Alzheimer.