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| Description: After leaving Europe and moving to the US during the 1940s, Philippe Halsman became one of the world’s most renowned portrait photographers. However, before Halsman’s career even began, his life was almost derailed by a controversial murder case. On September 10, 1928, the 22-year-old Halsman went on a hiking trip with his father, Morduch Halsman, in the Zillertal Valley in Tyrol, Austria. According to Halsman, he was walking ahead of his father when he suddenly fell into a ravine. When Halsman found his father’s body near a riverbank, he was still alive so Halsman went off to get help. By the time he returned, his father was dead and his empty wallet was now resting beside him. A stone was found with Morduch Halsman’s blood and hair on it, indicating that he was robbed and murdered sometime after his fall. Authorities soon made the shocking allegation that Philippe Halsman was responsible and charged him with his father’s murder. He was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison. However, Halsman had no discernible motive to kill his father and there was no evidence to implicate him. Since Halsman was Jewish and Tyrol was known for being an anti-Semitic community at the time, this seemed to be the motivating factor behind his conviction. He had many notable supporters who believed in his innocence, including Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. The prosecution had presented Freud’s Oedipus complex as a possible motive for Halsman murdering his father, but Freud himself refuted this idea. Halsman eventually garnered a new trial and received a lighter sentence of four years, but his supporters weren’t satisfied. They successfully petitioned the President of Austria to grant Halsman a full pardon, and he was released in October of 1930. The real murderer of Morduch Halsman was never found. |
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