28 October 1919 – 5 January 2000, was an Austrian-born Swiss actor, film and theatre director, and photographer. Born in St. Pölten, Austria, he studied art history, history, and German literature at the University of Breslau before turning to acting. In 1938 he entered the acting school of the Staatliches Schauspielhaus in Berlin. After being imprisoned for several months in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1939 because of his membership in the Bündische Jugend, he moved to Vienna and studied acting and directing at the Max Reinhardt Seminar. He later worked at theatres in Salzburg, Bremen, Munich, Basel, and Zurich, where he acquired Swiss citizenship.

His interest in photography developed after seeing an exhibition by Magnum Photos in Lucerne in 1952. He subsequently decided to learn photography and also sought experience with cinematography, working as a camera assistant on Helmut Käutner's Monpti (1957). Photography became a parallel part of his artistic work, and in 1960 he published the photobook Zwei Gramm Licht.

At the same time, he established a substantial career in cinema. After acting in films throughout the 1950s, he made his directorial debut with the documentary Warum sind sie gegen uns? in 1958. His international breakthrough came with the anti-war film Die Brücke (1959), which received numerous awards, including a Golden Globe, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He later co-directed the German sequences of The Longest Day (1962) and directed films including Das Wunder des Malachias (1961), Der Besuch (1964), Das falsche Gewicht (1971), and Das Spinnennetz (1989). He also continued acting, appearing in films by Michelangelo Antonioni, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, and others.

Reference
Biography text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), German edition. Retrieved 16 September 2026.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Wicki