While still in the prime of his professional life, Marcel Sternberger died in an automobile accident in 1956. This left his wife, Ilse, the sole guardian of this extraordinary archive of art. Many decades later she became determined to carry the memory of their remarkable experiences forward and find the collection a place in history.

Thus it was with relief in 1996 when Ilse’s search finally revealed an antiquarian dealer to whom she could entrust the Sternberger archive. The dealer promised to keep the collection intact until a solution to Ilse’s dreams could be found. Her great aspiration was to publish Marcel’s book and the archive of their joint work, to bring their art and history out of storage and into the collective memory of the present. Years later the aging antiquarian's son, Jacob Loewentheil, a student of psychology and photography, rediscovered the archive in storage. 

Jacob determined that Sternberger’s work deserved the exposure of which Ilse had dreamed. Exhibitions, The Psychological Portrait: Marcel Sternberger’s Revelations in Photography, and this website have finally erased Ilse’s burden. The book contains excerpts from Marcel’s unpublished manuscript, interviews with his prominent subjects, as well as approximately 206 photographs. The Sternberger genius is now finally exposed to a new generation of admirers and his remarkable story has found its place in the modern consciousness.

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