Schild, then Achternbusch

Filmportal.de, Literaturportal Bayern, and BnF notices identify Herbert Schild—illegitimate son of sports teacher Luise Schild (née Muckenthaler) and dental technician Adolf Achternbusch—as the artist later billed Herbert Achternbusch (filmportal; Literaturportal Bayern). After his mother's death he grew up with his grandmother in Mietraching in the Bavarian Forest. In 1960 his father adopted him; from then he used Achternbusch. BnF still labels Achternbusch a "pseudonyme" relative to Schild, but German civil and film databases treat it as the adopted legal surname.

He finished Abitur in Cham, studied at teacher-training and art academies in Munich and Nuremberg, then worked odd jobs before publishing avant-garde prose (Suhrkamp's Hülle, 1969) and turning to film.

Auteur films and controversies

From the early 1970s he shot low-budget features as writer-director-star, a Bavarian counterpart to New German Cinema. He acted for Werner Herzog and Volker Schlöndorff and wrote Herzog's Herz aus Glas (Heart of Glass). His own films—Das Andechser Gefühl (1974), Das Gespenst (1982), and dozens more—mixed comedy, blasphemy skits, and love-hate portraits of Bavaria. Das Gespenst triggered censorship fights and funding cuts after blasphemy accusations. He received drama and literature prizes (including Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis and Kasseler Literaturpreis) and kept writing novels, plays, and children's books after largely leaving filmmaking around 2002. He died in Munich on January 10, 2022.

For RealNameOf: birth name Herbert Schild; lifelong public name after 1960, Herbert Achternbusch.

His films and books repeatedly return to Bavarian landscapes, village speech, and anti-authoritarian comedy; German critics treat the Schild-to-Achternbusch name as part of a self-fashioned rural-anarchic persona rather than a Hollywood-style rebrand (filmportal.de; Literaturportal Bayern).

Achternbusch film DVD sets Heart of Glass / Herzog collaborations New German Cinema histories