Phoebe Kornfeld

Phoebe Kornfeld is a retired international lawyer and historian whose work explores Germany’s twentieth-century political, legal, and publishing history. She holds a BA in government and German from St. Lawrence University, a PhD in political science from Duke University, and a JD from Duke University School of Law. As a German Chancellor Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, she conducted legal research in Berlin, and her fluency in German and years living in German-speaking countries have shaped her archival research. She is the author of Passionate Publishers: The Founders of the Black Star Photo Agency, which reconstructs the story of three German Jewish émigrés who helped transform American photojournalism. Salvaging Germany draws on family and institutional archives to recover the postwar reporting of her uncle, Time correspondent Alfred Kornfeld.