Professor Dr. hc L.Fritz Gruber was an initiator and creative genius of photography. He travelled the world to bring new and old applications and manifestations of photography to his exhibitions and met and befriended the great and famous photographers in America, Europe and Asia. He was the friend of famous photographers from August Sander and Ansel Adams to Sebastiano Salgado, from Man Ray to Cecil Beaton, from Henri Cartier Bresson to Bob Capa. He started to collect photographs when he was still at School and his vast, wonderful Gruber-Collection is now the pride of the Ludwig Museum in Cologne. In the 1950s he initiated and made films of still photographs; made early films for TV about photography and photographers, which broke new ground then and inspired the creation of photographic galleries and museums, and he initiated the DGPh, the German Photographic Society.