Eberhard Fechner was born in 1926 in Liegnitz (Silesia). He grew up with his mother and his stepfather Paul Fechner. For a long time, Fechner was not aware of the existence of his biological father, Helmut Schmuler, who was killed in a concentration camp. Together with his mother, Fechner moved to Berlin where he finished school and did a mercantile apprenticeship at the Ufa film studio. After the war, he attended acting classes at the German Theater and was engaged by theaters in Hamburg, Hanover, Berlin, Bremen, Munich, and Milan. During the 1960s, he worked as an actor and director at the Stadttheater Constance. Furthermore, he was appointed assistant intendant for one season.

Since the mid-60s, Fechner worked as a television director for the North German Broadcasting Company (NDR). His first documentary, "Selbstbedienung", was concerned with a teenage burglar trio. He specialized in deeply investigated and, at the same time, entertaining documentary films. After already having adapted two Hamburg folk plays ("Vier Stunden von Elbe1" and "Gezeiten") for television, "Nachrede auf Klara Heydebreck" (1966/1967) became Fechner’s first feature film. Here, he reconstructed a vita with the greatest possible accuracy. For "Aus nichtigem Anlass" (1973-1979) he investigated a homicide case and transferred the results into a screenplay.

In 1974/1975, Fechner directed the TV mini-series "Tadellöser & Wolff", an adaptation of Walter Kempowski’s novel about a family from Rostock. Subsequently, he concerned himself with the Comedian Harmonists and shot the several hours long documentary "Die Comedian Harmonists – sechs Lebensläufe" (1976), in which he also dealt with the time after the band was forced to break up by the Nazi regime. In 1988, he published a documentary book based on his movie. His only big-screen movie, "Winterspelt 1944" (1977/1978), is based on the novel by Alfred Andersch and centers on a German officer willing to surrender to the Americans in order to avoid more bloodshed.

From 1975 until 1984, Fechner worked on "Der Prozess", a documentary he considered to be his most important work. Using court files, graphic material and innumerable interviews, he depicted the so-called "Majdanek trial", the longest criminal proceeding in German history, in which former staff members of the Majdanek concentration camp were accused of having participated in the murder of thousands. Further film projects included the adaptation of Ralph Giordano’s novel "Die Bertinis" – which he could not direct himself due to illness, – "La Paloma" (1987-1989), a documentary on sailors, as well as the refugee story "Wolfskinder" (1989-1991). In addition, he repeatedly played supporting roles in features for film and television, e.g. in "Die Geschwister Oppermann" (" Oppermann Family", 1982) and in "Das Heimweh des Walerjan Wrobel" (1990/1991).

In 1992, Fechner died in Hamburg, where he had lived with his wife and colleague Jannet Gefken. Due to his very personal "realistic" style between documentary and fiction, he holds a unique position in German television history. As a whole, his movies - which have been shown in several retrospectives both at home and abroad – provide a broad panorama of German history.