Modernist (i. e., 19th-20th century) art historian and art theorist; university professor in art history. He was born in Breslau, Silesia, Prussia which is present-day Wroclaw, Poland. Dresdner was born in 1866 to Bertha Wiener and Rudolf Dresdner, the latter a synagogue cantor. He graduated from the Gymnasium Elisabethanum in 1884. From 1884-1889, the young Dresdner attended the university in Berlin where he studied history, geography, philosophy, and art history.

Architect and seminal architectural historian for the Baroque. Gurlitt hailed from an illustrious creative family of assimilated Jews. He was named for his great uncle, the well-known composer [Gustav] Cornelius Gurlitt (1820-1901). His father was Louis Gurlitt (1812-1879), a Danish/German landscape painter and his mother Elisabeth Lewald (Gurlitt), sister of the writer Fanny Lewald (1811-1889). The conductor and composer Manfred Gurlitt (1890-1972) was also a relative.