Director of the Munich Gemäldesammlungen 1957-1964. Martin studied philosophy and art history at the university in Freiburg im Breisgau after the First World War. Among his major professors were the philosophers Martin Heidegger, and Edmund Husserl and the art historian Hans Jantzen. His doctoral thesis, written under Heinrich Wölfflin, was on the subject of fourteenth-century stone sculpture from Nuremberg. Martin joined the Mannheim Kunsthalle under the directorship of Gustav Hartlaub.