Museum curator, authority on early Christian, Byzantian, Islamic and early Nordic art and textiles. Berliner's parents were Theodor Berliner, a protestant from Jewish extraction, who owned a factory, and Philippine Wollner (Berliner). Beginning in 1904, Berliner studied art history in Berlin, Heidelberg and Vienna under Max Dvořák, earning his doctorate in 1910 with a dissertation on the dating of a Greek manuscript miniature painting.