Psychiatrist and disciple of Freud; earliest scholar to employ psycho-analytic method to an artist (Giovanni Segantini). Abraham was born into a wealthy, cultured, Jewish family. His father, Nathan Abraham, initially a Hebrew religion teacher, and his mother were first cousins. Karl Abraham rejected religion early in his life. His early interests in philology and linguistics lead to a life-long interest in humanities. After homeschooling, he entered medical school in 1896 at the universities in Würzburg, Berlin and finally Freiburg im Breisgau.

Early friend and exponent of German Expressionist artists, taught art history at the Bauhaus. He was born in Karlsbad, Bohemia, which is present-day Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. Adler was born to Therese (née Hirsch) and Mortiz Adler, both of Jewish descent. Adler’s father was a theater critic and socialist. Adler lived in Munich from 1917 onward, where he wrote his dissertation at that university the same year.  His topic was the early development of the woodcut. In Munich he became familiar with the Blauen Reiter artists group and for whom he worked.

Architectural historian, architect and archaeologist; specialist in ancient excavations, and medieval German architecture. Adler attended the Berlin Kunstakademie beginning in 1841. In 1846 he continued at the University of Berlin (Bauakademie). From 1854 he taught there under Ferdinand von Arnim (1814-1856) and from 1859 as a Dozent for the history of architecture. He was made professor at the Akademie in 1861 succeeding in the position previously held by Wilhelm Lübke.

Specialist in classical Greek and Roman art. Alscher studied under Ernst Buschor at Munich, and was charged with reorganizing the Archaeological Institute at the University of Jena after World War II in 1945. In 1951, he moved to a professorship at the Humboldt University in (East) Berlin, where he was named an ordentliche (full) Professor in 1953. Published a four-volume history of the development of Greek sculpture, that was influenced by his training in the analysis of forms.

Specialist in ancient Greek sculpture; director and rebuilder of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome after World War I, 1921-1927. Amelung's father was a successful insurance executive and his mother an actress. The younger Amelung studied under the classicist Erwin Rohde (1845-98) in Tübingen and briefly under Johannes Overbeck at Leipzig, before settling in Munich to write his dissertation under Enrico Brunn. His dissertation was on the personification of nature in Hellenistic vase painting.

Compiler of famous nineteenth-century catalogs of artist and monogram. His unpublished Lexikon der Nürnberger Künstler inspired the work of Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker for their 37-volume work of the twentieth century.

Private art scholar and dealer of ancient Greek sculpture and portraits. Son of an affluent merchant in Mecklenburg, Arndt studied classical art with Johannes Overbeck in Leipzig and Enrico Brunn in Munich. His dissertation, written under Brunn, focused on Greek vase types. He never attempted a habilitationschrift. Brunn took Arndt for his assistant. Because of his financial independence, Arndt could afford to remain a private scholar.

Philosopher of perception and art; used Gestalt psychology for his art-historical studies. Arnheim was the son of Georg Arnheim (1867-1944), a piano factory owner, and Betty Gutherz (Arnheim) (1879-1966). He was raised in Berlin, attending the Herdergymnasium (Abitur 1923). His parents intended him to assume the family business, but beginning in 1923 Arnheim, studied art and music history, philosophy and psychology at the University of Berlin with Gestalt-based scholars Wolfgang Köhler (1887-1967) and Kurt Lewin (1890-1947). His Ph.D.

Artist and art historian. Auerbach grew up in an educated Jewish family in Frankfurt. Her mother was the painter, Emma Kehrmann (1867-1958). She studied art history between 1917-24 at the universities in Frankfurt, Bonn and Munich, under Rudolf Kautzsch and Heinrich Wölfflin. Her 1925 Frankfurt dissertation, under Kautzsch, focused on 16th-century German portraiture in Franken, Schwaben and Bavaria. She taught at Frankfurter Volksbildungsheim (1925-33).

Art historian of Italian renaissance. Auerbach studied art history in Hamburg with the so-called Hamburg School art historians Charles de Tolnay, Fritz Saxl, Aby M. Warburg and Erwin Panofsky. She wrote her dissertation under Panofsky on Andrea del Sarto in 1932. She married one of the first Bauhaus school students, the sculptor and graphic artist Johannes Auerbach (changed to John Allenby in England,1900-1950) and immigrated to England in 1938.

German specialist in Asian art history, including East Asian, Southeast Asian, and Indian art and sculpture. Bachhofer began his studies in 1916 before a tour of service as a soldier in the First World War. He returned to his studies in 1918 in Munich studying art  history (under Heinrich Wölfflin, archaeology, philosophy and ethnography of Asia under Lucian Scherman (1864-1946). He completed a dissertation on Japanese woodcuts under these men (whom it is unclear).

Professor of law who converted to archaeology in mid-life. Specialized in funerary art and the archaeology of grave sites.

Private scholar; art historian of the baroque and modern periods; methodological theorist. Badt was born to a prosperous Banking family in Berlin. His father, Leopold Badt (1858-1929) raised his children in a rarefied cultural atmosphere, giving them every opportunity to experience art. The younger Badt attended the Berlin-Charlottenburg Reformgymnasium, graduating in 1906. Between 1909-1914 he studied art history and philosophy at the universities of Berlin, Munich and finally at Freiburg (im Breisgau) under Wilhelm Vöge.

Medievalist architectural historian whose influential book on architectural type significance and reception influenced post-war generation of medievalists. Bandmann grew up in Essen. He studied art history at the University in Cologne, inspired by the modern art which had been at the Folkwang Museum there until purged by the Nazis in 1933. Bandmann's dissertation written under Hans Kauffmann in 1942 focused on the abbey church of Essen-Werden.

Director of the Städtische Kunstsammlungen Breslau (Municipal Art Collections Breslau) and Nazi art ideologue. After the German attack on Poland in 1939, Barthel collaborated with the head Nazi art plundering in Poland, Kajetan Mühlmann to write Nazi-ideological books on Polish culture, making the argument that Poland was really part of Germany. During the Third Reich years, Barthel participated in art looting in Poland and co-authored the catalogue "Secured Works of Art in the General Government" that listed cultural assets that had been confiscated in Poland.

Rembrandt scholar and professor of art history, Freiburg. The son of a Mecklenburg judge, Bauch served as cadet and a second lieutenant in the imperial navy, 1916-18. After a 1919-21 volontariat at the Schweriner Museum in Rostock, Germany, under Albert Brinckmann, Bauch studied art history at the universities in Berlin, under Adolph Goldschmidt and Munich, under Heinrich Wölfflin.

Nazi-appointed director of the Folkwang Museum in Essen, after the forced retirement of Ernst Gosebruch. Baudissin, as part of a commission headed by the painter and president of the Reich Culture Chamber, Adolf Ziegler, seized over 5,000 works from private and public collections including Emil Nolde, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Max Beckmann.

Expert in the German Art of the Middles Ages. Baum studied art history at the universities of Munich, Berlin and Tübingen, where he worked under Karl Voll and Heinrich Wölfflin. He completed his dissertation in Tübingen in 1905 on the churches of the architect Heinrich Schickhardt (1558-1634) under Konrad von Lange. Baum wrote his habilitation under Heinrich Weizsäcker in Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart.

Architectural historian and Italianist.

Connoisseur and art critic, co-founder of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. Bayersdorfer initially studied medicine before moving to Munich in 1853 and switching to the humanities. Beginning in 1862 he studied philosophy, art history as well as economics, never attaining a degree in any of these fields. In 1870 he became noted as a journalist and chess player. In the following years he wrote for the theatre reviews for the newspapers of Vienna and Munich, including Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger and Die Walküre, 1868/70.

Co-editor of the magisterial dictionary of artists, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler. Becker studied art history in Bonn and in Leipzig as the assistant to August Schmarsow. He and Ulrich Thieme began work on a comprehensive dictionary of artists, architects and decorators in 1898. The first volume appeared in 1907. Becker withdrew from the project in 1910 because of ill health.

Historian of medieval and Renaissance art; among the key group of German art historians to recast the conception of the middle ages in their scholarship. The son of a salesman, Beenken studied in Freiburg and Munich, the latter where he wrote his dissertation under Heinrich Wölfflin on the topic of Enlightenment sculpture, Die allgemeine Gestaltungsproblem in der Baukunst des deutschen Klassizismus (1920). Afterward he turned his attention toward German sculpture of the Middle Ages. His habilitation Die Rottweiler: eine deutsche Bildhauerschule des 14.