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.

Early collector of Egon Schiele, wrote a memoir of the artist. Benesch was a railroad administrator in Vienna for the southern line. Although the position was not a particularly lucrative one, he collected contemporary Austrian art. Early on he befriended the Austrian expressionist artist Egon Schiele and became one of his earliest patrons. Schiele painted a combined portrait of him and his son in 1913 (Doppelbildnis H. Benesch und Sohn, Neue Galerie der Stadt Linz, Wolfgang Gurlitt Museum, Inventory 12).

Picasso scholar, wrote catalogue raisonne with Pierre Daix.

Museum director, exponent of German Expressionism, especially  August Macke. Cohen was born in 1880 to Helene and Friedrich Cohen. His father was a book publisher in Bonn, Germany. Cohen graduated from the Städtisches Progymnasium mit Oberrealschule in 1898, and the following year began the study of ancient languages.

Picasso scholar, compiler of catalogue raisonné, and writer. Daix was the son of Martial Daix, a city civil servant, and Germaine Derbré (Daix). He attended the Lycée Henri IV in Paris, and then universities in Rennes and Paris, receiving a B. A. Daix joined the communist party in France and served in the French Resistance during World War II, and was decorated with the Commandeur de la Légion d´honneur, the Croix de guerre 1939-1945, and Médaille de la Résistance. Daix first met Picasso, a fellow member of the French Communist Party, in 1945.

Film and painting historian of German Expressionism. Eisner's father was Hugo Eisner (1856-1924), a textile exporter and magistrate, and her mother Margarethe Feodora Aron (1866-1942). She was raised in a prosperous middle-class Jewish family living in near the Zoo quarter of Berlin.

Art and literary critic; wrote early book on expressionism. Fechter studied architecture and natural science in Berlin. Hiis doctoral thesis, Die Grundlagen der Realdialektik, was completed in 1906. Fechter wrote for the Dresdner Neuesten Nachrichten newspaper after receiving his degree, moving to Berlin to write for the Vossischen Zeitung in 1911.Between 1918 until 1933 he was a cultural critic for the Deutschen Allgemeinen Zeitung. In 1914 he published Expressionismus one of the earliest documentations of Expressionism as an art movement.

Editor of the Art News during the critical years of Abstract Expressionism. Frankfurter was the son of Moritz Frankfurter and Freda Heyman (Frankfurter) of Chicago. He attended the Boy's Latin School in Chicago followed by one year at Princeton University. He transferred to Humboldt University, Berlin, where he was awarded an undergraduate degree and graduate degree from the Institut für Kunstgeschichte (Institute for Art History).

Curator at the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt; exponent of Expressionism; primarily focused on works of the painting collection and prints and drawings department. Freund was born in Nußloch, Grand Duchy of Baden [modern Baden-Württemberg], Germany, to Max Freund (1857–1933), a cigar manufacturer, and Auguste Weisenburger (1860–1898). He attended school at the Ludwig-Georgs-Gymnasium in Darmstadt, completing his Abitur in 1900. Freund initially studied law in Heidelberg and Berlin, as well as modern philology and anthropology in Munich and Freiburg.

Americanist, especially on Abstract Expressionism and particularly Franz Kline. Gaugh graduated from Indiana University in 1960. He initially considered a career in journalism, working as a police and court reporter in Chicago while earning an M.A. in journalism in 1963. He became interested in art history, writing a second M.A. in art history in 1966 and joining the faculty of Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY. A 1972 dissertation on Franz Kline, the first ever, was granted also from Indiana University.

Art museum and library director; Germanist art historian specializing in northern renaissance; patron of Expressionist artist and Asian art authority. Glaser was born of cultured Jewish parentage, S. Glaser and Emma Hase (Glaser). He attended the Wilhelms gymnasium in Berlin, graduating in 1897. Glaser studied medicine at the University of Freiburg and Munich, receiving his M.D. in 1902. However, art had always interested him and he immediately began a second degree in art history during the years Heinrich Wölfflin was in Berlin. He was granted a Ph.D.

Director, Essener Kunstmuseum 1909-1922, major exhibitor of German Expressionism. Between 1891 and 1896 Gosebruch studied philology in Munich, Geneva and Berlin. He taught as a private tutor until 1903 when he joined the the Essen museum as an unpaid assistant. During the same time he studied art history in Paris and Berlin, the latter venue under Heinrich Wölfflin. After a second undergraduate degree in art history in 1906, he was appointed in 1909 Director of Essen art museums, a diverse art collection.

German Expressionist documentary scholar. Grisebach was the son of Jena professor of philosophy, Eberhard Grisebach (1880-1945), whose art connections laid the groundwork for his son's interests. His father was a second cousin of the art historian August Grisebach and personal friends with the artists Ferdinand Hodler (who became Lothar's Godfather) and Edvard Munch. The senior Grisebach organized art exhibitions for Kunstverein Jena, where he met and befriended the German Expressionist (Brücke) artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

Marxist art historian, Expressionism exponent and later detractor and post-war German diplomat. Hausenstein's parents were Wilhelm Hausenstein (senior) and Clara Baumann (Hausenstein) (d.1937). His father was a financial officer for the duchy of Baden. After graduating from the Gymnasium in Karlsruhe in 1900, he traveled in the typical German fashion between universities, Heidelberg, Tübingen and Munich studying philosophy, classical philology, history and economics--and heard the art history lectures of Karl Voll.

Museum director for the Hamburger Kunsthalle; notable advocate and collector of German modernist works. Heise was born in Hamburg, Germany as the only child of upper middle-class merchant Francis Julius Heise and Helene Kaemmerer (Heise). He attended the private secondary school of Dr. August Bieber until age 15, when he then moved to the Staatliche Oberrealschule in Uhlenhorst.

Musuem Director of German Expressionism

Philosopher, journalist, and scholar of African-American art. Alain Locke was born to an African-American couple, Pliny and Mary Hawkins Locke in Philadelphia, Locke was raised in Philadelphia, a popular center for the abolitionists during the Civil War. After his father died in 1891, Locke’s mother focused on developing her son’s intellectual and cultural curiosity. In 1907, Locke received his B.A. in philosophy and literature at Harvard College.

Picasso scholar and biographer, partner of the art historian Douglas Cooper. Richardson's father was Sir Wodehouse Richardson, D.S.O., K.C.B., who served as Quarter-Master General in the Boer War and later founder of the famous Army & Navy Stores of England. Independently wealthy the younger Richardson at first considered becoming an artist. He made friends with both Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud.

Art critic; canonizer of the Abstract Expressionist movement in the 1950s. Rosenberg was born to Abraham Benjamin Rosenberg, a scholar and sometime poet, and Fanny Edelman (Rosenberg). After a year at the City College of New York (1923-1924), he attended St. Lawrence University, Brooklyn, gaining a law degree in 1927. His education was greatly augmented by reading from the New York Public Library. He contracted osteomyelitis, a serious bone infection, almost immediately after graduating, resulting in his walking with a cane the rest of his life.

Early champion of Germany Expressionism and author of the first graphics catalog of Schmidt-Rottluff. Born to wealthy Jewish parents in Jewish community of Brody, Schapire was privately tutored along with her sisters. In 1893 she moved to Hamburg, writing feminist essays, including "Ein Wort zur Frauenemanzipation" (A word on women's emancipation) in 1897.

Art historian of German Expressionism and Professor of Art History, University of California, Berkeley,1965-1988. Selz was the son of Eugene Selz and Edith Drey (Selz). Of Jewish parentage, he fled Nazi Germany with his family arriving in the United States in 1936. Selz attended Columbia University for the 1937-38 year. He also established a connection with Alfred Stieglitz, a distant relative, who introduced him to many New York and European expatriate artists. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army in Office of Strategic Services from 1941 until 1946.

Early German Expressionism exponent, Kokoschka scholar and art publisher. Westheim was raised in a family of Jewish merchants. After abandoning this career track around 1903, he joined the liberal newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung working on the feuilleton (arts) section. Westheim studied art history at the Technische Universität Darmstadt and then, in 1906, at the University in Berlin Heinrich Wölfflin.

Art Historian and theoretician of Expressionism. Worringer formed his education at a number of German universities, Freiburg, Berlin, and Munich, before finally writing his dissertation at Bern in 1907. His thesis was entitled Abstraktion und Einfühlung: ein Beitrag zur Stilpsychologie (Abstraction and Empathy: Essays in the Psychology of Style). Its publication aroused the interest of art critic Paul Ernst, who reviewed it like a new art book in the influential Kunst und Künstler.

Picasso scholar and magazine editor. Zervos was born in Greece but spent his childhood in Alexandria, Egypt. Bby age 22 had permanently settled in Paris where he received his doctorate (doctorat ès lettres) at the Sorbonne. Zervos joined the publishing firm Editions Morancé writing art articles for the magazine L'Art d'aujourd 'hui in 1924. As an editor, he met many of the artists about whom the magazine wrote: Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Ferdinand Léger, and Pablo Picasso, for whom the latter exerted a strong influence on Zerevos' life.