His father was a Prussian nobleman, his mother a descendant of the painters Lucas Cranach the elder and younger.
He was educated by a private tutor PWG Gutzke, the Wilhelmsgymnasium at Eberswalde and then nominated by the Kaiser Wilhelm I as a Rhodes Scholar reading Philosophy at Lincoln College (Oxford University) from 1907 to 1909.
He volunteered as a trooper in the Second Heavy Cavalry at the outbreak of the First World War and was commissioned in the field after a few months.
After a spell on a hospital ship, which gave him his first and only glimpse of the Aegean, he was invalided home via Davos in an exchange of prisoners in 1917.
The same year, he and his brother Robert allowed Dietrich Bonhoeffer to use their estate at Schlönwitz to run an illegal Lutheran seminary.
His personal file indicates that his party membership was connected with his promotion from Ausserordentlicher to Ordentlicher Professor, which followed that year when he was appointed to a residential teaching professorship.