August Haake

In 1908, he decided not to continue his formal education, taking courses in stenography, typing and bookkeeping with the intention of following his father into business.

Walter Bertelsmann [de], a landscape painter and the son of one of his father's business acquaintances, gave him his first lessons, after which he attended the Bremen School of Applied Arts.

Every summer while he was a student (from 1910 to 1914), he would join Bertelsmann at the Fischerhude art colony in Worpswede, prolifically painting everything of interest in the local surroundings.

[1] After his death, a young music student named Hipo Döhrman presented herself to his parents as his fiancée and was informally adopted into the family.

As he usually didn't sign his paintings, attribution of his works is sometimes based solely on their original ownership or his habit of drilling two holes in his canvases, to dry them by hanging them on his back with a string while riding home on his motorcycle.