Friedrich Winkler was born at his family's farm in Prehna, a hamlet of Lumpzig, Germany, in 1888.

[2] He then started working as the editor of the Lexikon der bildenden Künstler by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, for which he wrote 34 entries.

He also worked as a volunteer at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, but then joined the army during World War I.

he wrote a work on Early Netherlandish miniatures, and in 1924 reworked Die Altniederländisch Malerei von 1400–1600, originally written by Max Jacob Friedländer.

Winkler wrote the final two volumes of the catalog and a book about Dürer, which were published in the late 1920s.