[1] As a boy growing up in Germany before the war, Weinberger witnessed several acts of political and racial violence, including the burning of the Reichstag[6] and street brawls.
Before the move to Czechoslovakia, Weinberger remembered watching boats of all kinds on the River Spree from the balcony of his parents' house at Bundesratufer 7[7] – a subject which he often returned to in his work, which for him symbolised escape.
The Weinbergers collected art, and a Russian artist, Grisha Oscheroff who lived with the family, taught Harry to paint at an early age.
[9][non-primary source needed] Weinberger's cousin, the artist Heinz Koppel (1919–1980), who was four years older than Harry, also lived in Berlin, moved to Czechoslovakia in 1933 and came to Britain in 1938.
On arriving in England, Weinberger initially boarded at schools in Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire, then took a tool-making apprenticeship at a South Wales factory owned by one of his uncles, and studied engineering.
After a falling out with a commanding officer over his Jewish identity he endured a brief spell in a military prison in Hamburg, but was duly honourably discharged at the end of 1946.
[12] On his return to England, Weinberger was awarded an ex-serviceman's grant and moved to London to study under his previous tutor, Ceri Richards, at Chelsea College of Art.
He did not do well at Chelsea; his modern colourful, expressive work was unpopular with staff and colleagues, who had taken on a rather more muted palette[6] akin to the fashionable Euston Road School painters of daily life of the late thirties and early forties.
[16] Weinberger taught art at schools in London and Reading, then at a teacher training college in Manchester in the early 1960s and later became Head of Painting at Lanchester Polytechnic[1] where he worked for nearly 20 years.
He preferred to paint interiors and objects within them, and he never dated his work (which has posed problems for curators, historians and those concerned with sales of his art).
From his retirement he lived only to paint, and he gradually turned the whole ... house into an image of his own work, in colour, furnishing and in the display of art and objects.
[8] He travelled widely in the UK and throughout Europe, capturing landscapes and harbour scenes in Wales, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Portugal and Turkey.
[6] Weinberger's art-historian friends have commented on his passion for collecting Russian icons, a love for which he apparently developed at an early age.
His works relate us to the deep emotions and profound joys of the early periods of the century when painting was a great universal exploration: impressionism, post-impressionism, fauvism, symbolism, expressionism, when painters adored paint and worshipped colour, inspired by passion and controlled imagination and courageous faith in their art.In 2014, Weinberger's work was exhibited in Iris Murdoch & Harry Weinberger: Writer Meets Painter at the Kingston Museum & Art Gallery, London.
In 1995, Cathy Courtney interviewed Weinberger for the Artists Lives oral history series, part of National Life Stories, an independent organisation based within the British Library, resulting in ten hours of recordings.