Born in Weimar, Uhde-Bernays was the son of the journalist Hermann Uhde (1845-1879) and stepson of Michael Bernays.

However, Uhde-Bernays soon realised "that he would rather follow in his father's footsteps and in retrospect describes those Munich years as a 'lost time'.

"[1] Subsequently, he engaged in German studies and art history at the universities of Munich, Berlin and Heidelberg.

At this time, he also wrote theatre and art criticism for the Frankfurter Zeitung.

He was appointed honorary professor of modern German literature at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1946, but rarely gave lecturess.