He attended art school at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Dessau with Wilhelm Danz in 1926, and from 1927 studied at Bauhaus Dessau with Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Lyonel Feininger.
[citation needed] Paying for his studies required occasionally working in the painting class of the Berufsschule in Zerbst.
From 1935 until the beginning of World War II, he studied in Munich at the Academy of Fine Arts.
As a set designer, he worked at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich as well as at the opera houses in Magdeburg and Bernburg; he also worked at Bavaria Film in Munich, on the sets of feature film Philine [de] with Theo Lingen.
[citation needed] The Younger, on the other hand, usually added "Munich" beneath his signature, since he lived and worked there.