[1] His early childhood was marked by several changes of locations, the family lived in Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and England before his father was involved in the establishment of a bicycle workshop in Lennep in North Rhein-Westphalia.
[3] By 1905 the family finally settled down in Berlin, where he attended a private high school whose students mainly constituted members of the Prussian nobility.
Concordantly he also attended evening classes in painting and drawing at the royal art academy in Berlin.
[6] He was wounded in one of his first involvements in the battles[6] and until his redeployment in October 1916,[7] he got to know several poets and painters around the magazine Der Sturm such as Georg Muche, Herwarth Walden, Theodor Däubler or William Wauer.
[9] Back in the western front in November 1917, he was captured during the Battle of Cambrai and sent into a POW camp in Calais.
[17] A few months before the Nazi Party (NSDAP) of Adolf Hitler assumed the power, he decided to emigrate to Austria in November 1932.
[23] In 1943 and 1944 during World War II he worked at the Psychological Institute of the University of Strassburg in occupied Alsace, France.
[24] In November 1944 the allied forces liberated Strassburg from the Nazis and he and his wife came into a French POW camp.
[30] He has published texts and poems in the magazines Der Sturm and the communist Die Rote Fahne.