[2] Von 1908 bis 1913 studierte er Geschichte, Romance studies and musicology[1] an der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin.
In 1913, he was awarded his doctorate there with the dissertation Das alte lübische Stadtrecht und seine Quellen Die Referenten der Arbeit waren Dietrich Schäfer and Michael Tangl.
[4] After the First World War, he was musically trained by Otto Taubmann at the Berlin University of the Arts and by Franz Schreker.
On the other hand, a connection "to traditional genres as well as an inclination to classicist thinking and simple, transparent fracture" (Grützner 2004) can be recognised.
[1] According to Gilbert Stöck, he "sometimes distanced himself critically from some of the dogmas of Socialist realism"; the composer pursued a neo-Romantic style.