 He chose the hyphenated surname Meier-Graefe to honour the mother he never knew.After studying engineering in Munich in 1888 and marrying Clotilde Vitzthum von Eckstädt (who was related to the art historian Georg Vitzthum von ), he moved to Berlin, where, in 1890, he took up the study of history in general and art history in particular.He began his literary career as a fiction writer with two novellas, "Ein Abend bei Laura" (1890) and "Nach Norden" (1893), His first work of art criticism, regarding Edvard Munch, was published in 1894.