Baselitz was born January 1938 as Hans-Georg Kern in Deutschbaselitz, in Germany. His father was the family lived in the local schoolhouse. In 1958, as a student in West Berlin Baselitz met Elke Kretzschmar. They had a son named Daniel. In 1966, the family moved to Osthofen, near Worms, later on elsewhere in Germany and Italy. In 1961, he adopted the name Georg Baselitz to his home town. Since 2013, his wife live in Salzburg in Austria and obtained Austrian citizenship in 2015. Baselitz read the writings of Jakob Böhme. At the ages of 15, he painted portraits, religious subjects, still lifes and landscapes, some in a futuristic style. In 1955, he was rejected. In 1956, he successfully enrolled at the Hochschule für bildende und Kunst in East Berlin. There he studied under befriended Peter Graf and Ralf Winkler. After two semesters, he was expelled for "sociopolitical immaturity." In 1957, he enrolled in West Berlin.