William S. Heckscher
From 1918 to 1921, the family lived in the Netherlands while Heckscher's father served as the Weimar Republic's ambassador to The Hague; there, Heckscher enrolled at the Nederlandsch Lyceum. Heckscher pursued his interests in history and Flemish art by spending his off hours studying at the Dutch Royal Library, the Mauritshuis and the Kröller-Müller Museum, but was dismissed from the Lyceum in 1920 for "lack of scholarly potential". After the family returned to Hamburg, Heckscher attended the city's Kunstgewerbeschule, now the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, but failed a class in ceramics.
Joseph Hirsch
The son of physician Charles S. Hirsch and Fannie Wittenberg, he grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and attended Central High School. He was of German-Jewish heritage. At age 17, he entered the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts), where he was instructed in the Philadelphia realist tradition of Thomas Eakins. After graduation, he studied privately with George Luks in New York City (1932–33). Luks was a founder of the Ashcan School and one of "The Eight," a group of painters who depicted everyday scenes of urban life. Luks introduced Hirsch to the Social Realism movement.