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.
Gustav Heckmann
War ended in 1918 and Heckmann moved on to study Mathematics, Physics and Philosophy at Marburg, Berlin and Göttingen. It was at Göttingen that he received his doctorate in 1924. This work was supervised by Max Born. In 1925 he passed the state exam necessary for a teaching position. While still a student one of his teachers was the philosopher Leonard Nelson, and he now applied for a teaching post at the with which Nelson was closely involved. At this stage, however, Nelson rejected his application, recommending that he instead obtain teaching experience in the public schools sector. Two years later, after complying with Nelson's non-negotiable condition that he cut all ties with the church, which had led to protracted wrangling with his parents, Heckmann was accepted as a teacher at the in 1927. Nelson himself died unexpectedly at the end of October, and Heckmann served a rigorous apprenticeship under the supervision of Minna Specht who had worked closely with Nelson, and who headed up the academy between 1927 and its closure.