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.
William S. Heckscher
Heckscher was commissioned in 1931 to paint a portrait of Gustav Pauli, the director of Kunsthalle Hamburg. While at work in Pauli's office, they were interrupted by a strange little man unknown to Heckscher. The man, apparently a colleague of Pauli, immediately launched into some Dürer problem that was troubling him. The stranger's animated discussion with Pauli left Heckscher astounded at the depth of the man's insight. Intrigued, Heckscher followed Panofsky to his office and all but begged to study under him. Panofsky was thoroughly unimpressed by Heckscher's education—he had never finished high school—but Heckscher persisted, and Panofsky eventually relented, telling him of a program to support gifted students who had not completed high school. Heckscher passed the rigorous examination and was accepted into the University of Hamburg, but was only grudgingly given a seat in the back of Panofsky's seminar.