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.
Uri D. Herscher
Born in Tel Aviv to parents who fled Germany in the mid-1930s, in 1954, he immigrated with his parents and brother to the United States where they settled in San Jose, California. After high school, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, where he graduated in 1964 with a BA in history and sociology. During his undergraduate years he founded Cal Camp, a summer camp which continues to serve underprivileged children in the San Francisco Bay Area. Seeking donated clothing for the children, he met Robert D. Haas, a classmate and scion of the Levi Strauss family, noted for its philanthropy; this friendship proved instrumental to his later endeavors.