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.
Helke Sander
When Sanders was 8 years old, she and her mother survived the firestorm bombing of Dresden during WWII. By the time she had graduated high school, she had been to 15 various schools around Germany. She received her Abitur in Remscheid in 1957 and went on to study acting at Ida Ehre School in Hamburg.
In 1959, she married Finnish writer Markku Lahtela in 1959, and had a son, Silvio Lahtela. After the birth of Silvio, Sanders and her family moved to Helsinki where she studied Germanistics and psychology at the University of Helsinki. Sanders also directed and performed in Ernst Toller's play "Der deutsche Hinkemann and Grass' "Noch zehn Minuten bis Buffalo." On the side, she also taught classes on drama and improvisation. From 1966 to 1969, she studied at the newly founded film school 'Deutsche Film und Fernsehakademie'. Sanders' work in cinema is very closely linked to her political engagement as a feminist.