Ernst Kolbe was born in West Prussia but spent most of his childhood and youth from 1883 onward in Stargard, Pomerania. At the age of 19 he entered the studio of the painter Adolf Schlabitz in Berlin. From 1895 to 1899 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, where his teachers included Julius Ehrentraut and the well-known landscape painter Paul Vorgang. In 1899 he joined the studio of the important landscape painter Eugen Bracht, whom he followed to Dresden in 1902 as a master student, together with Otto Altenkirch, Philipp Braumüller, Hans Hartig, Bruno Marquardt, Robert Meißner, and Alfred Oesteritz. A lifelong friendship connected him especially with Hans Hartig.
Bracht’s collegial relationship with his students, as well ...