Rudolf Jacobi, was born in Mühlhausen, Thuringia in Germany. He apprenticed as a painter of stage sets, attended the Royal Academy in Berlin. Jacobi took part in exhibitions and became a member of the Berlin Secession. He was a soldier in the flight division during WWI. In 1921 he married painter and pacifist Anna Ottonie Krigar-Menzel (Annot), with whom he founded the Annot School of Painting. Although he began as an impressionist he became a measured expressionist, though he also painted numerous landscapes, cityscapes and portraits. The Nazis shut the Annot School in 1933 after Jacobi and Annot, who were not Jewish, refused to dismiss Jewish students from the school.

The Jacobi family emigrated to Ne...