Louis Gurlitt: A Life in Landscape Early Life and Education Born: Heinrich Louis Theodor Gurlitt on March 8, 1812, in Altona, Holstein (present-day Germany). Gurlitt came from a family with artistic inclinations; his brother, Cornelius Gurlitt, was a composer, and his son would become an architect and art historian. Altona’s unique status as a Danish town with religious freedoms provided a relatively liberal environment for his…