Art by Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele was born in Tulln on the Danube. His father, Adolph Schiele, worked for the Austrian State Railways as a station master; his mother, Marie Soukup(ová), was from Krumau, in Bohemia. As a child, he attended the school run by the Stift Klosterneuburg, where his arts teacher K.L. Strauch recognized and supported Schiele's artistic talent.
When Schiele was 15 years old, his father died from syphilis, and he became a ward of his maternal uncle, Leopold Czihaczec, who became distressed by Schiele's lack of interest in academic studies, yet recognized his passion and talent for art. In 1906 Schiele applied at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) in Vienna, where Gustav Klimt had once studied. Within his first year there, Schiele was sent, at the insistence of several faculty members, to the more traditional Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna in 1906. There, he studied painting and drawing, but was frustrated by the school’s conservatism. Records show that Adolf Hitler was rejected by the Akademie in 1907; this has led to a misconception that Schiele and Hitler knew each other in Vienna.