Editing Gerhard Richter (section)

===Childhood and education===
Richter was born in Hospital Dresden-Neustadt in [[Dresden]], Saxony,{{sfn|Elger|2009|p=3}} and grew up in Reichenau (now [[Bogatynia]], Poland), and in Waltersdorf (Zittauer Gebirge), in the [[Upper Lusatia]]n countryside, where his father worked as a village teacher. Gerhard's mother, Hildegard Schönfelder, gave birth to him at the age of 25. Hildegard's father, Ernst Alfred Schönfelder, at one time was considered a gifted pianist. Ernst moved the family to Dresden after taking up the family enterprise of brewing and eventually went bankrupt. Once in Dresden, Hildegard trained as a bookseller, and in doing so realized a passion for literature and music. Gerhard's father, Horst Richter, was a mathematics and physics student at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden. The two were married in 1931.{{sfn|Elger|2009|p=4}}

After struggling to maintain a position in the new [[National Socialist]] education system, Horst found a position in Reichenau. Gerhard's younger sister, Gisela, was born there in 1936. Horst and Hildegard were able to remain primarily apolitical due to Reichenau's location in the countryside.<ref name=ElgerP4>{{harvnb|Elger|2009|pp=4–5}}</ref> Horst, being a teacher, was eventually forced to join the National Socialist Party. He never became an avid supporter of Nazism, and was not required to attend party rallies.<ref name=ElgerP4 /> When he was 10 years old, Gerhard was conscripted into the ''[[Deutsches Jungvolk]]''; the [[Hitler Youth]], for teenage boys, was dissolved at the end of the war, before Richter reached the age of enlistment.{{sfn|Richter|Harten|1986|p=9}} In 1943, Hildegard moved the family to Waltersdorf, and was later forced to sell her piano.{{sfn|Elger|2009|p=6}} Two brothers of Hildegard died as soldiers in the war and a sister, Gerhard's aunt Marianne, who had [[schizophrenia]], was starved to death in a psychiatric clinic, a victim of the [[Nazi Euthanasia Programme|Nazi euthanasia]] program.<ref name="grcom">{{Cite web|url=https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/biography|title=Biography » Early Years |website =Gerhard Richter|type=official website |language=en|access-date=27 January 2019}}</ref>

Richter left school after 10th grade and apprenticed as an advertising and stage-set painter, before studying at the [[Dresden Academy of Fine Arts]]. In 1948, he finished vocational high school in [[Zittau]] and, between 1949 and 1951, successively worked as an apprentice with a sign painter and as a painter.<ref name="Elgerp10">{{harvnb|Elger|2009|p=10}}</ref> In 1950, his application for study at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts was rejected as "too bourgeois".<ref name="Elgerp10" /> He finally began his studies at the Academy in 1951. His teachers there were [[Karl von Appen]], {{Interlanguage link|Heinz Lohmar|de}}, and [[Will Grohmann]].