Background
The son of a professor of German philology in Kiel, Kauffmann studied art history at the universities of Munich, Berlin and Kiel, where he obtained his doctorate in 1919 with a thesis on Rembrandt"s art
The son of a professor of German philology in Kiel, Kauffmann studied art history at the universities of Munich, Berlin and Kiel, where he obtained his doctorate in 1919 with a thesis on Rembrandt"s art
In 1922, he completed his Habilitationsschrift on Albrecht Dürer under Adolph Goldschmidt at the University of Berlin.
Foreign some time, he worked at the Gemäldegalerie Berlin under Wilhelm von Bode and in the print room at The Hague, where he was an assistant of Cornelis Hofstede de Groot. In 1924 he worked at the German Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz. From 1936 to 1956, he was professor and chair of art history at the University of Cologne.
In 1957, he moved to the Free University of Berlin, where he was appointed the first professor of art history after World World War World War II He retired in 1964.
In the same year, he did some research at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and in 1966 he was honorary professor at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London.
He spent his last years in Bonn. Apart from the books he wrote, he published many art historical essays in prestigious German art journals, mainly on masterpieces of art
Among others, Günther Binding and Martin Warnke were his students.