Early Life, Family and Training The story of August Macke begins in the town of Meschede, Germany, where he was born on January 3, 1887. He was the only son born to August Friedrich Hermann Macke, a building contractor and amateur artist, and Maria Florentine. His childhood was shaped by the shifting fortunes of his father’s company, which brought the family to Cologne and later to Bonn. Even as a young boy, the pull of visual expression was evident; he spent his early years sketching and designing sets for school plays, finding a way to translate his surroundings onto paper long before he e…