Rudolf Koppitz was born into a rural Protestant family in Schreiberseifen, a village close to the town of Freudenthal, in the Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia (what is today Skrbovice near Bruntál in the Czech Republic) [REF].
His time at the Institute was interrupted by the First World War in which Koppitz found himself putting his talents to use as an aerial reconnaissance photographer [REF].