Gurlitt was born into an artistic family in Dresden in 1895. His father Cornelius Gurlitt (senior) was an architect and art historian, his brother Willibald a musicologist, his sister Cornelia a painter and his cousin Wolfgang was an art dealer as well. His grandmother Elisabeth Gurlitt was Jewish, which would prove problematic under Nazi rule: he was considered a "quarter-Jew" under the Nuremberg laws. After completing his schooling, he showed an interest in art history and registered to study this subject at the Dresden Technical School, where his father was Chancellor, however in 1914 World War I commenced and both Hildebrand and his elder brother Wilibald volunteered to join the German army of the day. Hildebrand served and was wounded at both the Somme and in Champagne, and later served as an army press officer in Vilnius and Kaunas in Lithuania, where he remained until 1919. Returning to a shattered Germany after demobilization, he was disillusioned with all aspects of war and politics and vowed henceforth to devote himself to art alone as an escape from politics, an irony which has not escaped subsequent biographers.