Rudolf Hamburger was taught to sketch by Friederich Iwan, a local artist, while he was still a boy. He successfully completed his schooling and moved to Munich to study architecture in 1922. The assassination of the Foreign Minister, Walter Rathenau, that year came as a particular blow. Rathenau had been a close personal friend of his father's: the shocking event and the rising tide of right-wing extremism, which was particularly hard to miss in Munich, demonstrated the fragility of the new liberal-democratic political order. Contemporary architects by whom he was particularly influenced during his two years in the Bavarian capital included Theodor Fischer (1863–1938), Gabriel von Seidl and German Bestelmeyer (1874–1942). He moved to Dresden in 1924 where he studied for around a year, and met , a fellow trainee architect who became a close friend. Their careers would frequently become entwined during the decades that followed.