Volker Stezmann was the third recorded child of a railway official, Kurt Stelzmann, and his wife Charlotte. He was born some eighteen months after a resumption of general European war had been triggered when Europe's two leading dictatorships had launched a military rerun of the Partitions of Poland. Stelzmann's father was killed in the fighting in 1944. Early in 1945 much of Dresden was destroyed by two nights of intensive bombing. Volker Stelzmann survived, but in 1948 the remaining family members relocated to Leipzig which is where Volker Stelzmann grew up and where for more than two decades he would build his artistic and academic career. After leaving middle school, between 1957 and 1960 he undertook an apprenticeship in precision mechanics, continuing with this type of work till 1963. Simultaneously he was attending evening classes at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig, where he was at this stage taught by Walter Münze (1895-1978).