Hermann Struck (1876-1944) was a successful Berlin artist renowned for his masterful portraits and landscapes. He taught the art of printmaking to some great student, including Marc Chagall and Jacob Steinhardt; his monograph on the art of etching became a classic in the field. Struck was an Orthodox Jew and a Zionist who maintained an outlook on the world that was decidedly and unconventionally cosmopolitan. This is evident in the choice of subjects for countless portraits, from Friedrich Nietzsche to Sigmund Freud, and in the images from his frequent travels throughout Europe, the Middle East and America.

While serving on the Eastern front in the German Army during WW I, Struck came into contact with the Jewish communities of Galicia and Lithuania. He sketched everything he saw relating to the life of Eastern European Jewry, which he later turned into a book, with a text by Arnold Zweig, titled The Face of East European Jewry.

In 1922 he emigrated to Palestine, settling in Haifa. Struck was a faculty member of the Bezalel art school in Jerusalem and a founding member of the Tel Aviv Museum.