Manfred Altman(n) was born into a Jewish family in Salzburg, Austria in 1911. He studied art in Holland, where he settled in 1934 as a lawyer for a Jewish company. Fleeing Nazi persecution, he moved to England in 1939, and in 1940 was briefly interned as an 'enemy alien' on the Isle of Man. Afterwards, he became a businessman, taking British citizenship in 1947. In his later years, he helped develop the Institute of Jewish Studies at University College London, founded originally by his brother, Alexander, in Manchester in 1954. Manfred Altman died in London in 1999.