Hubert Wilhelm Jung was born in Stuttgart in 1883 as the youngest of seven children. After attending secondary school in Ravensburg, he registered in 1904 in the Architecture Department of the University of Technology in Munich. He had a close relationship with his older brother Hugo (born 1877), who had a doctorate in modern languages and was a student for a while at the same time as him. After Hubert completed his studies in 1911, the two brothers moved to Vienna to work with Josef Hoffmann, whom they had met through their friend Adolf Marx (1886–1971). Hoffmann had built the family villa for Marx’s father, the paint manufacturer Hugo Marx (1854–1944), in Hinterbrühl. The Jung brothers were thus members of artist circles that included Hoffmann, Dagobert Peche, Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. Contact with the last-mentioned is documented in a series of letters, according to which the brothers not only acted as brokers for Hoffmann but also bought works directly from the artist. In a list made by the artist showing the collectors of his drawings is the entry "Dr. Jung, Vienna". It is not clear which of the two brothers is meant. When the First World War started, the brothers were conscripted into the army in Germany. Hugo Jung, a lieutenant and company commander, died on 11 August 1917 in western Moldova. His brother Hubert survived but was seriously wounded. He did not return to Vienna, however, but moved to Gut Abelbeck bei Soltau, near Hannover, to his partner Anna Cassinone (1878–1968), a member of the wealthy Protestant industrial family, who had been married first to the Hannover publisher Max Jänecke (1869–1912) and then to Alexander Cassinone (1866–1931), director of Österreichische Maschinenbau AG Körting. In May 1931 Hubert and Anna Jung—they had married in 1924 in Munich—moved to Salzburg, where they acquired a farm, Erlhofgut, in the municipality of Thumersbach. They were accompanied by the 26-year-old housekeeper Emmy Lohmann, whom they later adopted. After the annexation of Austria in 1938, they sold the farm because they feared, as Hubert later admitted, that Anna could have difficulties later on account of her Jewish origins. Anna's mother Marie Körting (née Matyas, 1850–1880) came from a Hungarian Jewish merchant family. The Jungs subsequently acquired Hof Uhla with an area of around 145 hectares and a lake in the present-day district of Mecklenburgische Seenplatte. As they did not need an agricultural permit, they spent the following years relatively undisturbed, although the Reichssippenamt (Reich Genealogy Office) was aware that Anna was a "half-Jew". Apart from breeding small horses and Great Danes, they lived mostly from their annuities. When the Red Army arrived in May 1945, the animals, equipment, household furnishings and food were plundered. The following year the farm was to be expropriated as part of the "democratic land reform", but Hubert Jung was initially able to resist this action. In 1948, however, their entire property was once again expropriated under Regulation No. 19 of the Mecklenburg State Administration on Land Reform in the State of Mecklenburg of 5 September 1945. Local farmers were forced under police supervision to leave their properties. In May 1949 Hubert Jung managed to store with a friend the household goods deposited until then in a barn. In 1966 he stated that he had been able to send "a few crates and pictures and small household items to relatives in the West". After all attempts to have the expropriation repealed, Anna and Hubert Jung escaped from East Germany towards the end of 1949. They were taken in by Baron Christoph von Tucher at his Nuremberg castle, where they lived the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, the municipal council of the City of Neustrelitz seized the remaining goods stored with a friend. After their flight, the Jungs were always short of money. Their only remaining property was the Tyrolean mountain hut they had had built in 1920 on Bärenbadkogel between Kitzbühel and the Thurn pass and where they subsequently spent many months. It was from there that Jung wrote to Albertina director Otto Benesch in April 1951, offering nine drawings and an etching by Egon Schiele. He also asked for support in the sale of his oil painting The Small Town III, which he had acquired from Schiele in 1914 while working with Hoffmann. The Albertina purchased eight drawings, and the painting was ultimately acquired by Rudolf Leopold.

Among the drawings acquired by the Albertina is one of a boy by Erich Lederer, which was claimed by one of Lederer's legal successors in 2015. In October 2016 the Art Restitution Advisory Board did not recommend the restitution of the work and the five others acquired from Hubert Jung and in the Albertina today, because it was to be assumed that Jung had acquired the works directly from the artist through his work in Vienna.