Willy Schwabacher was a German numismatist who hailed from a line of numismatists. His father, Heinrich Wilhelm Schwabacher
(1852–1908), and grandfather, Adoph E. Cahn, were coin dealers, and his cousins, Herbert A. Cahn and Erich B. Cahn, were also
scholars of numismatics. He worked in the coin cabinet of the National Museum of Denmark from 1939 to 1943, when he fled the
Gestapo to Sweden, where he spent much of the rest of his life.