Beham was born in Nuremberg in 1500 into a family of artists. In 1525, he and his brother were banished from Nuremberg because they were thought to have not accepted the Churches ideas (heresy) and blasphemy. They came back to the city in 3 months, but Beham was banished again in 1528 for publishing a book which was plagiarised from an unpublished manuscript by Albrecht Dürer. 