Tarrasch was born in Breslau, in Prussian Silesia. He left in 1880 to study medicine, and qualified as a physician. He lived most of his life in Nuremberg, Bavaria, and later in Munich. Tarrasch was born Jewish, and converted to Christianity in 1909. He was a patriotic German, who lost a son in World War I, but he faced antisemitism in the early stages of Nazism.