Von Sacher-Masoch was born in what is now Lviv, Ukraine. His father was a Austrian police director with Spanish ancestry, and his mother was Charlotte von Masoch, a Ukrainian noblewoman. He began learning German at age 12. He studied law, history and mathematics at Graz University. After he finished his study, Sacher-Masoch moved back to Lemberg where he became a professor. His early writing was mainly non-fiction works about Austrian history. At the same time, Sacher-Masoch began looking into the stories of his homeland, Galicia. Soon he stopped lecturing to write stories and letters. Within ten years, his short stories and novels became more famous than his historical non-fiction works, though his fiction had history in it.