Eisenstein was born in Riga, Latvia but his family moved a lot in his early years. Eisenstein continued to move often during his life. Eisenstein's father Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein was of German-Jewish and Swedish descent and his mother, Julia Ivanovna Konetskaya, was from a Russian Orthodox family. He was born into a middle-class family. His father was an architect and his mother was the daughter of a wealthy merchant. Julia left Riga the year of the 1905 Revolution. She brought Sergei with her to St. Petersburg. Sergei would return at times to see his father. His father would later move to join them around 1910. His mother soon divorced his father and moved to France away from the family.