Hugo Preuß was born in Berlin on 28 October 1860 as the only child of Levin Preuß (1820 or 1821-62), a Jewish owner of a lithographic business, and his wife Minna (née Israel, 1826–99). Hugo's father died in 1862 and in 1863 his mother married her husband's brother, Leopold Preuß (1827–1905), a well-off grain merchant. After growing up in the western part of Berlin Hugo Preuß attended university from 1878 at Berlin and Heidelberg, studying "Rechts- und Staatswissenschaften" (law and governance) but with additional courses on history and philosophy. In May 1883, he passed the "1. Staatsexamen" and in November was awarded the Dr. iur. at Göttingen. He stopped working as a legal "Referendar" in 1886 and instead chose a career as an academic teacher. In 1889, he was habilitated with his publication "Gemeinde, Staat, Reich als Gebietskörperschaften" and began working as a "Privatdozent" (lecturer) at the university in Berlin. Although the quality of his writings was appreciated by academia, his Jewish religion and democratic-liberal views prevented him from becoming a tenured professor at the conservative Berlin university.