Karl Emil Franzos was born near the town of Czortków (Chortkiv) in the eastern, Podolian region of the Austrian Kingdom of Galicia. His family came from Sephardi Spanish Jews who fled the Inquisition to Holland and later settled in Lorraine. In the 1770s his great-grandfather established a factory for one of his sons in East Galicia, part of the Habsburg Monarchy since the First Partition of Poland in 1772. When the Austrian administration required Jews to adopt surnames, "Franzos" became his grandfather's name, from his French background, even though he regarded himself as German.