Elisabeth Mathilde Geißmar was born February 13, 1880 in Mannheim. Her parents were Louis Hirsch, a merchant in Mannheim, and Emilie, née Mayer. Elisabeth Geißmar attended the Higher Girls‘ School and the Grand Ducal Institute in Mannheim.
Dr. jur. Jakob Geißmar, director of the district court, was born November 1, 1868, in Mannheim. His parents were Dr. jur. Josef Geißmar, a well-known lawyer in Mannheim, and Clara, née Regensburger. The Geißmar family was a well-to-do, middle-class family from Mannheim, probably very German minded and national-liberal in their thinking. Goethe and Bismarck were considered by his father to be „his most revered role models“, as it was said in an obituary in a Mannheim newspaper (1900). Jakob’s grandfather, David Jakob Geißmar, had been a district rabbi in Sinsheim. Jakob himself was a member of the Protestant Heiliggeist congregation when he lived in Heidelberg.
Jakob Geißmar graduated from the Grand Ducal Gymnasium in Mannheim in 1887 and, after completing his one-year military service, studied law in Heidelberg. His professional career began at the district court in Engen and finally led him to Heidelberg, where he worked at this district court starting from 1905, first as a district court councellor, later as a director (mostly as a Judge at the Regional Court of Commerce).