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Alexander Schmorell was born in Orenburg, Russia, on [[September 16]], 1917 ([[September 3]] on the [[Julian Calendar]]), and was [[baptism|baptised]] in the [[Church of Russia|Russian Orthodox Church]]. His father, Hugo Schmorell, a doctor, was Germanand held German citizenship, although he had been born in Orenburg, Russia, and had lived there most of his life, except for a time when he studied medicine in Germany. His mother, Nataliya Vvedenskaya, was Russian, and was the daughter of a Russian Orthodox [[priest]]in or near Moscow. Dr. Schmorell had been practicing medicine in Moscow when he was forced to stop due to anti-German sentiment as a result of World War I. However, due to the great need of doctors in Russia, he was allowed to return to Orenburg to practice medicine there. With him came his new bride. Soon thereafter, in September 1917, a son, Alexander, was born to the couple. Although Hugo Schmorell was by confession Lutheran, he allowed his son to be baptized in the Orthodox Church. When Alexander was around a year old, his mother died of typhustyphoid during an epidemic. Dr. Schmorell also hired a Russian woman to be a nanny for his son. Her name was Feodosiya Lapschina, and besides taking care of Alexander, she also was an Orthodox Christian, and took the boy to church and taught him about the Faith. His father Dr. Schmorell remarried in 1920. The woman whom he married, a nurse by the name of Elisabeth Hoffman, was also German, but, like Hugo Schmorell, she had grown up in Russia.

Hugo Schmorell and his family left Russia in 1921 in order to flee the Bolsheviks. With them came Feodosiya Lapschina, Alexander's nanny, under the pretense that she was the widow of Hugo Schmorell's brother. (For this reason, she was buried with the name Franziska Schmorell.) The family settled in Munich, and soon afterward two children, Erich and Natascha, were borne of this unionborn to Dr. Schmorell and his second wife.

Although the family was now in Germany, the language of the house remained Russian. In fact, even with the many years she stayed in Germany, Feodosiya Lapschina never learned very much German. Elisabeth Schmorell was [[Roman Catholic Church|Roman Catholic]], as were Alexander's siblings, but in large part due to Feodosiya Lapschina's influence, Alexander remained Orthodox, and his stepmother made it possible for him to attend Orthodox religion classes in Munich. Not only did both Alexander's father and stepmother have a great love of all things Russian, but in the case of Alexander, in particular, they wanted to honor and respect the memory of his mother. Furthermore, according to Erich Schmorell in 2004, during her work as a nurse during WWI, his mother (the future Elisabeth Schmorell) had met [[Elizabeth the New Martyr|Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna of Russia]], which made quite an impression on her.  Once the Schmorells were more established in Munich, their home, large enough to rightly be called a villa, was a meeting place among well-to-do Russian expatriates. Among the friends that they entertained there were members of the Pasternak family; [[w:Leonid Pasternak|Leonid Pasternak]] being a well-known painter in his own right, but was also the father to author [[w:Boris Pasternak|Boris Pasternak]]. (Leonid Pasternak had lived in Germany, along with his daughters, since 1921, but both of his sons remained in the Soviet Union.)