EDGAR JULIUS JUNG WAS BORN on March 6, 1894, in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, the second son of Wilhelm Jakob Jung (born July 21, 1861) and his wife Frieda (née Friedrich) Jung (born October 28, 1868). Both parents were Protestants who hailed from well-established Pfalz families. Edgar's father, Wilhelm Jakob, was Oberlehrer (schoolmaster) at a Gymnasium for girls. His mother, Frieda, came from a farming family. The Pfalz (also referred to as the Bavarian Palatinate) was primarily an agricultural region, but some of its towns and cities had experienced rapid industrialization and population growth during the years of the Kaiserreich (1871–1918). When Jung was born, the population of Ludwigshafen numbered forty thousand. Ten years later, it had nearly doubled to seventy-five thousand. The Pirmasens shoe industry, the Kaiserslautern machine factories, the sugar refining mills of Frankenthal and BASF in Ludwigshafen (one of the largest employers in the Pfalz) all sprang up during this period. Next to the workers in the industries, the small and middle-sized farming communities comprised the second largest population group, earning a living cultivating corn, potatoes, cattle, milk and wine. In confessional terms, the Pfalz was split evenly between Protestants and Catholics, although in agricultural regions, Protestants formed the larger group.

In addition to his professional occupation as Oberlehrer at a Gymnasium, Jung's father was a highly respected musician and as such he belonged to the Bildungsbürgertum (cultivated bourgeoisie). The Bildungsbürgertum, considered by some historians to be a uniquely German phenomenon, originated as a distinct social class in the second half of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Germany owed its reputation in scholarship, administration, and technical expertise to this numerically small, but socially influential university-trained elite. In addition to high officials, this class included the academically trained professions, notably university professors, Gymnasium teachers, members of the legal profession, the Protestant clergy and medical doctors. It was a heterogeneous group, but a constituent feature of the Bildungsbürgertum was the Bildung of its members—“Bildung” being perhaps best described in English as the experience of personal growth through an individualized appropriation of classical high culture. As a section of the German middle classes, the Bildungsbürgertum differentiated itself from the Wirtschaftsbürgertum (nouveau riche bourgeoisie) created by Germany's rapid industrialization.