Wilhelm Christian Weitling was born in Magdeburg, Westphalia, the son of Christiane Weitling and Guilliaume Terijon. Weitling's father was a young French officer who was billeted in occupied Prussia, who met and fell in love with Weitling's mother, a household maid. His parents never married, with his father dying in the ill-fated 1812 French invasion of Russia.

Weitling was