Leopold Bauer was born in Skalat, a small town in Eastern Galicia which at that time was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. (Today it is in western Ukraine.) His father was a watchmaker and a gold trader. During the second half of the nineteenth century the population of Skalat had been boosted by the arrival of large numbers of Jews seeking to escape the pogroms taking place in the western territories of Russia. There are estimates that by 1900 approximately 50% of the town's population were Jewish. In July 1914 war broke out. According to one source it was in order to get away from more pogroms that the family fled to the west. Elsewhere it is stated simply that they wished to get away from the advancing Russians. They ended up in Chemnitz, in southern central Germany which is where Leo Bauer attended school between 1919 and 1930. He was granted German citizenship in 1924 or 1925.