Maria Županc was born one of her parents' (at least) four children in Ebriach, a small village in the rural Eisenkappel-Vellach administrative district. The region was one of remote mountain villages in which Slovene dialects predominated, but in the 1920 Carinthian plebiscite pragmatic considerations of perceived economic advantage had trumped nationalistic separatism, and throughout her childhood the district had remained part of the Austrian province of Carinthia, rather than joining up with Yugoslavia, across the mountains. Georg and Barbara Županc, her parents, were peasant farmers.