He was the son of head forester Carl Hermann Gloeden (1820–1862) and his wife Charlotte Maassen (1824–1901; from 1864 Charlotte von Hammerstein). . His grandfather, Iwan von Glöden († 1825), was an officer who had served in Hamburg during the wars of liberation against Napoleon. His mother, Charlotte, née Maaßen, had previously been married to Johann Magnus Wilhelm Raabe († 1848). The law professor Friedrich Maassen and the Parchim mayor were his uncles on his mother's side; the lawyer and conservative publicist Iwan von Gloeden was a uncle on his father's side. On October 10, 1856, Wilhelm von Gloeden was baptized in the church of Blankenhagen.