Kiautschou Bay concession
Hellmut Wilhelm was born on 10 December 1905 in the Chinese city of Tsingtao (modern Qingdao), which was then a German enclave due to the Kiautschou Bay concession of 1891. Wilhelm was the third son of the German missionary and sinologist Richard Wilhelm. His early education in China coincided with the Xinhai Revolution, when the Qing dynasty was overthrown and China moved toward republican government, and he was intimately familiar with the Chinese intellectual world of that era. When Qingdao was occupied by the Japanese Army, Japan having declared war on Germany in 1914 at the beginning of World War I, Wilhelm's parents sent him to live with friends in Shanghai for his safety.