Suwałki Governorate
Hermann Minkowski was born in the town of Aleksota, the Suwałki Governorate, the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire, to Lewin Boruch Minkowski, a merchant who subsidized the building of the choral synagogue in Kovno, and Rachel Taubmann, both of Jewish descent. Hermann was a younger brother of the medical researcher Oskar (born 1858).