Tresckow was born in Magdeburg into a noble family from the Brandenburg region of Prussia with 300 years of military tradition that provided the Prussian Army with 21 generals.Balfour 1988, pg. 124. His father, Leopold Hans Heinrich Eugen Hermann von Tresckow, later a cavalry general, had been present at Kaiser Wilhelm I's coronation as the emperor of new German Empire at Versailles in 1871. His mother, Marie-Agnes, was the youngest daughter of Count Robert von Zedlitz-Trützschler, a Prussian Minister of Education.
