Born in Berlin, Meckel spent his youth there, in Erfurt and in Freiburg im Breisgau, where he attended Gymnasium.

[1] He traveled extensively through Europe, Africa, and America and lived in Oetingen in Markgräflerland, in Berlin, in southern France, and in Tuscany.

In her book "For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Childrearing and the Roots of Violence" Alice Miller provides quotes of Meckel on his childhood: Punishment followed on a grand scale.

For ten days, an unconscionable length of time, my father blessed the palms of his child's outstretched four-year-old hands with a sharp twitch.

Whatever it was that happened in Paradise involving Adam, Eve, Lilith, the serpent, and the apple, the well-deserved Biblical thunderbolt of prehistoric times, the roar of the Almighty and His pointed finger signifying expulsion – I know nothing about all that.