He was born in Leipzig, where his parents had moved the year before his birth.
Gottfried Heinrich became "feeble-minded" (careless, shallow)[1] at an early age, but in his childhood he played the keyboard well and C. P. E. Bach is quoted as saying that he showed "a great genius, which however failed to develop".
[2] After the death of his father in 1750 Gottfried Heinrich continued to live with his mother Anna Magdalena Bach.
At this time his sister Elisabeth Juliana Friderica Altnikol had not lived there for some years.
[4] She had moved from Leipzig to Naumburg when she married Johann Christoph Altnikol in 1749, where her husband was employed as an organist.