Johann Philipp was born in his family's manor house at Laubuseschbach (present-day Hesse) to Georg von Schönborn, a minor nobleman at the employ of the Lutheran counts of Wied.

His diplomatic skills made him an important mediator during the Peace of Westphalia negotiations that ended the Thirty Years' War in 1648.

The family thus shifted its focus from its regions of origin (in modern Hesse), which had become predominantly protestant, to the catholic ecclesiastical principalities of the empire, located in Franconia and on the Rhine.

Johann Philipp was the first of six members of the Schönborn family who, in the course of more than three generations, were to rule over eight of the most prestigious ecclesiastical principalities of the Holy Roman Empire,[3] giving the name Schönbornzeit to an era (1642–1756), sometimes nostalgically remembered in the popular conscience as an era of prosperity.

[4] His contemporaries gave him the honorable titles of "The Wise", "The German Solomon", and "The Cato of Germany".