Siegmund Lubin was born as Zygmunt Lubszyński,[citation needed] a son of Samuel Lubszyński and Rebeka Lubszyńska, Polish Jews,[citation needed] in Breslau, Kingdom of Prussia (now Wrocław, Poland) or in Poznań, Kingdom of Prussia on April 20, 1851.

His father, a successful ophthalmologist,[1] moved the family for economic reasons to Berlin soon after Zygmunt's birth.

He later graduated from the Heidelberg University and in 1876 emigrated to the United States, where he settled in Philadelphia and worked as an optometrist.

When World War I broke out in Europe in September of that year, Lubin Studios was among the American filmmakers who lost foreign sales.

The Lubin Film Company went out of business on September 1, 1917, after having made more than a thousand motion pictures.