Handel was born in 1685 in Halle, Duchy of Magdeburg (then part of Brandenburg-Prussia),

to Georg Händel and Dorothea Taust.[8] His father, aged sixty-three when George Frideric was born,
was an eminent barber-surgeon who served the court of Saxe-Weissenfels and the Margraviate of
Brandenburg.[9]
Georg Händel (senior) was the son of a coppersmith, Valentin Händel (1582–1636), who had
emigrated from Eisleben in 1608 with his first wife Anna Belching, the daughter of a master
coppersmith. They were Protestants and chose reliably Protestant Saxony over Silesia,
a Habsburg possession, as religious tensions mounted in the years before the Thirty Years War.
[10]
 Halle was a relatively prosperous city, home of a salt-mining industry and center of trade (and
member of the Hanseatic League).[11] The Margrave of Brandenburg became the administrator of the
archiepiscopal territories of Mainz, including Magdeburg when they converted, and by the early 17th
century held his court in Halle, which attracted renowned musicians. [d] Even the smaller churches all
had "able organists and fair choirs",[e] and humanities and the letters thrived (Shakespeare was
performed in the theaters early in the 17th century). [13] The Thirty Years War brought extensive
destruction to Halle, and by the 1680s it was impoverished. [10] However, since the middle of the war
the city had been under the administration of the Duke of Saxony, and soon after the end of the war
he would bring musicians trained in Dresden to his court in Weissenfels.[14]