William Ralph Merton

Wilhelm was born to a Jewish family, the eighth of nine children of Ralph Merton (until 1856: Raphael Lyon Moses) and his wife Sara Amelie Cohen (daughter of Philipp Abraham Cohen), who immigrated to Frankfurt from England in 1837. On 5 November 1855, Ralph Moses and his family gained citizenship of the free city of Frankfurt.

On 27 November, he was granted permission to call himself ‘Merton’ after claiming in his application for such (on 22 October 1856) that his brother Benjamin had already taken the family name ‘Merton’ in Manchester as the name ‘Moses’ was not suitable to be used as a surname.

Wilhelm Merton studied at Frankfurt's grammar school, thereafter in Munich and he performed voluntary work at the Deutsche Bank in Berlin.

He married Emma Ladenburg in 1877 (born 1859 in Frankfurt, died in 1939), who was a daughter of Eugenie Halphen (1829–1866) and the businessman Emil Ladenburg (1822–1902), co-owner of the famous Ladenburg banking house. The couple had five children:

Alfred Emil Ralf (1878–1954)

Walter Henry (b. 28 August 1879 in Frankfurt am Main)

Richard Albert Eugen (b. 1 December 1881 in Frankfurt am Main)

Adolf Wilhelm August (b. 24 December 1886 in Frankfurt am Main), art historian and 2nd Lieutenant of the Reserves with the Magdeburg Dragoon Regiment No. 6, † on 30 October 1914 in Le Quesnoy

Eugenie Amalie Essie Gertrud "Gerta" (1894–1968), wife of Moritz Freiherr von Bissing

Merton and his children converted to Protestantism in 1899. The Mertons—who had been English citizens hitherto—naturalised as Germans in the same year, and thereafter he bore the name Wilhelm Merton.