She was born as Freiin Sybille Aleid Elsa von Schoenebeck in Charlottenburg, west of Berlin, to Baron Maximilian Josef von Schoenebeck (1853-1925), a German aristocrat, retired lieutenant colonel and art collector, and his German-Jewish wife, Elisabeth Bernhardt (1888-1937) [REF].
In the early 1920s, Sybille often travelled between England and Italy.