Tobias Brandt (originally Fraenkel-Brandt) was born in the The Hague on 27 April 1917 to Martin Fraenkel-Brandt and Kaethe Jacobsohn. The family moved to Berlin 2 years later and this is where Tobias grew up. His parents divorced in 1928 and Tobias lived with his mother while he went to the gymnasium. Kaethe Jacobsohn was the sister of Siegfried Jacobsohn, founder of the German weekly magazine, Die Weltbühne, which focused on politics, art and business and which was originally devoted to theatre criticism. Kaethe was born on 21 March 1887 in Berlin and was deported to Auschwitz on 4.3.1943.

In 1936 Tobias left Germany for South Africa as a result of growing antisemitism. he landed in Cape Town. From there he travelled to Johannesburg to live with relatives of his father. He became an apprentice at a motor dealer.

During World War II Tobias joined the South African Airforce which took him to the Western Desert, Egypt in 1941. There he learned how to do maintenance work on aeroplanes and got his A licence for flying. He lived in Cairo with a Swiss lady called Annie, flying between Cairo and Pretoria, South Africa. After the war when he was de-mobbed he went to Palestine, where he had an aunt who lived in a tiny village called Kersirkin. She left for the USA to join her son, so Tobias went to Jerusalem and remained there until he came to England in 1946.  

Whilst living in London Tobias met his future wife, Emmy Sachs, who, in the 1920s, had worked in the offices of Die Weltbühne, and who was also a cousin of the celebrated poet, Nellie Sachs. The offices of Die Weltbühne is where Emmy and Tobias first met each other, though Tobias would have been a young boy at the time. Emmy was born in 1897. During the 1940s Emmy was working for the Society of Friends and living in a hostel run by Ingrid Heichelheim. Tobias and Emmy were both ardent Quakers. Once Tobias had obtained his pilot's licence at British Airways the couple went on to live in many countries, including Sweden, Italy, Turkey and Germany, eventually ending up in North London. Tobias became conversant in 8 languages.

After the death of Emmy in 1985, and having received a condolence message from his former landlady, Ingrid Heichelheim, who happened to have lost her husband not long before, Tobias and Ingrid later became partners. The couple spent the next 29 years together.