他出生于维也纳的一个犹太人家庭[6]，母亲安娜（并不是弗洛伊德的女儿安娜，弗洛伊德的妹妹也叫安娜）是弗洛伊德的妹妹。1890年代全家移民美国[7]，1892年定居纽约市，伯内斯在此就读德威特·克林顿高中[8]。1912年，他自康奈尔大学毕业，获农学学位，但选择进入新闻界工作，成为了一名记者[9]。之后又到巴黎的路易达孚工作，1912年12月返回纽约，先后做过杂志编辑、新闻代理人。一战爆发后，美国政府的公共信息委员会请他到委员会的拉丁美洲事务部（Bureau of Latin-American Affairs）工作[10]，曾参加巴黎和会[11]。
^Tye (1998), p. 147. "Feeling he was too short, at 5 feet 4 inches, Eddie seemed determined to make everything else larger than life. He even inflated his name with an L., a middle initial that was not on his birth record in Vienna. It apparently stood for Louis, although even his daughters aren't sure, since he didn't like to talk about it.
^Lavin, Maud. A literary couple's muted memoir of 1950s New York. Chicago Tribune. July 21, 2002 [2021-10-13]. （原始内容存档于2018-09-11）. Edward and his wife, Doris Fleischman, were nonpracticing, highly assimilated, wealthy German-American Jews, and Anne grew up a self-professed hothouse flower on New York's Upper East Side.
