When Peter Britt was born in Obstalden in the Swiss canton of Glarus, his family farmed land that had been in the family for centuries.
He studied at the universities of Zurich and Berlin, receiving his doctorate in theology from Zurich in 1913, with a dissertation on The Symbolic Element in Religious Knowledge. Brunner served as pastor from 1916 to 1924 in the mountain village of Obstalden in the Swiss Canton of Glarus.