Heine was born in
Posen,
Province of Posen,
Kingdom of Prussia (Poznań, Poland) to Otto Heine, a grammar school teacher at the Maria-Magdalena-Gymnasium in
Breslau (Wrocław, Poland), and Meta née Bormann. He attended school in
Weimar,
Hirschberg (Jelenia Góra) and Breslau, and studied natural sciences and law at the Universities of
Breslau,
Tübingen and
Berlin. He worked as a lawyer in Berlin and joined the
SPD in 1884. He was elected a member of the
Reichstag in 1898, initially representing
Berlin and from 1912 on representing the constituency of
Anhalt. After
World War I Heine became Minister President of the
Free State of Anhalt,
Prussian Minister of the Interior and Prussian Minister of Justice. Heine was criticized for his attempt to negotiate during the
Kapp Putsch of March 1920 and lost his position in the Prussian government. From 1923 to 1925 he was a judge at the
German Constitutional Court () and continued to work as a lawyer in Berlin. At the beginning of the Nazi regime, Heine fled to Switzerland and died in
Ascona. ==References==