[1] In 1911, Bästlein finished his training as a mechanic and joined the Socialist Workers Youth Party (Sozialistischen Arbeiterjugend), where he met his future wife, the seamstress Johanna Elisabeth Hermine Berta Zenk, daughter of Wilhelmine (née Schröder) and Albert Zenk, a working-class family and Social Democrats.

[1] The following year, Bästlein joined the metal workers' union and the SPD and from 1913 till 1915, he went to work at different armaments factories, at which point he became a soldier and went to fight in France on the western front in 1916.

At that time, decisions urged by the Communist International, caused the KPD to incite unrest in Saxony and the Ruhr region.

[1] Bästlein fled to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) and worked as an editor, lecturer and teacher at the KPD school in Moscow, where his wife joined him.

[1][2] From 1923 to 1930, Bästlein worked as an editor at several KPD newspapers in Dortmund, Hagen, Wuppertal, Remscheid and Solingen.

The following year, in February 1931, Bästlein became the Political Secretary of the middle Rhine district of the KPD and for the first time received enough salary to live on.

Despite the fact that the case was closed, Bästlein was sent to the concentration camp in Esterwegen and in 1936, to Sachsenhausen, where he met Robert Abshagen, Franz Jacob, Julius Leber, Harry Naujoks, Wilhelm Guddorf and Martin Weise.

Returning to his family, then living at Goldbekufer 19 in Hamburg, he worked as a car washer and driver, then later in Altona, at Riepe-Werken, making ballpoint pens.

[1] Bästlein began getting together with friends from Sachsenhausen, such as Abshagen, Jacob and Oskar Reincke,[2] who all wanted to get back to work in the German Resistance.

They were active in the Hamburg shipyards, developing over 30 factory cells and supporting prisoners of war and forced laborers.

[1] In the middle of 1942, there was a major leaflet campaign directed at construction workers, primarily in Hamburg, who were forced to work with the Organisation Todt in Norway and the Soviet Union.

The leaflets linked the general socio-political demands for wages and severance pay with the call to commit acts of sabotage.

"[1] In mid-May 1942, four people entered Germany illegally by parachute, jumping from Soviet planes over East Prussia.

This period removed any shadow of a doubt regarding my political views and made rock solid my conviction, that a society, in which such things as I had experienced are possible, must be eliminated.

[5][6] He helped create an illegal network of the Free Germany Movement (Bewegung Freies Deutschland) in Berlin-Brandenburg.

He was sentenced to death on 5 September 1944 for the crimes of conspiracy to commit high treason, aiding the enemy and undermining military strength.

[1] In 1964, the GDR released stamps honoring Bästlein, Saefkow and Jacob on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of their execution by the Nazis.