His high school years were spent in Leipzig, where his father Franz Johann Erich Hein (1863–1927) was an artist and teacher.

[3][4] In 1933, Hein signed the Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State.

[5] After 1942, he moved from Leipzig to the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena where he became the director of the Institute for Inorganic Chemistry.

With the reaction of anhydrous chromium(III) chloride (CrCl3) and phenylmagnesium bromide (C6H5MgBr), Hein created a mixture of compounds.

[9] However, it was later found that the correct structures were of sandwich compound type complexes and based on biphenyl not phenyl.