Born in Uelzen, Behne studied school music, musicology, psychology and physics in Freiburg im Breisgau, Bonn and Hamburg.
(1927-2003) - besides Klaus-Ernst Behne also Helga de la Motte-Haber, Ekkehard Jost, Günter Kleinen and Eberhard Kötter.
There Behne founded the (West) German editorial office of the Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM).
In 1972, Behne received his doctorate in Hamburg with his empirical study Der Einfluß des Tempos auf die Beurteilung von Musik.
In 1977, he was appointed Germany's first and only professor of music psychology at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover, a post he held until 2004.
Studies and theoretical models are accompanied[1] and documented for example in the books Film – Musik – Video oder die Konkurrenz von Auge und Ohr (1987), Gehört – gedacht – gesehen.
In 1993, Behne founded the "Institute for Music Education Research" (ifmpf) at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover together with his professorial colleagues Franz Amrhein (1935-2012) and Karl-Jürgen Kemmelmeyer (born 1943).