Edmund Heines was born on 21 July 1897 in Munich, German Empire, the illegitimate child of Helene Martha Heines and Lieutenant Edmund von Parish, a native of Hamburg from a merchant family for whom she was a nanny. In 1903, Martha Heines gave birth to a second child, Oskar Heines, who is also believed to have been fathered by Parish. In 1915, Heines joined the Bavarian Army to fight in World War I after graduating from his Gymnasium, and fought on the Western Front as a field artillery operator.