Erich Heberlein attended high school in Danzig and, after graduating from high school, studied jura in Breslau, Munich and Berlin from 1908 to 1912, receiving his doctorate in 1913. From 1912 he was employed in the Prussian judicial service. He was a soldier in the First World War and married Käthe Wegner in 1915; they had one child. Shortly before the end of the war he was seconded to the consulate general in Zurich as a lieutenant in the reserve. In August 1919 he was accepted into the diplomatic service. From 1920 to 1925 he was employed at the embassy in Madrid, where in 1922 he married Margot Calleja, a Spaniard with Irish roots; they had a son, Oskar Heberlein. From 1925 he was a representative of the Foreign Office to the Reich Commissioner in the occupied Rhenish areas. In 1928 he went to the embassy in Athens and in 1934 to Buenes Aires. For 1. In August 1935 he joined the NSDA at (membership number 2,549,704).^[1] From 1937 he was employed at the German embassy in fascist Spain during the Spanish Civil War. In 1941 his official title was envoy. In February 1943 he was ordered to Berlin to head the department for Spain and Portugal.

Heberlein fell ill in August 1943 and, with permission, went on convalescent leave to his country estate “La Legua” near Toledo in Spain. When he refused to return to Germany, he and his wife were deported on the 17th. They were kidnapped from Spain by the German Gestapo in June 1944 and were imprisoned in various places Kimprisoned in a concentration camp.^[

The Heberlein couple were part of a transport of celebrities in April 1945  Concentration camp prisoners who were led from the Dachau concentration camp to occupied Italy to the Alpine foothills operational zone, where the prisoners were released on January 30th. They were liberated by the US Army in Nierdorf in April 1945.

In 1954, Heberlein was appointed envoy, first class, in accordance with the Restitution Act. D. promoted.