When Heinrich Christian Arnold Bartling was born in 1891, in Altenbruch, Cuxhaven, Cuxhaven, Niedersachsen, Germany, his father, Georg Hermann Christoph Bartling, was 25 and his mother, Wilhelmine Lorenz, was 21. He married Minna Meyer on 11 April 1915. He died on 11 September 1974, in his hometown, at the age of 83.