Eduard Erne was born in Bregenz, Austria, in 1958. After finishing school, he started to attend drama school at Vienna"s Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna in order to become an actor and director. He subsequently studied directing at Mozarteum in Salzburg from 1980 to 1983. After his graduation, Erne worked as an actor and director at Vienna"s Schauspielhaus and at Frankfurt"s Theater am Turm. From 1981 on, Erne was occasionally seen as an actor in film and TV productions.

In 1994, he made his debut as a filmmaker with the documentary film "Totschweigen" ("A Wall of Silence") about an allegedly random Holocaust crime at the Austrian border. The film was co-directed by Margarete Heinrich. From 1997 to 1999, Erne worked as a writer and contributing editor of the political TV show "Dienstag – das starke Stück der Woche" for Hessischer Rundfunk. With his documentary film "Indiras Tagebuch" (2000) about ethnic cleansing and forced deplacement during the Kosovo War, Erne further established his reputation as a specialist for the sensitive accounting for the past of controversial contemporary and historical topics.

In 2009, Erne who works as an arts editor for Swiss television since 2007, finished his third documentary film for the movie screen: In "Herrenkinder" (2009), he portrays several people who attended the Nazi elite school "Napola" in their youth – and addresses the question if their doctrinaire education has also affected their own children.