Martin Lautwein was born on May 6, 1991, in Trier, Germany. At the age of 16, he graduated high school and began an apprenticeship to become an industrial mechanic at a company called STEMA/PEDAX, which he finished at the age of 18.

After moving to Berlin at the age of 18, he worked as a nightclub bouncer, as well as in construction and as a scaffolding assistant. He then decided to begin a scaffolding apprenticeship in 2014, and later worked with different companies.

In 2017, after graduating, Lautwein started working for the German humanitarian aid organization CADUS e.V. in Iraq as a field technician, with the first rotation starting in September 2017 and ending in December of the same year. In May 2018, he left for his second rotation with the same organization to Erbil, Iraq, from where the team moved to Raqqa, NE Syria to work in a WHO-funded hospital project. 

While in northeast Syria, Lautwein was arrested by the Assad regime in Qamishli and detained alongside colleague Simon Mauchline. They were taken to Damascus and held in the Military Intelligence Branch 235 (also known as Palestine Branch) for 48 days. They were accused of being US/Israeli spies and of immigrating illegally. Mauchline and Lautwein were then released after intervention from the Czech Republic in August 2018. 

After his release in August 2018, Martin went back to Germany and resumed his work as a nightclub bouncer. After some time, he decided to use his personal experience to educate and support others in order to prevent them from undergoing similar experiences, so he became a freelance consultant and trainer for NGOs, media and for the German authorities.