He worked as a lecturer at the University of Greifswald from 1941 to 1945, where he founded the institute for religious studies together with the Deutsche Christen member Wilhelm Koepp [de].

[1] He studied Nordic languages and the history of religion at Lund University, where he immersed himself in student life and became renowned for his occasional poetry and Spex writing.

He did not adjust his scholarship in line with National Socialist ideology and later denied being a Nazi, but his conduct at the time has been described as opportunistic and as a combination of adaptation, collaboration and ignorance.

[2] Ohlmarks was director of Europafilm's manuscript department from 1950 to 1959, visiting professor in Zürich in 1965 and head of the Institut für vergleichende Felsbildforschung in Rheinklingen in 1966.

[3] He published about eighty works of popular science and history of varying quality, and roughly as many translations, in addition to nine novels and four volumes of autobiography.