He was educated at the gymnasium in Magdeburg before studying medicine at Heidelberg, Berlin and finally Halle from where he qualified in 1894.
[2] He became assistant in the University Surgical Clinic in Halle under Fritz Gustav von Bramann from 1895 to 1901.
In 1901 he joined the German Army as a medical officer in the Westphalian Cuirassiers,[3] serving until 1909.
[3] Infantile hypertrophic pyloric stenosis was first fully described by Harald Hirschsprung in 1888.
He elected to cover the defect with an omental patch, realising that it was not necessary to suture the pyloric muscle.