After studying at a teaching seminar, and completing a one-year voluntary military service with the Bavarian Army, he was appointed a public school teacher in Augsburg.

[1] He was a member of ARPLAN (Association for the Study of Russian Planned Economy) with Ernst Jünger, Georg Lukács, Karl Wittfogel and Friedrich Hielscher, under whose auspices he visited the Soviet Union in 1932.

[4] The attempt to combine ultranationalism and communism, two extreme ends of the political spectrum, caused Niekisch's National Bolsheviks to be a force with little support.

[9] He was allowed to visit Rome in 1935 and held meetings with Benito Mussolini, who told Niekisch that he considered Hitler's aggressive stances towards the Soviet Union to be foolish and would later discuss opposition groups with the Italian Consul General while Italo-German relations were somewhat strained.

In 1939, Niekisch was found guilty of 'literary high treason by the Volksgerichtshof, along with fellow National Bolsheviks Joseph Drexel and Karl Tröger, and sentenced to life in prison.

[1] Embittered against nationalism by his wartime experiences, he turned to orthodox Marxism and lectured in sociology in Humboldt University in East Germany until 1953 when, disillusioned by the brutal suppression of the workers' uprising, he relocated to West Berlin, where he died in 1967.

[1] Subsequent to his death, Niekisch was one of a number of writers, including the likes of Oswald Spengler, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Vilfredo Pareto and Carl Schmitt, whose works were promulgated by the likes of the Groupement de recherche et d'études pour la civilisation européenne and others involved in the Conservative Revolutionary movement.