Schäfer was born in Cologne, and even as a young boy, he spent time in the outdoors shooting with an air gun and rearing birds, insects and reptiles.

In 1934, Dolan invited Schäfer for a second trip into Tibet in 1934, which affected his studies in the University of Göttingen under Professor Alfred Kühn.

[4] In July 1934, during his second expedition in Asia, he met the then exiled Panchen Lama, Thubten Chökyi Nyima, at a mountain temple near Hangzhou, China.

"[6]: 175  These seeds collected during the Tibetan expeditions were important, as Heinrich Himmler planned to develop hardy new varieties of crops in order to boost the agricultural yields of colonies across the captured territories of Ukraine and Crimea.

Speculation that it belongs to the pre-Buddhist Bon culture that existed in Asia about 1,000 years ago has been brought into question due to certain incoherent features of clothing and style.

[2] He was made an honorary member of the German ornithologists federation (DO-G) on 7 December 1939, his wedding day, a gift from Erwin Stresemann.

[2] With film-maker Heinz Sielmann, he produced Herrscher des Urwalds (Rulers of the Wild, 1958) in the Congolese forests.

Schäfer served as the curator of the Department of Natural History at the Lower Saxony State Museum from 1960 until 1970.