He studied natural sciences at the universities of Würzburg and Munich, where his influences were Karl von Zittel and August Rothpletz.
In 1919 he was appointed director of the Staatssammlung fur Palaontologie und historische Geologie ("State Collection for Paleontology and Historical Geology") in Munich.
[2] In 1901 he traveled to the Texas Red Beds, where with Charles Hazelius Sternberg, he collected and studied fossil vertebrates of the Permian period.
[3] Later on in his career, he carried out significant investigations of pterosaur fossils from the Solnhofen limestone of Bavaria.
[1][4] In the 1930s, with Joachim Schröder, he published a 28 volume series on vertebrates of the Karoo Formation of South Africa (Beobachtungen an Wirbeltieren der Karroo Formation; 1934–37).