Siegfried Ferdinand Stephan Nadel was born on 24 April 1903 in Lemberg (Lviv), Galicia, part of the Habsburg monarchy.
At the Musikkonservatorium he sorted the ethno-musical papers of Rudolf Poch and later catalogued musical instruments for the Wiener Museum für Völkerkunde.
The failure of Nadel to pass his Habilitation was a result of professional and disciplinary infighting, it was not directed at him personally; a close reading of the minutes of the meeting, however, reveals underlying antisemitism widely growing in Vienna at the time.
In 1932 Nadel was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship, allowing him to do post-graduate training in anthropological African field research.
During a brief fieldbreak in Al-Ubayyid Nadel wrote Black Byzantium on the Nupe (which would not be published until 1942) and The Nuba: An Anthropological Study of the Hill Tribes in Kordofan (which would not appear in print until 1947).
In 1941, as World War II broke out, Nadel enlisted in the Sudan Defence Force, transferring later that year to the British Army's East African Command.
[2]: 119 By this time Nadel had served on the Eritrean-Ethiopean border and was appointed, as a Major, Secretary of native Affairs in the British Military Administration of Eritrea.
In 1944 he returned to England produced academic work on the Nuba and Eritrea, including Land Tenure on the Eritrean Plateau.
Life and Work of Siegfried Frederick Nadel " in Bérose - Encyclopédie internationale des histoires de l'anthropologie, Paris, IIAC-LAHIC, UMR 8177.