He received his education in Iranian and other oriental studies at several German universities, obtaining his doctorate at Erlangen in 1868 with a thesis on the Pahlavi language.

From 1875 he spent several years conducting field studies in Persia and India, during which time, he also worked as a postmaster.

[1][2] From 1883 to 1903 he gave private lessons in Turkish and Persian in Berlin,[3] and afterwards became a professor of Iranian philology at the University of Göttingen.

[1] Due to his linguistic talents, he was appointed to the "Königlich Preußische Phonographische Kommission" (Royal Prussian Phonographic Commission).

The purpose of the commission was to record the approximately 250 languages spoken by the prisoners of German WWI PoW camps.