He was a teaching assistant at the Art Historical Institute in Jena and habilitated in 1967 with his thesis Westwerkstudien at the Philosophical Faculty.
After being made professor for cultural theory in 1971, he was reappointed to the chair of art history at Jena University (vacant since 1958) in 1976.
His most productive period ended abruptly when the publication of manuscripts ready for printing, which were intended to take stock of his research, failed due to the Peaceful Revolution and in 1991 he was dismissed from Jena University.
In addition to his Westwerkstudien (1968)[7] for example his introductory essay for the anthology Stil und Gesellschaft (Style and Society, 1984) was included in the collection Neue Wege der Forschung.
[9] His extensive studies on medieval village churches, reflected in his The Parish Church in the Age of the Cathedral ('Die Dorfkirche im Zeitalter der Kathedrale', 1988) and in a separate chapter in History of German Art ('Geschichte der deutschen Kunst', 1989), were still highlighted in 2001 by Wolfgang Schenkluhn as "exceptional" in architectural history.