His Chinesische Grammatik (1881), according to a critic, "remains until today recognized as probably the finest overall grammatical survey of the Classical Chinese language to date."
His father was the minister and linguist Hans Conon von der Gabelentz, an authority of the Manchu language.
In 1878, a Professorship of Far Eastern Languages, the first of its kind in the German-speaking world, was created at the University of Leipzig, and Gabelentz was invited to fill it.
Among his students were the German sinologists Wilhelm Grube (1855–1908) and Johann Jakob Maria de Groot (1854–1921), the Austrian Sinologist Arthur von Rosthorn (1862–1945), the Japanologist Karl Florenz [de] (1865–1939), the archaeologist Max Uhle (1856–1944), the Tibetologist Heinrich Wenzel and the art historian Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Müller (1863–1930).
[1] Only in recent times has the northern dialect, pek-kuān-hoá, in the form [spoken] in the capital, kīng-hoá, begun to strive for general acceptance, and the struggle seems to be decided in its favor.