He was born in Dammer in Lower Silesia and attended the Maria-Magdalenen school in Wrocław.
He then studied at the University of Wrocław, where he gained a Ph.D. after his 1898 dissertation on the spread of marine Pennsylvanian rocks in South and East Asia.
Later that year, he moved to the Geological-Palaeontological Institute in Bonn, where he remained until 1903 as an assistant to Clemens Schlüter.
He then became a geologist with the Prussian Geological Institute in Berlin and in 1923 became a department director.
[1] His son Fritz Fliegel was a Luftwaffe pilot and Knight Cross holder killed in World War II.