[2] Herbert Baldus settled in São Paulo and, in the same year, joined a film expedition that visited the Xamakoko, Kaskihá and Sanapaná people of the Paraguayan Chaco, where he became interested in ethnology.

[2] Baldus returned to Germany and became a student of Richard Thurnwald, Konrad Theodor Preuss and Walter Lehmann at the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he completed his studies in ethnology in 1928 and earned a PhD in philosophy.

In 1934, on an expedition to Mato Grosso, Baldus had his first contact with the Terena and Bororo people and saw rock paintings in Sant'ana de Chapada, which sparked his interest in archaeology.

[2] In 1937, Baldus decided to compile several works and publish them in the book Ensaios de Etnologia Brasileira, dedicated to "the great connoisseur of natives in Brazil Curt Nimuendaju".

He was the teacher of Oracy Nogueira, Gioconda Mussolini, Virgínia Leone Bicudo, Lucila Hermann, Florestan Fernandes, Levy Cruz, Fernando Altenfender Silva and Sergio Buarque de Holanda at FESPSP.

In the company of Emilio Willems and his students from FESPSP, Baldus visited the Ribeira do Iguape Valley, in the interior of São Paulo, to study the cultural change in the group of Japanese immigrants who had settled there.

[1][3] In 1949, Herbert Baldus was invited by the US government to take a tour of several native tribes in the states of Arizona and New Mexico and appointed secretary of the executive committee of the XXIX International Congress of Americanists, which took place in New York City.

Also in 1949, he made the preface to the book Etno-sociologia brasileira, written by Florestan Fernandes, which presented a synthesis of all the contributions of travelers, chroniclers and missionaries to the knowledge of Brazilian tribal populations.

Later, he traveled to Europe to visit cultural institutions, libraries and museums in countries such as Austria, France, Denmark, Spain, Switzerland, England, Portugal and Sweden.

In 1961, he assumed the position of professor of Brazilian Ethnology at the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters in Rio Claro, a city in the interior of São Paulo.

In 1964, on his 65th birthday, Baldus was honored in a commemorative edition of Hans Becher's Völkerkundliche Abhandlungen - Beiträge zur Völkerkunde Südamerikas, which contained texts by thirty specialists in Americanist subjects.