In 1932 he finished his doctoral degree—supervised by Alfred Hettner's disciple Heinrich Schmitthenner—that treated the geomorphology of western Bulgaria Die Oberflächenformen des Iskergebietes: Eine Morphogenese Westbulgariens.

As a pupil of Oskar Schmieder[12][13][14]—in turn an advisee of Alfred Hettner and got in contact with Carl O. Sauer at Berkeley—, he dedicated his work to Latin America, in particular to the cities of the subcontinent as well as to the South American lowlands of Argentina and Paraguay (Pampa, Gran Chaco), and northern Colombia.

Initially focusing on settlement and agricultural colonization, he later founded the German tradition of Latin Americanist urban geography at Kiel.

[15] In this context, he is considered a prominent representative of the cultural-genetic urban geography tradition,[16] which bases on Oskar Schmieder's kulturmorphogenetische Länderkunde and the concept of cultural regions.

[17] Further, he investigated the Indus River basin of Pakistan, where his mentor Oskar Schmieder worked as a Visiting Professor in Karachi, and published monographies on Mayan civilization, Bhutan, and Alexander von Humboldt.