At the age of 10 he entered the Conservatorium and studied violin for four years under Albert Wolfermann, the leading virtuoso of the Royal Opera House.

His first commercial engagement was with the "Gewerbe Haus", a popular concert hall, after which he was leader then conductor of an orchestra at the thermal springs resort at Buxton, near Manchester, whose soloists had included violinist Lady Hallé (Wilma Neruda) and the Dutch 'cellist Gerard Vollmar (1859–1907).

He returned to Germany, and was engaged as leader and deputy conductor of the Berlin Concert House Orchestra, when he read an advertisement placed by Gotthold Reimann for a violin teacher with his College of Music in Wakefield Street, Adelaide.

[2] He arrived in Adelaide in June 1890,[1] serving as teacher of violin, viola and orchestral playing, and saw the College develop into a popular and highly regarded institution with 240 students.

[1] He died at his North Adelaide home; there was only a very small obituary in one of Adelaide's two newspapers[7] and no mention in the other, yet before World War II he was nominated one of the 15 notable SA musicians of the period: Frederick Bevan, Charles Cawthorne, E. Harold Davies, J. M. Dunn, Thomas Grigg, Hermann Heinicke, John Horner, E. H. Wallace Packer, Harold S. Parsons, W. R. Pybus, I. G. Reimann, William Silver, C. J. Stevens, Oscar Taeuber, Arthur Williamson.