Jakob Bleyer was born into a German-speaking peasant family on 25 January 1874 in Tscheb (Dunacséb), Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary (today Čelarevo, Serbia) in the region Batschka.

In 1897 he received his doctorate with the thesis "Hungarian Relations of German Historical Folk Songs until 1551" and in the same year became a high school teacher in Budapest and Sopron (Ödenburg).

In the years 1911 to 1919 and again from 1921 he held the chair for German studies at the University of Budapest.

[2] Bleyer feared due to the increasing Magyarization a "neglect of the German-speaking minorities in the country", since in his opinion this could not be assimilated linguistically because of their low level of education.

In speeches and essays he emphasized that he was in favor of the Hungarian rule and did not demand, in contrast to other German people's councils like Rudolf Brandsch, an "Eastern Switzerland" with several official languages.