Meier studied German, Romance and English philology, history and anthropology at the Universities in Freiburg im Breisgau and Tübingen.
In 1891 there followed his formal faculty admission to the University of Halle with the work Studies in the Linguistic and Literary History of the Rhinelands in the Middle Ages.
In the years which followed this, he busied himself intensively with folk-song investigations, and put forward his thesis of Sunken Cultural Patrimony.
In 1899 he became professor in ordinary for German philology at the Basel University and concerned himself principally with a systematic collection of folk-songs.
In his role as Chairman of the convention, he found himself - especially in view of the threats of the Rosenberg party - forced to cooperate with the Ahnenerbe of the SS.