At Bonn, he was influenced by philologist Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl and worked as an assistant at the university library.

After a brief stint as a schoolteacher in Karlsruhe, he was appointed director of the university library at Breslau (1872).

Here, he headed a comprehensive reorganization of the library that included rules for a new alphabetical card catalog that became a model for the Preußische Instruktionen.

[2] With educator Friedrich Althoff, he strove for reforms pertaining to academic librarianship during the latter part of the 19th century.

Also, he made significant contributions in the fields of "Gutenberg research" and incunabula studies,[2] that included a complete incunabula catalog[1] Among his publications are a text edition of the comedies of Terence (1884); "Instruction für die Ordnung der Titel im Alphabetischen Zettelkatalog der Königlichen und Universitäts-Bibliothek zu Breslau" (hectographed in 1874, printed in 1886); and "Untersuchungen über ausgewählte Kapitel des antiken Buchwesens" (1900).