He was guided by Georg Jacob, a philologist of Semitic cultures, and picked up 'fairly fluent English and Russian, passable Arabic and Turkish and modern Persian.'
[1] Subsequently, whilst retained on full military pay he asked for, and was granted, a two-year research trip furlough (Разведка) from the Army during which he traveled through Persia and India.
His stated intent was to carry out excavations and study Islamic practices in Persia - though military intelligence must have figured in the decision to give him two years of paid leave.
[citation needed] Having reached Asterabad in the spring of 1913 he spent nearly five months compiling a huge dossier on Shia practices for German intelligence.
In February 1914 he was debriefed by Wilhelm Wassmuss who was so impressed by him that he recommended him, in August 1914, to Max von Oppenheim as the man to lead the German Afghan mission.
In May 1916 he and his team received orders to withdraw from Afghanistan and attach itself to the authority of the Ottoman Empire, involving a dangerous return march through hostile Russian territory, which was accomplished on 1 September 1916.
Niedermayer was awarded for his work in the Orient the Militär-Max-Joseph-Orden and subsequently posted with the rank of Captain to the Western Front, where he took part in fighting in the Champagne and Flanders before the war ended in November 1918.
At the end of World War I, Niedermayer was on leave and had an opportunity to recommence his academic life at the University of Munich studying Literature and Geography for two more semesters.
The division was first installed in Ukraine, where they and Niedermayer were responsible for the training of the so-called "Ostlegionen", until February 1943, and from then to autumn of 1943 they were reinstalled in Neuhammer German Reich.
Numerous friends and associates, including Heinrich Himmler, provided character references during the hearing stating Niedermayer's merits and history of service to Germany, but he was jailed and not released from Torgau prison until end of the war.
After the capitulation of Germany on May 9, 1945, whilst attempting to return to his hometown of Regensburg, at Carlsbad the Red Army arrested him, and he was deported to the U.S.S.R,[4] and a Moscow prison, where he contracted tuberculosis.