His best-known work is probably Als Flieger in zwei Kriegen, published in 1941 by Philipp Reclam Jr. of Leipzig.
He then became a soldier and officer, and in World War I enlisted as a pilot, serving time on the western front from 1914 to 1916.
He fought alongside the Turks in Syria and later took up the position of commander of the Flying School at Lechfeld, Bavaria.
In the turbulent years after the war, he was perturbed and roved around, becoming in the process one of the earliest members of the NSDAP.
In this capacity, he identified 18,000 works deemed not to correspond with Nazi ideology, which were publicly burned as a result.