He was Professor at the Institute for Oriental and Islamic Studies at the Department of Philology, Ruhr University Bochum.
[1] As a PhD student in the early 1980s, Reichmuth translated modern novels by Salah Abd as-Sabur and Tayyib Salih.
His second major research project was the study of modern Islam in Nigeria for which he undertook sustained fieldwork and learnt several African languages.
His "2009 masterpiece" reconstructed the life, works and networks of Murtada al-Zabidi, an 18th-century Indian scholar who studied in Yemen and settled in Cairo.
[2] Reichmuth encouraged younger scholars at Bochum University, and established a research group Islamic Networks of Education in Local and Transnational Contexts.