He spent most of his career at the University of Göttingen,[1] where he began work in April 1939 and in October of the same year succeeded Herbert Oskar Meyer as the professor of German legal history, civil and mercantile law, agricultural and privatization law.
Beginning in 1935, he was active in the Sicherheitsdienst, and in Rostock he worked for the Gau administration and represented the party on the law faculty.
[4][5] After the outbreak of war, he volunteered for the Waffen-SS and served with the Totenkopf division in the Battle of France, returning to Göttingen in August 1940.
After another brief period of military service, he was assigned to the Führungshauptamt of the SS and then became division head for Indo-European and German legal history at the Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt.
In March 1949, he was able to have his classification reduced to that of Mitläufer (fellow traveler), and in September 1950 to have his privileges as a civil servant restored, but he had meanwhile been succeeded in his professorship by Hans Thieme.
[14] Despite his commitment to Nazism, his publications included a 1936 refutation of the notion that the employment contract derived from the relationship of Germanic followers with their lord.