He studied at the universities of
Kiel,
Freiburg, and
Berlin, receiving his doctorate at Kiel in 1895. Following graduation he lived and worked in
Karlsruhe,
Plymouth,
Naples,
Cold Spring Harbour (Long Island N.Y.), and
Würzburg. From 1901 he worked as a curator for a year at the Selangor State Museum in
Kuala Lumpur, afterwards returning to Europe, where he spent another year in Naples. He was a member of the Hamburg
Südsee-Expedition (1908-10) during its first year in
Oceania, of which, he collected specimens on behalf of the Hamburg Zoological Museum. From 1928 onward, he worked as a curator and professor at the Museum. In 1904 he described the
Harlequin rasbora,
Trigonostigma heteromorpha, a fish species that inhabits the forest streams of Southeast Asia. == Taxon named in his honor ==