 From 1914 to 1917 he was a volunteer in World War I.In 1921 he passed his Staatsexamen in Stuttgart, and from 1922 to 1924 he was an assistant for Paul Bonatz at the University of Stuttgart, where he received his doctorate, on the architecture of homes.In 1926, he joined "Der Ring", an artist's society, and in 1927 was appointed as construction manager of the Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart, a modern architectural project supervised by Mies van der Rohe.