It is one of the most renowned contemporary indologists, obtained a PhD with a thesis The social situation in India as the Satapatha-Brahmana. In 1968 he became professor work "India in the mean time as the Sanskrit Vedic sources". Between 1959 and 1969 he was invited at the Oriental Institute of the University of Leipzig professor, and 1970-1976, professor of Sanskrit Philology section of African Studies and the Middle East. Since 1996 he is professor of Sanskrit at the Institute of Comparative Linguistics Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt. Member of various academies, including the Berlin Scientific Society and the Leibniz Society, received the prize for literature Rabindranath Tagore. He is the author of Das Opfer altindische (2000), Dictionary Sanskrit-German / German-Sanskrit (2005) edition of the Bhagavadgita and the Kamasutra, among other works.