After studying history, musicology, philosophy and political science at the University of Cologne and completing his doctorate at the same university in 1999, he held academic positions at the universities of Münster and  Vienna. He has been associated with several academic institutions in Germany, Poland and the Netherlands as a visiting scholar. In 2013, he completed his habilitation in Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Vienna. Since 2015, he has been employed as a Senior Scientist at the Institute for Economic and Social History and as Head of the Archive of the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU). He has been head of provenance research at WU Vienna since 2016.