Löffler studied anthropology in Vienna and Mainz with Karl Jettmar, later he went for postdoctoral studies to Cornell University and the University of Chicago (amongst his teachers were Clifford Geertz and Lloyd A. Fallers). Later he became professor at Western Michigan University.
Löffler is a specialist on tribes in the Hindu Kush and Karakoram mountains and on Deh Koh/Iran.
As an interim chair, he headed the Department of Ethnology (Heidelberg, South Asia Institute) from 1986 to 1989.
Löffler is married to anthropologist Erika Friedl.
Among his students is mediterraneanist Dieter Haller (Bochum), whose PhD thesis he supervised whilst in Heidelberg.
(photography: Erika Friedl and her husband, Reinhold Löffler, http://www.wmich.edu/grad/emeriti/loeffler.html)
