In Germany, he found his first refuge in a physician's family in Lüdenscheid, where he also worked in a factory and started to learn German.
Born and raised in Lüdenscheid, Nöbeling studied mathematics and physics in Göttingen and Vienna where he was a student of Karl Menger and received his PhD in 1931 on a generalization of the embedding theorem, which for one special case can be visualized by the Menger sponge.
In 1946 production of holders for fluorescent tubes was allowed to take place at a plant in Lüdenscheid, by 1962 an additional plant for lighting products had opened in Selm and the Vossloh works employed 1300 people, with 500 more employed in subsidiaries.