Franz Gustav Taeschner was born in Bad Reichenhall, Germany, on 8 September 1896. He was born into a family of pharmaceutical entrepreneurs, which accounts for his great private wealth in later life. He studied Oriental languages at several German universities, obtaining his doctoral degree from the university of Kiel under Georg Jacob in 1912. During the First World War he served as Turkish dragoman in Palestine. He was captured and detained as a POW, only returning to Germany at the end of 1919. In 1929 he became extraordinary professor of Oriental languages at the university of Münster, receiving tenure as ordinary professor only as late as 1942. He became a member of the Nazi party in 1933. After the Second World War he was temporarily removed from office. He retired in 1956 and died in Münster on 11 November 1967.

Franz Taeschner published extensively on Arabic and Ottoman studies, most notably on the 'futuwwa' or chivalrous brotherhoods of Islam. His most popular work is probably Geschichte der arabischen Welt, first published in 1944 and republished several times.

Taeschner’s private wealth allowed him to travel extensively in the Middle East throughout his life (Schmidt 2006, p. 26; Kissling 1968).