Neither lack of funding nor losing his previous job as an associate professor in German through academic restructuring have prevented Dr Obermayer (70) from achieving a rare feat - helping produce a new book on German language and literature every year for the past 30 years.
Born in Vienna, he emigrated to New Zealand and joined the then Otago German department staff in 1970.
In 1980, he helped edit a "festschrift" collection of essays celebrating long-serving department head Prof Eric Herd, who was retiring.
Thus the tradition of annual publications in the "Otago German Studies" was born.
Prof Herd also helped for some years.
The series has always run on a shoestring, essentially self-funded, with just enough money left over from sales of the previous book to fund the next.
It has now become the longest-running regular series of German-related monographs published at a university in Australia and New Zealand.
The Otago German language programme's staff can also point to another significant achievement - having run an annual German language play production for the past 55 years.
This is believed to be the longest-running series of German play productions at any university in New Zealand and Australia.
At a function on campus, Otago German Studies recently celebrated its 30th publication, which involved an old Prussian glossary.
When extensive restructuring of the foreign language departments at Otago cost Dr Obermayer his job in 1997, he retained a room at the university and, undaunted, kept working on the series, coming in each day, unpaid.
"This shows that despite adverse external circumstances, we can still do things when we are bloody-minded," he joked.
The "Otago German Studies" series has won favourable reviews, and Otago languages and cultures department head Prof Tim Mehigan says it reflects Dr Obermayer's "unflagging diligence and great expertise" and the university's long-standing promotion of German culture and language.