His political career started as a head of the district authority in his native town Hagen, later on Nieland became district president in Münster. In 1925 he received his doctorate in Hamburg. His doctoral thesis, completed in June 1925, was entitled "Power as a governmental concept of law: An analysis of the German Reich's constitutional law situation under the rule of the Versailles Treaty"[1] (German: "Die Macht als staatlicher Rechtsbegriff: Zugleich eine Untersuchung über die staatsrechtliche Stellung des Deutschen Reiches unter der Herrschaft des Versailler Vertrages").