Rüdiger Safranski

Rüdiger Safranski was born on 1 January 1945 in Rottweil (Baden-Württemberg, Germany). He studied philosophy (including with Theodor W. Adorno), German studies, history and art history at the University of Frankfurt and the Free University of Berlin. He received his doctorate in 1976 with a thesis on workers' literature in the Federal Republic of Germany. He worked as an assistant for German literature, and since the 1980s has devoted himself to independent literary and philosophical work. He lives in Berlin and is considered one of Germany's most distinguished essayists and authors of philosophical biographies.

Safranski has gained worldwide fame for masterful philosophical biographies in which he combines biography, historical context and in-depth analysis of thought. His style is characterized by exceptional readability, literary quality and philosophical precision. His best-known works are: Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy (1987), Heidegger: Between Good and Evil (1994), Nietzsche: A Biography of His Thought (2000), Goethe: Life as a Work of Art (2013), and Romanticism: The German Night Side (2007). He has also published books on Schiller, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and essays on contemporary philosophical and cultural topics.

His books have been translated into more than 20 languages ​​and have won numerous awards, including the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2005. Safranski is considered one of the most successful popularizers of philosophy in Germany, and his works serve as a standard introduction to the lives and thoughts of the greats of German philosophy and literature.