Rüdiger Safranski is considered the most important biographer of the greats of German intellectual history. He is known for his monographs and biographies on Arthur Schopenhauer, Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Nietzsche, which have been translated into a total of 26 languages. With these books, he succeeds in making the philosophers understandable to a broad public. After studying German language and literature, philosophy, history and art history at the universities of Frankfurt/Main and Berlin, he completed his doctorate in German language and literature and philosophy. He then spent several years as a research assistant at the FU Berlin before becoming involved in adult education as a lecturer in the years 1977-1984. Until 1981 he was co-publisher and editor of the cultural-political journal "Berliner Hefte". From 1985 onwards he worked as a freelance writer. In November 2001, Safranski was appointed a full member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry in Darmstadt; he is also a member of the PEN Club Germany. From 2002 to 2012, he co-hosted the "Philosophical Quartet" on ZDF with Peter Sloterdijk, and afterwards was a regular participant in the "Literaturclub" programme on Swiss television. Since summer 2012, he has been teaching as an honorary professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities at the Free University of Berlin. Among the numerous awards Professor Safranski has received are the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for his biography of Schiller, the Josef Pieper Foundation Prize, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Literature Prize and the Thomas Mann Prize. In 2018, he was be awarded the German National Prize for his life's work as a "unique mediator of culture".