Klaus von See was born in the village of Altendorf, Brome, Germany on 10 August 1927.

[1] He studied history, German and Scandinavian philology at the University of Hamburg, receiving his doctorate there under the supervision of historian Hermann Aubin in 1953.

von See habilitated at the University of Kiel in 1962 with the thesis Altnordische Rechtswörter.

The same year, von See was appointed Professor of Germanic Philology at the Goethe University Frankfurt.

Here von See expanded the Nordic Department of the German Seminar, and 1976 he created an Institute for Scandinavian Studies under his leadership.