[1] Ludwig Siep grew up in Cologne and graduated from Dreikönigsgymnasium in 1962. as a scholarship holder of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung), He studied philosophy, education, German studies, history and political science at the University of Cologne and the University of Freiburg.

Siep completed his doctorate at the University of Freiburg in 1969 under Werner Marx with the dissertation Hegels Fichtekritik und die Wissenschaftslehre von 1804.

From 1988 to 1992, Siep worked as an expert reviewer for the history of philosophy at the DFG (German Research Foundation).

In 2007, Ludwig Siep was elected chairman of the Hegel Commission of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and the Arts.

The commission supervises the critical Hegel edition, which is published by the Hegel-Archiv of the Ruhr-University Bochum.