He earned a PhD from FU Berlin in 1976 for a dissertation by the title of "Studies on the Development of Working-Class Literature in the Federal Republic of Germany" (original German: Studien zur Entwicklung der Arbeiterliteratur in der Bundesrepublik).

In the late 1970s, he worked as the co-publisher and editor of the Berliner Hefte, a journal on literary life.

Hoffmann, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Johann Wolfgang Goethe.

Center, since 2001 member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (German Academy for Language and Poetry) in Darmstadt.

[2] From 2002 to 2012, he and Peter Sloterdijk co-hosted a bi-monthly debate on philosophical and ethical questions, Das Philosophische Quartett (lit.