Manfred Schneider was born in 1944 in Gliwice, studied German, French and Philosophy in Freiburg, then taught there and in Essen before accepting a Chair in “New German Literature, Aesthetics and Media” at the Ruhr-University Bochum, in 1999. Publications inter alia: The Barbarian. The Apocalyptic Mood and Cultural Recycling and The Assassination: A Critique of Paranoid Reason.