Otto A. Böhmer, born in 1949 in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, lives as author and literary critic in Wöllstadt, Hessen. He did his doctorate on Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He was awarded the ›Erich Fried Prize‹ in 2001. At Diogenes he has published several biographies of poets, like Goethe, Schiller, Eichendorff, Heine and Nietzsche.