1952 born in Vienna (Austria); 1970-1975 Studies in philosophy, history and musicology at the University of Vienna; 1976 PhD (with a thesis on the philosophy of music); 1984 Habilitation in philosophy (with a postdoctoral thesis on the meta-phors of death); 1993 Chair of Cultural History at Humboldt-University, Berlin; 1999 Co-founder of the Hermann von Helmholtz-Centre for Cultural Techniques at Humboldt-University, Berlin; 2000 Senior Fellow at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK) in Vienna; 2001 Award of the Aby-Warburg-Foundation Hamburg; 2003-2006 Director of the Institut für Kultur- und Kunstwissenschaften, and 2006-2008 Dean of the Philosophical Faculty III at Humboldt-University, Berlin; since 2007 member and Chair of the Board of Trustees for the foundation Deutsches Hygiene-Museum Dresden; 2008-2012 associate Director of the Center for Literary and Cultural Research, Berlin; 2008-2009 Senior Fellow at the International Research Institute for Cultural Technologies and Media Philosophy (IKKM) of the Bauhaus University, Weimar.