Wilhelm Dilthey was born in Biebrich on the Rhine in 1833, and died in 1911. The son of the preacher to the Count of Nassau, Dilthey followed family tradition by starting his university studies at Heidelberg in theology. There he was drawn to the philosophical systems of G. W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Schleiermacher by Kuno Fischer. In 1853 Fischer was accused of being a pantheist and his right to teach was withdrawn. As a consequence, Dilthey moved to the University of Berlin, where he came under the influence of Schleiermacher's students Friedrich von Trendelenburg and August Boeckh. Increasingly, Schleiermacher became the focus of Dilthey's interests. In 1859 he was asked to complete the editing of Schleiermacher's letters. That year the Schleiermacher Society also organized an essay competition on his hermeneutics. Dilthey submitted an essay entitled “Schleiermacher's Hermeneutical System in Relation to Earlier Protestant Hermeneutics” in 1860, which was published in part in 1893, but not fully until 1966 (see Dilthey 1996: 31). It was awarded the first prize and led to a second commission, namely, to write Schleiermacher's biography. The first volume of this biography was published in 1870 (Dilthey 1979b). It is a large volume that places Schleiermacher not only in his theological setting but also in the context of the literary and philosophical movements astir in Berlin from 1796 to 1807. The work displays Dilthey's own expanding interests in aesthetical and philosophical issues. He finally wrote his dissertation in philosophy on Schleiermacher’s ethics.