Author
Gero von Wilpert was born in 1933 in Dorpat, Estonia. Upon the takeover of Estonia by the Soviet Union, he left the country, as did many other Baltic-Germans. From 1953 to 1957 he studied at the University of
Heidelberg, where he was at times a docent. He then settled near Stuttgart to work as independent
author and lecturer. Von Wilpert published several editions of an encyclopedia of literary descriptions
Sachwörterbuch der Literatur. He also wrote a conprehensive Lexicon of World Literature and earlier had published a German Literature in Illustrations and a Journal on Schiller.