Hanns-Josef Ortheil was born in Cologne, the fifth son of librarian Maria Katharina Ortheil (1913–1996) and geodesist and later Federal Railway Director Josef Ortheil (1907–1988). His parents had lost two sons during World War II and another two in the early postwar years.
In light of these deaths, Ortheil's mother became increasingly silent and eventually mute, so that Ortheil grew up with a speechless mother during his early childhood and stopped speaking himself for a time at around the age of three. As a result, he did not learn to speak until he was seven.

In a television studio interview on the WDR program Planet Wissen in October 2013, Ortheil said that his first sentence was "Give it here!" when he wanted the ball during a soccer game between two boys. The four-year-old found relief from his highly introverted and mutistic childhood when he began piano lessons, which he initially received from his mother.

From 1956 onwards, Ortheil was taught by pianists and music teachers, such as the pianist and music theorist Erich Forneberg and later by the pianist and Arrau student Daniela Ballek. Ortheil made rapid progress as a pianist and wanted to pursue this career professionally. However, severe, recurring tendonitis forced him to abandon this career aspiration during two stays in Rome in the early 1970s, where he studied at the Roman Conservatory and earned his living as an organist at the Church of Santa Maria dell'Anima. After spending his childhood and youth in Cologne, the Westerwald, Wuppertal, and Mainz, Ortheil graduated from the Rabanus-Maurus-Gymnasium in Mainz and initially studied art history in Rome and later musicology, philosophy, German studies, and comparative literature at the universities of Mainz, Göttingen, Paris, and Rome.

During his studies in the 1970s, he worked as a film and music journalist for the Mainz-based Allgemeine Zeitung and later (from the 1980s onwards) as a feature writer and literary critic for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, Die Welt, the Rheinischer Merkur, Der Spiegel, and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, among others..

In 1976, he received his doctorate from the German Institute at the University of Mainz with a dissertation on the theory of the novel in the age of the French Revolution. From 1976 to 1982, he was a research assistant there, and from 1982 to 1988, he was a university assistant.

In 1979, he made his debut as a writer with the novel Fermer, for which he received the first ZDF "Aspekte" Literature Prize for "the best debut" of the season. In 1983, he married the publisher Imma Klemm, the granddaughter of the expressionist poet Wilhelm Klemm, to whom he dedicated a monograph. From 1988 to 1990, he was a freelance writer.

In 1991, he received a scholarship from the German Academy Villa Massimo in Rome and has lived there more frequently since then. During a second stay at Villa Massimo in 1993, Ortheil also resumed his earlier concert activities, playing in private and public settings.

In 1990, he was appointed lecturer in creative writing and contemporary literature at the University of Hildesheim, where he founded the "Creative Writing and Cultural Journalism" degree program in 1999. This program has produced a number of younger writers, including Mariana Leky, Paul Brodowsky, Thomas Klupp, Sebastian Polmans, Kevin Kuhn, and Leif Randt. In 2003, he also became a professor of creative writing and cultural journalism in Hildesheim, where he successfully continued the program together with colleagues and staff.

In 2008, Ortheil became the first director of the newly founded Institute for Literary Writing and Literary Studies at the University of Hildesheim, which is dedicated to promoting young authors in theory and practice and researching all aspects of writing.

In addition to his teaching activities at the University of Hildesheim, Ortheil was a lecturer in poetry at Washington University in St. Louis, USA, as well as at the universities of Paderborn, Bielefeld, Heidelberg, Zurich, and Bamberg. Ortheil is an honorary professor at the University of Heidelberg and a member of the PEN Center Germany and the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. He has been curator of the Gargonza Arts Award since 2012.

(Source: Wikipedia)