Roland Reuß was born in Karlsruhe and, from 1977, studied German Language and Literature, History, Philosophy and Music Theory. He received his PhD in 1990 and, in 1994, was one of the co-founders of the Institute for Textual Criticism. Since 2003, Reuß has been a private lecturer at the University of Heidelberg, where he has had a professorship for New German Literature since 2007. He has also been working as an Honorary Professor in Textual Scholarship at the FU Berlin since 2008.