Georg Bertram was born in Gießen in 1967 and grew up in Esslingen am Neckar. He studied philosophy and German studies at Justus Liebig University Gießen, where he also received his doctorate (1997) with a dissertation on the philosophy of the Sturm und Drang. Following his time as a research associate with Professor Martin Seel at the Center for Philosophy and the Foundations of Science in Gießen, he was assistant professor (Juniorprofessor) of philosophy at the University of Hildesheim from 2002 to 2007.

He completed his university professorial teaching qualification (Habilitation) in philosophy as well as a research stay at the University of Pittsburgh before taking up a position as professor of theoretical philosophy with a focus on aesthetics and philosophy of language at Freie Universität Berlin in 2007. In the first few years there, he made significant contributions to the further development of the Institute of Philosophy. From 2017 to 2019 he was vice dean for student affairs at the Department of Philosophy and Humanities. During his tenure as vice dean, he was responsible for initiating and advancing many projects, including establishing the introductory and orientation studies program EinS@FU and implementing a structural reform of the combined bachelor’s program at the Department of Philosophy and Humanities. He became dean of the department in 2019 and remained in this role until July 8, 2022, when he became vice president of Freie Universität Berlin with responsibilities for professorial appointments and the university’s recruitment strategy.

Georg Bertram’s main research areas cover the systematic philosophy of art, theories of meaning in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of subjectivity, and the social foundations of rational and normative practices. He is the author of several monographs, including works that aim to convey philosophical issues to a general audience, such as Kunst: Eine philosophische Einführung (Reclam, 2005 [Art: A Philosophical Introduction]), Sprachphilosophie zur Einführung (Junius, 2011 [Introduction to the Philosophy of Language]), and Improvisieren: Lob der Ungewissheit (Reclam, 2021 [Improvise! In Praise of Uncertainty]), which he cowrote with jazz journalist Michael Rüsenberg. His most important research monographs include Die Sprache und das Ganze: Entwurf einer antireduktionistischen Sprachphilosophie (Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2006 [Language and the Whole: Outline of an Antireductionist Philosophy of Language]), Kunst als menschliche Praxis: Eine Ästhetik (Suhrkamp, 2014; English translation: Art as Human Practice: An Aesthetics, Bloomsbury, 2019), Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes: Ein systematischer Kommentar (Reclam, 2017 [Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: A Systematic Commentary]), and Die Freiheit des Verstehens: Eine hermeneutisch-kritische Theorie (Suhrkamp, 2024 [The Freedom of Understanding: A Hermeneutic-Critical Theory]).