 Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten was born in Berlin on 17 June 1714. Baumgarten’s mother died when he was three, and his father, a garrison chaplain and pastor, died when he was eight in 1722, leaving him to the care of his grandmother and older brothers. In accordance with his father’s wishes, Baumgarten went to Halle to study, enrolling in the Latin school at Francke’s Waisenhaus where his older brother Siegmund Jakob (1706–57), who would himself become a famous theologian, was an inspector. Baumgarten thrived in his studies, and in 1730 matriculated at the university, where he attended lectures by Francke and Lange in theology. While it was still forbidden to teach Wolff’s philosophy, Baumgarten undertook (with his brother’s encouragement) a thorough study of Wolff’s thought, lecturing on his logic in the Latin school and visiting Wolffians at the university in Jena. Baumgarten turned to the study of philosophy, attaining his Magister in 1735, and held lectures on logic and Wolffian metaphysics, dictating from his own notes on the latter (rather than a textbook) from which notes his own later Metaphysica derives. In 1736, a chronic lung ailment interrupted his academic work and saw him hospitalized in Berlin, returning to Halle in 1737 where he continued to lecture to great acclaim. His position at Halle had been as an (unpaid) extraordinary professor, but in 1739 he was called to a position at the university at Frankfurt an der Oder, and he left Halle in 1740 just before Wolff’s triumphant return. In Frankfurt, Baumgarten lectured widely in philosophy, including on aesthetics for the first time in 1742. Health problems, likely tuberculosis, and other difficulties, marked the last decade of Baumgarten’s life, and he died on 26 May 1762.