Anna von der Goltz was born in Freiburg in 1978 and grew up in Bremen, Germany. She moved to Britain in 1997 to study History, first at the University of Sussex and then at Oxford University. She won the German History Society Essay Prize in 2006 and was awarded the prestigious Fraenkel Prize in 2008 for her work on the Hindenburg myth. Since 2007, she has been a contributor to the research project 'Around 1968: Activism, Networks, Trajectories' funded by the AHRC and the Leverhulme Trust.