Dilthey was born in 1833 as the son of a Reformed pastor in the village of Biebrich in the Duchy of Nassau, now in Hesse, Germany. As a young man he followed family traditions by studying theology at Heidelberg University, where his teachers included the young Kuno Fischer. He then moved to the University of Berlin and was taught by, amongst others, Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg and August Boeckh, both former pupils of Friedrich Schleiermacher. In January 1864, he received his doctorate from Berlin with a thesis in Latin on Schleiermacher's ethics, and in June of the same year he also earned his habilitation with a thesis on moral consciousness. He became a "Privatdozent" at Berlin in 1865.