Wolf Küper

Wolf Küper worked as a tropical researcher in the Amazon rainforest, as a postdoc and project leader at a university, and as a scientific reviewer for the United Nations—before his four-year-old daughter gave him the opportunity to finally ruin a perfectly respectable career in picture books and to fulfill, for himself and his family, the dream of spending more time together.

With 90 kg of total possessions, a six-month-old baby, and a whole lot of entirely unfounded primordial trust, the family set off on a multi-year journey around the world…

Wolf Küper returned with the not-always-everyday-compatible certainty that time is the substance from which our happiness is made. His travel diary A Million Minutes, both humorous and contemplative, became a bestseller, was translated into several languages, and conquered the box office in 2024 as a feature film starring Karoline Herfurth and Tom Schilling.

While the film delighted a good-humored audience of millions, the right-wing outrage crowd in the comment sections expressed very real concern about the “woke parasite” and “worm” Küper, who, because of his “luxury problem,” should “best be sent to a labor camp.”

The luxury problem in question: wanting to spend time with his family…

Which, in turn, greatly energized the worm to attempt the ultimate fact check in his new book Take.Your.Time.: How important is time, really, for our individual and collective happiness?

After—according to his family—mixed success in domestic service at sink and stoveWolf Küper spent six years as a teacher in South Africa. He currently works as a coach for biographical transformation (while also tinkering with the idea of a parallel career as a surf instructor).

Wolf Küper lives, from time to time, in Cape Town, Bonn, or Aix-en-Provence.