Enderlein spent his childhood in Tübingen, a town in the German State of Baden-Württemberg. He studied Political Science and Economics at Sciences Po in Paris. He then started a doctoral fellowship at Columbia University in New York from 1998 to 1999, where he earned an M.A. From 1999 to 2001 he became a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne and completed his PhD. His thesis supervisor was Fritz W. Scharpf.
