A pupil of St. Albert the Great in Cologne, he taught philosophy and theology in Strasbourg, was provincial of Teutonia (1272-77), and then professor in Paris.
He wrote a commentary on Aristotle’s *Librum Metheurum* and *De Anima*. He also commented in part on the *Sentences*. However, of these and other works, which are less probably attributed to him, no trace remains. Instead, 25 letters from the period of his provincialate survive (ed. by H. Finke, *Ungedruckte Dominika*, nos. 66-78, 81), a sermon written in Old High German (ed. by J. Daguillon, *U. de S. prédicateur*, in *La vie spirituelle*, suppl., 17 [1927], pp. 90-94), and the *Liber de Summo Bono*. Written contemporaneously with St. Thomas Aquinas’s *Summa Theologiae*, the *Liber* lacks the unity and systematic rigor of the works of the Angelic Doctor; nonetheless, it represents a notable advance over earlier *Summae* in the organic arrangement of its material and the originality of its compositional plan. The Neoplatonic orientation that Ulrich inherited from St. Albert the Great is evident, particularly in his use of Albert’s commentary on the *De Divinis Nominibus*. Ulrich also drew upon other Neoplatonic works, such as the *Liber de Causis* and Avicenna’s *Metaphysica*.
According to Ulrich, God is the *esse formale* of all beings, not in a pantheistic sense, but because He is the efficient and exemplary cause and the light of all intelligences. Divine action reaches lower beings through the cooperation of the intelligences, which are informed by intersecting light and regulate the movement of celestial bodies. The possible intellect naturally possesses a habitual and confused knowledge of God, which, upon contact with things, becomes immediately actual and determinate without proof. *Esse* is the first emanation of the First Being. The communication of this *esse*, which God confers upon all creatures, is a diffusion of light: God is pure formal and intellectual light, and since He acts through His essence, the effects are necessarily a diffusion of that light.
Ulrich serves as the connecting link between the Neoplatonism of St. Albert the Great and the theologians and, especially, the German Dominican mystics of the following centuries, from Tauler to John Nider.