HAMBURGER, MICHAEL

HAMBURGER, MICHAEL (1924– ), German-born English poet, translator and critic. Hamburger was born in Berlin and, with his family, settled in London in 1933. He was educated at Westminster School and at Oxford. At the age of 19, he translated a volume of Hoelderlin's verse into English. Hamburger held a variety of academic posts in Britain and the United States. While lecturing in German (1952–64), Hamburger wrote poems that dealt with increasingly somber themes, such as the eichmann trial. Among them are Poems 1950–1951 (1952), The Dual Site (1957), Weather and Season (1963), and In Flashlight (1965). His other works include critical studies: a bilingual edition of Hoelderlin's poems (1967) and some of the translations in O The Chimneys (1967), poems on the Holocaust by nelly sachs . His Collected Poems, 1941–1994 appeared in 1995. (William D. Rubinstein (2nd ed.)