Hamburger, Michael Peter Leopold (1924–2007)

German-born British poet, translator, and critic. He emigrated with his family to London in 1933, and began to write poetry in English while still at school. His verse was first published in Later Hogarth (1945), and he turned in the 1960s from traditional forms to a freer and deeper expression of feeling, in which images of nature and of the Holocaust are frequent. Collected Poems 1941–1994 was published in 1995.

Hamburger was born in Berlin, and educated at Christ Church, Oxford. He was lecturer in German, then Reader, at Reading University, 1955–64. He was awarded the 1990 European Community prize for his translation of Paul Celan. Works of criticism include The Truth of Poetry (1969), and occurs in Testimonies: Selected Shorter Prose 1950–1987 (1989). He published the memoir String of Beginnings in 1991.