Hans Magnus Enzensberger was born in Kaufbeuren, in Germany, on 11 November, 1929. As a writer, poet, essayist, dramatist, translator and journalist, Enzensberger is considered to be one of the most influential intellectuals on the international scene.
He studied literature, philosophy and languages at the Universities of Erlangen, Freiburg and Hamburg and at the Sorbonne in Paris. He received his doctorate in 1955 with a thesis discussing Clemens Brentano‘s poetry. Immediately after the War, he became one of the most active members of Group 47, an intellectual movement whose members included authors such as Grass, Boll and Celan and whose purpose was to re-establish the areas of German culture that had been forgotten or suppressed by the Nazi regime. In 1965, he founded the magazine “Kursbuch”, one of the German Federal Republic’s most lively periodicals, and later, in 1980, the monthly “TransAtlantik”. Since 1985 he has been the editor of the prestigious book series Die Andere Bibliothek, published in Frankfurt, and now containing around 250 titles. His own work has been translated into more than 40 languages, and Enzensberger has won numerous important international awards, including the Georg Brüchner Prize (1963), the Grinzane Editoria Prize (2001), the Principe delle Asturie Prize (2002), the Lerici Pea Prize (2002), the Merck-Serono Prize (2007).
His works published in Italy include poetry such as Mausoleum (1979), The Sinking of the Titanic (1980), The Music of the future (1997), Lighter than Air (2001); essays and fiction include The Short Summer of Anarchy. Life and Death of Buenaventura Durruti (1978), Perspectives on Civil Wars (1994), The Number Devil (1997), Where Have I Ended up? (1998), Zig Zag. The Politics of Culture and Vice Versa (1999), Esterhazy (with Irene Dische, 2002), Poetry Is so Boring (with Alfonso Berardinelli, 2006), The radical loser (2007), The Labyrinth of Intelligence (2008), The Silences of Hammerstein (2008).
Enzensberger lives and works in Munich.