Michael von Albrecht (born 22 August 1933 in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

) is a German classical scholar and translator, as well as a poet writing in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

Life

The son of the composer Georg Albrecht first attended the Music Academy in

, where he graduated in 1955 after taking the state examination. In

Tübingen Tübingen (, , Swabian: ''Dibenga'') is a traditional university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer rivers. about one in thr ...

and

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, he then studied classical philology and Indology in 1959. In 1964, Albrecht was appointed professor of classical philology at the

University of Heidelberg } Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, ...

, where he remained until his retirement in 1998. He was also the Visiting Professor at the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...

and a visiting member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1981. Michael von Albrecht's research focuses on ancient music, Roman literature and its reception, history, and comparative literature. His two-volume history of Roman literature has been translated into eight languages. He has also become well known for translations of Latin literature into German, especially

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...

and

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...

. In 1998 he received an honorary doctorate from the

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...

. For his translations of Latin, he was awarded with the Johann Heinrich Voss Award for excellent translation in 2004.

Selected works

* 1964 ''Silius Italicus: Freiheit und Gebundenheit römischer Epik'' * 1968 ''Ovid'' (''

Wege der Forschung ''Wege der Forschung'' (WdF, ''Ways of Research'') is the name of a historic interdisciplinary book series about topics of humanities, first published by Hermann Gentner Verlag in Bad Homburg, later by Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft in Dar ...

''; Mitherausgeber) * 1971 ''Meister römischer Prosa von Cato bis Apuleius'' * 1972 ''Goethe und das Volkslied'' * 1972 ''Der Teppich als literarisches Motiv'' * 1973 ''Marcus Tullius Cicero, Sprache und Stil'' * 1977 ''Römische Poesie'' * 1987 ''Die römische Literatur in Text und Darstellung'' (Hrsg. von Bd. 3) * 1988 ''Rom: Spiegel Europas. Texte und Themen'' (2. Auflage 1998) * 1989 ''Scripta Latina'' * 1992 ''Geschichte der römischen Literatur'' (2. Auflage 1994
Besprechung
* 1999 ''Roman Epic. An Interpretative Introduction'' * 2000 ''Das Buch der Verwandlungen'' * 2000 ''Vergil, Eklogen'' * 2003 ''Literatur als Brücke : Studien zur Rezeptionsgeschichte und Komparatistik'' * 2004 ''Wort und Wandlung. Senecas Lebenskunst'' * 2005 ''Lukrez in der europäischen Kultur'' * 2005 ''Bibliographie zum Fortwirken der Antike in den deutschsprachigen Literaturen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts'' (mit Walther Kißel und Werner Schubert) * 2006 Vergil' .Bucolica, Georgica, Aeneis. Eine Einführung''. Heidelberg, 2006.

References

External links

Eulogy on the occasion of his 80th birthday
(German) 1933 births Writers from Stuttgart German classical scholars German translators Living people German male non-fiction writers Translators of Virgil 20th-century Latin-language writers {{Germany-academic-bio-stub