Michael von Albrecht

The son of the composer Georg Albrecht, Michael von Albrecht first attended the Music Academy in Stuttgart, where he graduated in 1955 after taking the state examination. In Tübingen and Paris, he then studied classical philology and Indology in 1959. In 1964, Albrecht was appointed professor of classical philology at the University of Heidelberg, where he remained until his retirement in 1998. He was also the Visiting Professor at the University of Amsterdam 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 and Ovid. In 1998, he received an honorary doctorate from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. For his translations of Latin, he was awarded the Johann Heinrich Voss Award for excellent translation in 2004.