- Though primarily a poet and essayist, he also made excursions into theater, film, opera, radio drama, reportage, translation.
- Since 1985 he had been the editor of the prestigious book series 'Die Andere Bibliothek', published in Frankfurt, and now containing almost 250 titles.
- He was part of the last generation of intellectuals whose writing was shaped by first-hand experience of the Third Reich.
- Between 1965 and 1975 he lived briefly in the US and Cuba and edited the magazine Das Kursbuch.
- Together with Gaston Salvatore, Enzensberger was the founder of the monthly TransAtlantik.
- His own work has been translated into more than 40 languages.
- Enzensberger had a sarcastic, ironic tone in many of his poems. For example, the poem "Middle Class Blues" consists of various typicalities of middle class life, with the phrase "we can't complain" repeated several times, and concludes with "what are we waiting for?".
- Enzensberger ( the eldest of four boys) was the brother of the author Christian Enzensberger.
- Many of his poems also feature themes of civil unrest over economic and class based issues.
- Hans Magnus Enzensberger also wrote under the pseudonym Andreas Thalmayr.
- The Enzensberger family moved to Nuremberg, the ceremonial birthplace of National Socialism, in 1931. Julius Streicher, the founder and publisher of Der Stürmer, was their next-door neighbour. Hans Magnus joined the Hitler Youth in his teens, but was expelled soon afterwards. "I have always been incapable of being a good comrade. I can't stay in line. It's not in my character. It may be a defect, but I can't help it.
- He has written novels and several books for children (including The Number Devil, an exploration of mathematics) and was co-author of a book for German as a foreign language (Die Suche).
- In 2009, Enzensberger received a special Lifetime Recognition Award given by the trustees of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, which also awards the annual Griffin Poetry Prize.
- With Irene Dische he wrote the libretto for Aulis Sallinen's fifth opera The Palace.
- In 1963 he received the Georg Büchner Prize (the most important literary prize for German language literature, along with the Goethe Prize).
- Until 1957 he worked as a radio editor in Stuttgart.
- He also invented and collaborated in the construction of a machine which automatically composes poems. This was used during the 2006 Football World Cup to commentate on games.
- He was a German author, poet, translator and editor.
- Enzensberger studied literature and philosophy at the universities of Erlangen, Freiburg and Hamburg, and at the Sorbonne in Paris, receiving his doctorate in 1955 for a thesis about Clemens Brentano's poetry.
- He participated in several gatherings of Group 47 (a group of participants in German writers' meetings, invited by Hans Werner Richter between 1947-1967).
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