Hans W. Finger was born and educated in Hamburg, Germany. He lived in Melbourne as an Australian resident for ten years before returning to Germany and eventually settling in Munich, but he continued visiting Australia regularly.
Finger became interested in the life and writings of the German explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, and during stays in Melbourne and Sydney in the early 1990s he collected material for his Leichhardt biography. Leichhardt (1999; 2nd rev. and enlarged ed. 2000) is the first major biography of the explorer written in German, and it draws heavily on the manuscripts of Leichhardt's German diaries and letters, providing extensive quotations from these texts together with their sources. A shortened version of the biography appeared in 2000 under the title Das Unmögliche wagen. In 2001 Finger was involved in assembling an exhibition on the European exploration of Australia at the Göttingen State and University Library to mark the centenary of Australian Federation; he organised the Leichhardt section of the exhibition, co-authored (with Reimer Eck) an accompanying book on Australia, and also edited a 'Leichhardt online' website by the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen (http://leichhardt.sub.uni-goettingen.de).
Finger has also published a short story collection, Ins rote Herz (2000), which includes - among others - stories set in Australia and dealing with Australian topics and issues.
