Background
Burger was born in Maryville, Tennessee, to a banker, Joseph Burger and Elizabeth (Knox) Burger.
Burger was born in Maryville, Tennessee, to a banker, Joseph Burger and Elizabeth (Knox) Burger.
He attended Maryville College and Stanford University prior to transferring to Cornell University, where he took his Bachelor of Architecture in 1912. Burger later studied at the School of Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for three years.
At Cornell, Burger was art editor for the Cornell Era and the Cornellian. His mentor was the noted naturalist Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Prior to the First World War, he worked for the Boston Post, drawing sports and political cartoons, as well as illustrations for the Sunday edition
The Burgers had one child, Knox Burger.
Carl completed his national service in the United States Armed Forces between 1917 to 1920, rising to the rank of Captain, United States Army. During this period he organized and directed the American Expeditionary Forces School of Painting in Beaune, France.
The illustrations in The History of the Inter-Allied Games, published in Paris by the United States Army, were drawn under Burger’s direction. He also worked for Edwin Bird Wilson, Incorporated., a financial advertising firm with offices in New York City and Chicago and Barton, Durstine & Osborn.
During World War Two, he was the art director for the American Red Cross in Washington, District of Columbia Burger wrote and illustrated his own books as well as illustrating many books and magazines.
These included All About Fish, published by Random House in 1965. Burger also contributed All About Dogs and All About Elephants. He also painted large murals for the Bronx Zoo and the New York Aquarium.
He lived in Pleasantville, New York, at his death in 1967.
Burger was a member of the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Zoological Society, the Cornell Club of New York, the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity, and through that organization, the Irving Literary Society.