Biography

Rainer Maria Rilke was born in Prague on the 4th of December 1878 as the son of a military man working with railroads. After he visited a military Upper School he tried to avoid the army and did the preparations for the final exams and the final exams in private. He went to university to study literature and art. Rilke left Germany for a journey to Russia which had a big influenced on him. He settled down 1900 in Worpswede, a German village with artists only, most of them painters. He married one of them, Clara Westhoff, but the marriage was divorced in 1902. After journeys to Spain, North Africa, Egypt and France he finally found a man with money: After World War One he settled down in Switzerland in a castle owned by Werner Reinhart, but free to use for him. On the 29th of December 1926 he died in a sanatory in Valmont on Leucaemia. Rilke made some important contributions to the German literature. His work, including the novel "Malte Laurids Brigge" and many famous poems, are the standing examples of the literary "Jugendstil", an epoche in which the authors tried to reflect their inner views.

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The father, Josef Rilke, was a railway inspector, his mother, Sophie "Phia" Entz, came from a wealthy Prague factory owner family. The marriage ended in divorce in 1884. Rilke began writing during his military school days from 1886 to 1891. In 1894 his first volume of poetry, "Life and Songs," was published. In 1891 he broke off his military training due to illness. From 1892 to 1895, Rilke was able to prepare for the Abitur with private lessons, which he passed in Prague in 1895. From 1895 he studied literature, art history and philosophy in Prague. A year later, in 1896, he began studying philosophy at the University of Munich. After meeting the writer Lou Andreas-Salomé in the same year, he followed her to Berlin and enrolled there as a student of art history. He changed his first name René to Rainer. In 1899 and 1900, Rilke made two trips to Russia with Andreas-Salomé. He never wrote down a planned monograph on Russian painters. In the artists' colony in Worpswede he met the sculptor Clara Westhoff and the painter Paula Modersohn-Becker.

In 1901, Rilke separated from Andreas-Salomé and married Clara Westhoff. The two moved to Westerwede near Worpswede. The only daughter Ruth was born. The following year, 1902, Rilke had to break up his household due to financial hardship. This situation forced him to accept commissioned monographic works. During a trip to Paris in 1902, he met the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. This acquaintance had a great influence on his works. During this time he wrote the thing poem "The Panther" and the first of the "New Poems". A year later, the monograph "Auguste Rodin" about the artist was published. The "Book of Hours" was published in 1905. That year, Rilke resumed his philosophy studies in Berlin. His work "Wise of Love and Death by Christoph Rilke" was also written during this time. From 1905 to 1906, Rilke was employed as Rodin's secretary. Between 1908 and 1912 the books "Requiem for a Friend" (in memory of the late Modersohn-Becker), "The Notes of Malte Laurids Brigge" and "The Life of Mary" were published. At a psychological congress in Munich in 1912, Rilke met Sigmund Freud.

At the beginning of the First World War in 1914, his enthusiasm for this turned into shock. He wrote five "war songs". The following year, Rilke was drafted into Bohemia and in 1916 he was transferred to the war archives in Vienna. He then spent the time back in Munich, interrupted by a stay at Hertha Koenig's Gut Böckel in Westphalia. The traumatic experience of military service - as a renewal of the horrors he experienced during military school - left him almost completely silent as a poet. In 1919 Rilke moved to Switzerland. There he met Alexander von Jawlensky. In 1921 he found a permanent home in the castle tower of Muzot (French: Chateau de Muzot) near Sierre in the canton of Valais. In May 1922, Rilke's patron Werner Reinhart (1884-1951) purchased the building and gave it to the poet rent-free. This is where his works "Duino Elegies" and "The Sonnets to Orpheus" were created, which he wrote within 14 days.

In 1924, Rainer Maria Rilke fell ill with leukemia, which resulted in frequent stays in a sanatorium. The long stay in Paris from January to August 1925 was an attempt to escape the illness through a change of location and living conditions. In the last few years between 1923 and 1926, however, he wrote numerous important individual poems (such as "Gong" and "Mausoleum") as well as an extensive lyrical work in French. His book "Poetry of Michelangelo" and his extensive correspondence were published posthumously.

Rainer Maria Rilke died on December 29, 1926 in Val-Mont near Montreux. After his death, his book "Poetry of Michelangelo" and an extensive volume of letters were published.

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