Rilke was called up at the beginning of 1916, and he had to undertake basic training in Vienna. Influential friends interceded on his behalf, and he was transferred to the War Records Office and discharged from the military on 9 June 1916. He spent the subsequent time once again in Munich, interrupted by a stay on Hertha Koenig's Gut Bockel in Westphalia. The traumatic experience of military service, a reminder of the horrors of the military academy, almost completely silenced him as a poet.



The short story of the death in action of Cornet Rilke of Langenau, standard-bearer of an Austrian cavalry regiment in Hungary during the Great Turkish War of 1663.

The Austro–Turkish War (1663–1664) or fourth Austro–Turkish War was a short war between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire.
The Habsburg army under Raimondo Montecuccoli succeeded to halt the Ottoman army on its way to Vienna in the Battle of Saint Gotthard.
Despite this Ottoman defeat, the war ended for them with the favourable Peace of Vasvár.