Georg TRAKL , Born 3 Feb 1886 in Salzburg. Expressionist poet whose personal and wartime torments made him Austria's foremost elegist of decay and death. He influenced Germanic poets after both world wars. Moody and withdrawn, Trakl trained as a pharmacist at the University of Vienna (1908–10)—partly, perhaps, to gain access to narcotics, for by 1913 he was a confirmed addict. Other compulsions were an abnormal affection for his younger sister, Grete, and restless wanderlust. The patronage of a periodical publisher and of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who secretly gave him part of a patrimony, enabled Trakl to devote himself to poetry; he brought out his first volume in 1913. The following year he became a lieutenant in the army medical corps and, in Galicia, was placed in charge of 90 serious casualties whose agonies he, as a mere dispensing chemist, could hardly relieve. One patient killed himself while Trakl watched helplessly; he also saw deserters being hanged. He either attempted or threatened to shoot himself in the aftermath of these horrors and was sent to a military hospital at Kraków for observation. There he died of an overdose of cocaine, perhaps taken inadvertently.
| Nationality |
German |
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Fredericton |
| Cover Price |
$15.95 |
| No. of Pages |
57 |
| Height x Width |
8.8
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6.1
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Georg Trakl (1887-1914), the Austrian Expressionist poet, served with the Austrian army during the first three months of the war before committing suicide on 3/4 November 1914.
Born to a middle class Protestant family in Salzburg on 3 February 1887, Trakl's mother was unhappy throughout his childhood and considered emotionally unstable. In turn, as Trakl progressed through his own childhood he began himself to withdraw from friends and family and similarly demonstrated early signs of emotional instability.
Taking to opium, chloroform and alcohol Trakl failed his school courses and was obliged to re-take a year. Meanwhile he developed a close attachment to his sister Grete, leading some critics to speculate upon a possibly incestuous relationship.
Trakl's initial attempts at poetry were uniformly unsuccessful; at this time he also wrote brief articles for a local newspaper and two one-act plays (both also unsuccessful).
Dropping out of school and deciding upon a career as a pharmacist's apprentice, Trakl's choice of profession afforded him ready access to satisfy a by now confirmed drug habit. He went on to study pharmacy in Vienna although the death of his father prior to the completion of his course caused Trakl financial hardship.
Trakl next spent a period drafted into the Austrian army before re-emerging into civilian life with clear mental problems. Unable to hold down any job he spent time at a hospital in Innsbruck where he met a number of avant-garde artists including Ludwig von Ficker, editor of the Der Brenner journal.
Ficker encouraged Trakl and regularly published his poems, which by now largely concerned themselves with decay, courage and the search for God. Subsequently choosing to live with Ficker Trakl finally achieved success with the decision of Kafka's publisher Kurt Wolff to publish a collection of Trakl's poetry in 1913.
Drafted into the Austrian army with the arrival of war in August 1914 as a Lieutenant with the Austrian Medical Corps Trakl was also the recipient of a sizeable donation from Ludwig Wittgenstein, although he never had the opportunity to use it before his death. Hospitalised for depression he regularly threatened to commit suicide.
Assigned to a hospital in Poland in November 1914 in the wake of the Battle of Grodek, Trakl found himself required to care single-handedly for some 90 men, a task which broke him emotionally. He committed suicide via a cocaine overdose on 3/4 November 1914, shortly before Wittgenstein was due to pay him a visit of encouragement.
His sister, Grete, by now also a drug addict, similarly committed suicide some three years later.
On the outbreak of World War I, Trakl was sent as a medical official to attend to soldiers in Galicia (comprising portions of modern-day Ukraine and Poland). Trakl suffered frequent bouts of depression[citation needed], exacerbated by the horror of caring for severely wounded soldiers. During one such incident in Grodek, Trakl had to steward the recovery of some ninety soldiers wounded in the fierce campaign against the Russians. He tried to shoot himself from the strain, but his comrades prevented him. Hospitalized in Krakow and placed under close observation, Trakl lapsed into deeper depression and wrote to Ficker for advice. Ficker convinced him to contact Wittgenstein. Upon receiving Trakl's note, Wittgenstein went to the hospital, but found that Trakl had committed suicide from an overdose of cocaine three days before.
