Rilke, Rainer Maria (1875-1926)


Rainier Maria RILKE born, Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary, 4 Dec 1875: Austro-German poet who became internationally famous with such works as Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. ~~ At the outbreak of war in 1914, Rilke was in Munich, where he decided to remain, spending most of the war there. Early in the war he wrote a series of patriotic poems which he later renounced. In December 1915 he was called up for military service with the Austrian army at Vienna, but by June 1916 he had returned to civilian life. The social climate of these years proved inimical to his way of life and to his poetry and, by the time the war ended, he had come to feel almost completely paralyzed. He would have only one relatively productive phase: the fall of 1915, when, in addition to a series of new poems, he wrote the Fourth Duino Elegy. Rilke's Wartime Letters, 1914-1921 were published in 1940.