A poem by Trakl inscribed on a plaque inMirabell Garden, Salzburg.
Georg Trakl (Austrian German:[ˈtraːkl̩]; 3 February 1887 – 3 November 1914) was anAustrian poet and the brother of the pianistGrete Trakl. He is considered one of the most important AustrianExpressionists.[1] He is perhaps best known for his poem "Grodek", which he wrote shortly before he died of acocaineoverdose at theage of 27.
Trakl was born and lived the first 21 years of his life inSalzburg. His father, Tobias Trakl (11 June 1837, Ödenburg/Sopron – 1910), was a hardware dealer fromHungary. His mother, Maria Catharina Halik (17 May 1852,Wiener Neustadt – 1925), was a housewife of partlyCzech descent who struggled withsubstance use disorder. She left her son's education to a French governess, who brought Trakl into contact with French language and literature at an early age. His sisterGrete Trakl was a musical prodigy with whom he shared artistic endeavors. Poems allude to an incestuous relationship between the two.[2][3]
From 1892 Trakl attended aCatholic elementary school, but he was released two afternoons a week for religious instruction from a Protestant pastor.[4] He matriculated in 1897 at the SalzburgStaatsgymnasium, where he had problems inLatin,Greek, and mathematics, for which he had to repeat one year and then leave withoutMatura. At age 13, Trakl began to write poetry.
Carolyn Forché notes that "Given his dependence on opiates, his lack of financial independence, and his poetic vocation, he chose somewhat practically to become a dispensing chemist".[5] From 1905, Trakl undertook a 3 year apprenticeship in a pharmacy; this facilitated access to drugs, such as morphine and cocaine. It was during this time that he experimented withplaywriting, but his two short plays,All Souls' Day andFata Morgana, were not successful. However, from May to December 1906, Trakl published four prose pieces in thefeuilleton section of two Salzburg newspapers. All cover themes and settings found in his mature work. This is especially true of "Traumland" (Dreamland), in which a young man falls in love with a dying girl who is his cousin.[6]
In 1908, Trakl moved toVienna to study pharmacy, and became acquainted with some local artists who helped him publish some of his poems. Trakl's father died in 1910, soon before Trakl received his pharmacy certificate; thereafter, Trakl enlisted in the army for a year-long stint. His return to civilian life in Salzburg was unsuccessful and he re-enlisted, serving as a pharmacist at a hospital inInnsbruck. There he became acquainted with a group of avant-garde artists involved with the well-regarded literary journalDer Brenner, a journal that began the Kierkegaard revival in the German-speaking countries.Ludwig von Ficker, the editor ofDer Brenner (and son of the historianJulius von Ficker), became his patron; he regularly printed Trakl's work and endeavored to find him a publisher to produce a collection of poems. The result of these efforts wasGedichte(Poems), published by Kurt Wolff inLeipzig during the summer of 1913. Ficker also brought Trakl to the attention ofLudwig Wittgenstein, who anonymously provided him with a sizable stipend so that he could concentrate on his writing.[7] Johnston reports that Ficker selected Trakl to receive 20,000 crowns and that the "news of this windfall prompted the drug-ridden Trakl to vomit".[8]
Grave of Georg Trakl
At the beginning ofWorld War I, Trakl served in theAustro-Hungarian Army and was sent as amedical officer to attend soldiers on theEastern Front. Trakl suffered frequent bouts of depression. On one such occasion during theBattle of Gródek (fought in autumn 1914 atGródek, then in theKingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria), 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 at a military hospital inKraków and observed closely, Trakl lapsed into worse depression and wrote to Ficker for advice. Ficker convinced him to communicate with Wittgenstein. Upon receiving Trakl's note, Wittgenstein travelled to the hospital, but found that Trakl had died of a cocaine overdose.[9][10]
Trakl was buried at Kraków'sRakowicki Cemetery on 6 November 1914, but on 7 October 1925, as a result of the efforts by Ficker, his remains were transferred to the municipal cemetery ofInnsbruck-Mühlau (where they now repose next to Ficker's).[11]
While Trakl's very earliest poems are more philosophical and do not deal as much with the real world, most of his poems are either set in the evening or have evening as a motif.[12] Silence is also a frequent motif in Trakl's poetry, and his later poems often feature the silent dead, who are unable to express themselves.[13]
Sebastian Dreaming, trans. James Reidel, Seagull Books, 2016
A Skeleton Plays Violin, trans. James Reidel, Seagull Books, 2017
Autumnal Elegies: Complete Poetry, trans. Michael Jarvie, 2019
Surrender to Night: The Collected Poemsof Georg Trakl, trans. Will Stone, Pushkin Collection 2019
Collected Poems, trans. James Reidel, Seagull Books 2019
Georg Trakl: The Damned, trans. Daniele Pantano, Broken Sleep Books 2023
Critical studies
Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis,Blossoming Thorn: Georg Trakl's Poetry of Atonement, Bucknell University Press, 1987,ISBN978-0838751022
Richard Millington,Snow from Broken Eyes: Cocaine in the Lives and Works of Three Expressionist Poets, Peter Lang AG, 2012
Richard Millington,The Gentle Apocalypse: Truth and Meaning in the Poetry of Georg Trakl, Camden House, 2020
Hans Joachim Schliep,on the Table Bread and wine- poetry and Religion in the works of Georg Trakl, Lambert Academic Publishing (LAP), 2020,ISBN978-6200537300
Russian composerDavid Tukhmanov wrote a triptych for mezzo-soprano and piano titledDream of Sebastian, or Saint Night, which is based on the poems of Trakl. The first performance took place in 2007.[19]
Kristalliner Schrei, a 2014 setting of three poems fromGedichte for mezzo-soprano and string quartet, by Henry Breneman Stewart[20]
French composerDenise Roger (1924-2005) used Trakl’s texts in her songs “Rondel” and “Gesang einer gefangenen Amsel.”[21]
Silence Spoken: ...quiet answers to dark questions, an intersemiotic translation of five poems by Trakl into dance, choreographed by Angela Kaiser, 2015.[23]
^Perloff, Marjorie (2023), Stadler, Friedrich (ed.),"In Search of the Redeeming Word: Wittgenstein's Private Notebooks 1914–16 and the Making of the Tractatus",Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, vol. 28, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 44–45,doi:10.1007/978-3-031-07789-0_2,ISBN978-3-031-07788-3, retrieved28 October 2025,Wittgenstein was looking forward eagerly to visiting the poet Georg Trakl, who was a patient in the garrison hospital there. Before the war, Wittgenstein had made a very generous financial bequest to a group of poets and artists chosen by Ludwig von Ficker, the editor of Der Brenner, from artists in need. These included Trakl [...] Wittgenstein had never met Trakl and knew very little about contemporary poetry, yet somehow he considered Trakl a kind of soulmate. But when he arrived in Kraków and went to the hospital, he was informed that the poet had died a few days earlier. "This hit me very hard," Wittgenstein wrote in his notebook, "How sad, how sad!!!"
Wikimedia Commons has media related toGeorg Trakl.
Photos of the graves of Ludwig von Ficker (left) and Georg Trakl (right) at the cemetery of Innsbruck-Mühlau:Photo 1Archived 2 February 2018 at theWayback Machine,Photo 2
