Rainer Maria Rilke

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke - better known as Rainer Maria Rilke - was one of the most important poets in the German language. Born in Prague in 1975, he first entered the Military Academy St. Pölten and later briefly attended the Business School in Linz. In Prague he studied Literature, Art History and Philosophy for a time before switching to Law and transferring to Munich. He lived in Berlin, Paris, and Vienna, travelled in Italy and Russia, and only settled permanently after the First World War at Château de Muzot in Switzerland. He died of of leukemia in the Valmont Sanatorium near Montreux aged only 51.

Rilke's poetry influenced Modernist poets and philosophers such as Wittgenstein and Gadamer. His best-known works include the poetry collections Duino Elegies (Duineser Elegien) and Sonnets to Orpheus (Die Sonette an Orpheus), the semi-autobiographical novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge), and a collection of ten letters that was published after his death under the title Letters to a Young Poet (Briefe an einen jungen Dichter).