»Where Do I Belong?«

On July 14, 1914, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke left his home in Paris. He wanted to take a short trip to Germany and then return to the French capital. But the world war that broke out in August thwarted his plans. As an Austrian citizen, the Prague-born poet could no longer return to Paris. He spent almost five years in Munich. During this period of war and subsequent revolutions, he largely stopped writing poetry. He repeatedly lamented that his »voix intérieure« had fallen silent.

This silence was not an unfounded bout of writer's block, but for Rilke the appropriate and only possible response to the madness of war. For him, poetry and war were mutually exclusive. This incompatibility prompted him to define his self-image as a poet and his conception of poetics more sharply in contrast to war, while at the same time making his stance on war clear. In this respect, Rilke was by no means the unworldly aesthete he is often portrayed as. Hundreds of letters prove that he was a keen observer of his time and that his political views – which he always placed in a broader context – were more illuminating than those of many of his contemporaries. If we think about this »political« incarnation of Rilke, it becomes easier to understand his traumatic experiences in his childhood and youth, his relationship with his family, and his friendships with women.