On the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Friederike Mayröcker

On 20 December 2024, Friederike Mayröcker would have turned 100.

Friederike Mayröcker was born in 1924 in Vienna. Until the age of 11, she spent her summer months in the village of Deinzendorf near Austria’s border with what was then Czechoslovakia. Her experiences in this place left a lasting mark on the young author. After completing her state examinations in English, between 1946 and 1969, she worked as an English teacher at various schools in Vienna. Mayröcker published her first literary works as early as 1939, and seven years later, she released smaller publications of poetry. In 1954, she met Ernst Jandl and they became close friends, and later became life partners. In 1956, Mayröcker’s first collection of poetry was published, Larifari: Ein konfuses Buch. In 2024, this book formed the primary inspiration for an artistic response by Austrian comic artist Nicolas Mahler, which was released as Airy-Fairy. 2024 also saw the release of the second volume of her Collected Poems, gathering together her poetic works published between 2004 and 2021. Over the following six and a half decades of her life, Mayröcker published works of poetry, prose, stories, radio plays, children’s books and works for the stage. Mayröcker received numerous prizes and awards in recognition of her extensive and versatile oeuvre. Friederike Mayröcker passed away on 4 June 2021 in her home town of Vienna.