Wolfgang Leppmann (1922–2002)
Author of Rilke: A Life
Works by Wolfgang Leppmann
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1922-07-09
- Date of death
- 2002-12-03
- Gender
- male
- Birthplace
- Berlin, Deutschland
- Place of death
- Bergen auf Rügen
- Relationships
- Leppmann, Franz (father)
Members
Reviews
Lists
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 11
- Members
- 152
- Popularity
- #137,198
- Rating
- 2.8
- Reviews
- 2
- ISBNs
- 30
- Languages
- 5
The ease of international, or at least interEuropean, travel. The book provides a chronology of Rilke’s life; so for (as an example) 1899 we find Rilke starting out in Berlin, then Arco (in the Tyrol), then Bolzano, Prague, Vienna, Russian, back to Berlin, Bibersburg, then closing out the year back in Berlin. These are places where Rilke had at least a temporary residence, not just places he passed through; and this is not an unusual year. Rilke wrote poetry in both German and French. (Born in Prague, he ended up as a Czech citizen after WWI, although he never actually set foot in Czechoslovakia after it became independent.) You wonder if the Eurocrats have a sort of remembered nostalgia for this sort of freedom of movement. Of course, what brought it all to an end was the ease of terrorist passage from Serbia to Austrian and the assassination at Sarajevo. History seems ripe to repeat.
The less-than-strict sexual morals. We’ve all heard the expressions “the gay Nineties” and “the naughty Oughts”, so I was prepared for the idea that great-grandfather might have messed around a little. However, I wasn’t ready for the carload lots that Rilke dealt in, and the fact that he was usually the seducee and not the seducer. And what names they had!
Láska van Oestéren
Fransika von Reventlow
Luise von Salomé (who had earlier been the mistress of Friedrich Nietzsche)
Lulu Albert-Lasard
Marthe Hennebert
Adelmina Romanelli
Baroness Sidonie Nádherny von Borutin
Princess Madeleine de Broglie
Valerie von David-Rhonfeld
Eleonora Duse
Baladine Klossowski
Wera Ouckama Knoop
Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlowe
Luise von Schwerin
and that’s just a sample. He married Clara Westhoff and had a daughter, but quickly abandoned both, although he would sometimes write the long-suffering Clara for advice on. During his final illness she rushed to Switzerland to be with him but was refused entrance to his hospital room (it’s not clear whether Rilke or his physicians were responsible for this).
To be fair, Rilke’s contemporaries also found his success with the ladies a little odd; one commented
“Not only do impressionable and easily aroused teenage girls find this failure of a man attractive; but no, also mature women of quite normal sensuality...”
It’s also possible that some of the women later exaggerated their relationships with Rilke for the notoriety value; a number published “kiss and tell” memoirs after Rilke’s death.
Rilke had a lot of contact, casual and serious, with the other artists of the period. He met Tolstoy, worked as a secretary for Rodin (and watched as George Bernard Shaw sat for a bust) and shared an apartment (and apparently a redhead) with Paul Klee. He was writing The Duino Elegies in Trieste at the same time James Joyce was working there as an English tutor and writing Ulysses (although Rilke and Joyce apparently never met).
Alas, the book did disabuse me of one bittersweet myth about Rilke’s final days. One of his last poem cycles was Les Chansons des Roses, a relatively light (for Rilke) work in which the beauty and thorniness of the flower is symbolic of love (and roses appear frequently in his other poetry). Beginning to feel his terminal illness (leukemia), Rilke retired to a house in Switzerland which had a magnificent rose garden. Receiving a visit from some (of course) lady friends, he rushed out to pick some flowers and, in his hurry, pricked his thumb on a thorn. The way I heard the story the cut developed into an infection which Rilke’s compromised immune system couldn’t fight off and was the proximate cause of death. However, it turns out that although the infection was severe enough to keep him from writing for a few days he had recovered from it by the time he died of acute leukemia.
I find a weird pop culture connection in Rilke’s life. His patroness the Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlowe (he was living in her castle at Duino when he wrote The Duino Elegies) was a member of the Thurn und Taxis family; Thurn and Taxis is enmeshed in an international conspiracy against postal service (W.A.S.T.E.) in Thomas Pynchon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49. That novel also features the California aerospace firm Yoyodyne; which, in turn, is a front company for the red Lectroid aliens in the cult movie The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension and is the manufacturer (as YPS, Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems) of much of the Federation star fleet in Star Trek. I have yet to relate Buckaroo Banzai or Star trek back to Rilke, but I’m sure something will turn up eventually. Start googling; it gets more and more complicated.… (more)