The Origins of Gedichte between Salzburg and Innsbruck

THE EARLIEST SIGN of Trakl's rekindling interest in publishing a collection of his poetry can be found in a letter of February 1912 to Buschbeck, whom he addresses as “der Du dereinst meine Gedichte in Verlag nehmen willst” (HkA, 1/486). At that time the poet was once again resident at his family home in Salzburg, having completed two years of pharmacy studies in Vienna after taking his final exams in mid-1910, followed by one of compulsory military service, also performed in the imperial capital. At the conclusion of the latter at the end of September 1911 he had returned to Salzburg immediately, where he had set about trying to resolve what would ultimately prove to be the insurmountable problem of providing for his own material needs. For two months he returned to work at Zum weißen Engel, where he had completed his apprenticeship three years earlier, but his hopes for the medium and long term were oriented towards state employment, whether in the civil service or the military, as shown by two applications dating from the final months of 1911. The first, made within ten days of his return to Salzburg, was for an internship at the Ministry of Public Works, while the second, to re-enter active service in the army, was prompted by his promotion to reserve Medikamentenakzessist—Akzessist being an administrative rank equivalent to lieutenant—at the beginning of December.

Both applications ultimately resulted in offers of work, although they differed sharply both in response time and in the duration of the subsequent employment. A full year passed before Trakl was offered the internship in Vienna he had been hoping for; then, following two further months’ delay, he requested to be relieved from the post only one day after finally taking it up at the end of December 1912, and fled the city another day later. The second application produced a comparatively quick and more substantial result in the form of a call-up to service in a pharmacy attached to a military hospital in Innsbruck, an offer that arrived after just three months. Trakl's six-month limbo in Salzburg, a period of gloomy uncertainty spent “zwischen Hangen und Bangen” (HkA, 1/486), ended when he moved to the Tyrolean capital to begin a six-month probationary period on April 1, 1912.