»150 JAHRE RAINER MARIA RILKE« EIN ABEND MIT SANDRA RICHTER & MANFRED KOCH

Moderation: Frieder von Ammon (LMU)

Reading: Florian Jahr (Residenztheater)

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is considered one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. His art was "making things out of fear", he wrote to his former lover Lou Andreas-Salomé in July 1903. In "Rilke. Dichter der Angst" (C.H.Beck), Stuttgart literary scholar Manfred Koch portrays Rilke as a highly sensitive echolocation and the most gender-fluid poet of the emerging modern age. In "Rainer Maria Rilke oder Das offene Leben" (Suhrkamp), Sandra Richter, literary scholar and director of the German Literature Archive in Marbach, shows that Rilke was by no means the aloof recluse he liked to stylize himself as, but rather more robust, cheerful and fit for life than is generally assumed. Who was the creator of the "Book of Hours", the "Duino Elegies" or "Malte Laurids Brigge" really? Sandra Richter and Manfred Koch present their new biographies of Rilke in conversation, supplemented by selected text passages.