Lavant, Christine (Groß-Edling, Carinthia, Austria, 1915-73, Wolfsberg), née Thonhauser, married the painter Josef Habernig in 1939, and adopted Lavant as a pseudonym. The ninth child of a miner, she suffered prolonged illness during her childhood and youth, leaving her with delicate health throughout her life. She is best known for her lyric poetry, in which the combination of echoes of her Roman Catholic background and crass expressions of suffering and a sense of hopelessness, and the creative use of metaphors and of seemingly conventional rhymed verse are distinguishing features. Her collections include Die un-vollendete Liebe (1949), Die Bettlerschale (1956), Spindel im Mond (1959), Sonnenvogel (1960), Der Pfauenschrei (1962), and Hälfte des Herzens (1966). Her stories grow out of her rural background and compassion for deprivation (she herself was the daughter of a miner). They include Das Kind (1948), Das Krüglein (1949), Maria Katharina (1950), Baruscha (1952), Die Rosenkugel (1956), Der Lumpensammler (1961), Das Ringelspiel (1963), and Nele (1969). A select edition (including the title-story), Wirf ab den Lehm, by W. Schmied, appeared in 1961 and Kunst wie meine ist nur verstümmeltes Leben. Nachgelassene und verstreut veröffentlichte Gedichte—Prosa—Briefe posthumously in 1978, Gedichte, a select edition by Th. Bernhard, in 1987.

She received a number of prizes, among them the Trakl Prize (1956) and the Großer Österreichische Staatspreis für Literatur (1970).

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