Josef Weinheber

Weinheber, Josef, (Vienna, 1892-1945, Kirchstetten nr. St Pölten), having lost both parents in his early childhood, was sent to an orphanage at Mödling, an experience which forms the basis of his school novel Das Waisenhaus (1924). In 1911 he became an official in the Post Office, but in 1932 turned full-time to writing. Originally a Roman Catholic, he adopted the Protestant faith in 1927.

Weinheber's poetry first attracted serious attention in 1934. Influenced by Hölderlin, George, and Rilke, and, as F. Jenaczek has shown, by K. Kraus, he achieved work of distinction in many lyric forms. Each volume of verse has an underlying unity, and he showed a predilection for cycles, in which the same form (sonnet, classical metre, terza rima, or strophic song) is repeated. His disciplined poetry reflects with sadness a declining world and yet maintains an optimistic humanism, which is most clearly seen in Zwi-schen Göttern und Dämonen (1938). The early verse included Der einsame Mensch (1920), Von beiden Ufern (1923), and Boot in der Bucht (1926). Adel und Untergang (1934) established Weinheber's reputation. Wien wörtlich (1935) contains some remarkably effective poems in dialect. The climax of his later verse, which included Späte Krone (1936), was the volume Kammermusik (1939). Posthumous verse (Hier ist das Wort) appeared in 1947. Weinheber, who had accepted the National Socialist regime, appears to have taken an overdose of sleeping tablets when Russia began to invade Austria. Bitter words of self-reproach are already perceptible in his last volumes.

Posthumous writings, including the novel Gold außer Kurs, were published in Sämtliche Werke (5 vols.), ed. J. Nadler and H. Weinheber, 1953-6 and, based on this edition, ed. F. Jenaczek, 1970 ff. (7 vols. in 8).