Rainer Maria Rilke in my Memories

The princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis (1855–1934) spent her childhood in Venice and at the Duino castle near Trieste, which became known in literary history as the site where Rilke wrote the firs two of his Duino Elegies. In 1875 she married a distantly related family member the duke Alexander von Thurn-Taxis, the owner of the castle Lautschin situated near the town of Nymburk. Princess Marie was a typical representative of the Austrian international aristocracy of her time; she was fluent in German, French and Italian, she was a passionate reader, wrote novels and poems and was a profound music lover. She lived a fruitful life partly at Duino, partly at Lautschin. Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) first met Marie Thurn-Taxis in December 1909 in Paris, shortly before The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge was published. Their relation had evolved into a mutual friendship, in which the 20 years older princess played the maternal role of understanding patron. Besides his stay at the Duino castle in the winter of 1911/12, where Rilke drafted what was later to become the Duino Elegies, the poet enjoyed princess Marie’s hospitality also at the Lautschin castle (in 1910 and 1911) and in her Venetian flat in Palazzo Valmarana. Marie Thurn-Taxis, to whom Rilke dedicated his Duino Elegies, published her collections of memories on Rilke in 1932.