Georg Trakl - Ich bin eine Welt - Briefe und Gedichte (Interpret: Ulrich Mühe)

"Confiteor

Die bunten Bilder, die das Leben malt
Seh’ ich umdüstert nur von Dämmerungen,
Wie kraus verzerrte Schatten, trüb und kalt,
Die kaum geboren schon der Tod bezwungen.

Und da von jedem Ding die Maske fiel,
Seh’ ich nur Angst, Verzweiflung, Schmach und Seuchen,
Der Menschheit heldenloses Trauerspiel,
Ein schlechtes Stück, gespielt auf Gräbern, Leichen.

Mich ekelt dieses wüste Traumgesicht.
Doch will ein Machtgebot, daß ich verweile,
Ein Komödiant, der seine Rolle spricht,
Gezwungen, voll Verzweiflung - Langeweile!"
- Georg Trakl


He played the role of Hauptmann (Captain) Gerd Wiesler in the Oscar-winning film "Das Leben der Anderen" ("The Lives of Others", 2006), for which he received the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, Gold, at Germany's most prestigious film awards, the "Deutscher Filmpreis" ("German Film Awards)"; and the Best Actor Award at the 2006 European Film Awards.

After leaving school, Mühe was employed as a construction worker and a border guard at the Berlin Wall. He then turned to acting, and from the late 1970s into the 1980s appeared in numerous plays, becoming a star of the Deutsches Theater in East Berlin. He was active in politics and denounced "Communist" rule in East Germany in a memorable address at Alexanderplatz on 4 November 1989 shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall. After German reunification he continued to appear in a large number of films, television programmes and theatre productions. In Germany he was particularly known for playing the lead role of Dr. Robert Kolmaar in the long-running forensic crime series "Der letzte Zeuge".
Ulrich Mühe, who sadly died July, 2007, was a German film, television and theatre actor.

In the last years he also became a popular reader of audio books, for example ""Der kleine Prinz" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery and "Ich bin eine Welt" by Georg Trakl.

The poet and writer Georg Trakl was born as the son of the ironmonger Tobias Trakl and his wife Maria Catharina, nee Halik, on February 3, 1887 in Salzburg. At the age of 13, Georg Trakl began writing poetry. He studied pharmacy in Vienna and simultaneously began to publish his first poems.

Trakl was also interested in literature, music, painting and architecture. Between 1910 and 1914 Georg Trakl wrote his most important works. In 1912 Trakl temporarily worked as a military pharmacist in Innsbruck. His search for stability in life was fruitless, and following excessive drug use, Trakl fell into deep depression. In 1912 Georg Trakl's poem "Vorstadt im Föhn" was published in the Innsbruck cultural and political journal "Der Brenner", whose editor was his friend and benefactor Ludwig von Ficker. All subsequent poetic work by Trakl appeared in the monthly issues of this journal.

Karl Kraus also published poems by Georg Trakl in the journal "Die Fackel". During this time, Trakl met Oskar Kokoschka and Else Lasker-Schüler. In 1913, the publisher Kurt Wolff published Georg Trakl's book of poetry "Der jüngste Tag".

Georg Trakl volunteered for World War I, where he served on the Eastern Front in the Galician town of Grodek as a medical officer. As a consequence of his traumatic experiences of the war, Georg Trakl suffered a nervous breakdown and was admitted to a military hospital in Krakow. During his convalescence in the Krakow hospital, Trakl wrote his poems "Grodek", "Im Osten" and "Klage". Georg Trakl committed suicide on November 3, 1914 in Krakow. Today, Georg Trakl is considered one of the most extraordinary poets and most important exponents of Austrian Expressionism.

"Trakl creates pure compositions of autonomous metaphors. Each metaphor has a more-or-less definite emotional tonality and combines with the other metaphors...in a incoherent sequence of images. Yet each poem has an inner coherence, not the coherence of logical thought, but of a musical composition. The metaphoric image acts somewhat like a note in a musical score indicating that a cerain tone or chord is to be played." (Sokel)
The tone and progression of Trakls poetry is often dreamlike, but the imagery is more likely found in a nightmare: decay, death, twilight, nature (in decay), religious symbolism. The verses are bleak but with a certain warmth, somber with a hint of transcendence.

Georg Trakl - "Ich bin eine Welt" (Ulrich Mühe)
(192 kbps, front cover included)

For more informations about Georg Trakls and english translations of his poetry, please check out http://www.literaturnische.de/Trakl/english/index-trakl-e.htm.