Rilke, Rainer Maria

1875 – He was born on the 4th day of December this year in Prague, Bohemia.

1892 – He was tutored for the university entrance exam, which he passed in 1895.

1896 – He studied literature, art history, and philosophy in Prague and Munich.

1897 – He met and fell in love with the widely traveled intellectual and lady of letters Lou Andreas-Salome (1861-1937).

1898 – He undertook a journey lasting several weeks to Italy.

1899 - He traveled with Lou and husband, Friedrich Andreas, to Moscow where he met the novelist Leo Tolstoy.

1900 - He stayed at the artists' colony at Worpswede, where his portraits were painted by the proto-expressionist Paula Modersohn-Becker.

1911 – He stayed at the Castle Duino, near Trieste, home of Countess Marie of Thurn and Taxis.

1912 – He began the poem cycle called the Duino Elegies, which would remain unfinished for a decade due to a long-lasting creativity crisis.

1916 – He had a turbulent affair with the painter Lou Albert-Lasard.

1917- He left home and traveled to Paris to write a monograph on the sculptor Auguste Rodin.

1919 – On the 11th of June this year, he traveled from Munich to Switzerland.

1921 – He was able to find a permanent residence in the Chateau de Muzot, close to Sierre in Valais.

1922 – His patron Werner Reinhart purchased the building so that Rilke could live there rent-free.

1923 – He had to struggle with health problems that necessitated many long stays at a sanatorium in Territet, near Montreux, on Lake Geneva.

1925 - His long stay in Paris between January and August this year was an attempt to escape his illness through a change in location and living conditions.

1926 – He died on 29th of December this year in the Valmont Sanatorium in Switzerland.

1927 – He was laid to rest on 2nd January this year in the Raron cemetery to the west of Visp. He chose his own epitaph.