Grete Trakl (full name Margarethe Jeanne Trakl, married name Grete Langen; 8 August 1891 – 21 September 1917) was an Austrian pianist and sister of the Austrian poet Georg Trakl.
Family and ancestry
Margarethe Jeanne Trakl was born in Salzburg as the youngest of seven children. She also had an elder half-brother, Wilhelm, son of the father's first marriage. Tobias Trakl (1837–1910) was an ironmonger. As a merchant and owner of a house at Waagplatz he became an official citizen of the city of Salzburg. From that time, the family strived to be regarded as bourgeois, in the sense of belonging to "Bildungsbürgertum", although the family from both sides could hardly be regarded as such. Tobias Trakl (originally Trackl) came from Ödenburg (Sopron) in Hungary, where his family can be traced back until the middle of the 17th century, earning a living as winegrowers. The mother, Maria Catharina Halik (1852–1925), also spelled Hallick or Hawlick, was born in Wiener Neustadt, but her family came from Prague. Her ancestors were all Slavs; they can be traced back until the mid-1700s in Prague's Nové Mešto (New Town), working as gardeners.
Education
As a child, Grete grew up in the spacious Weigh house in the middle of the Waagplatz/Mozartplatz. When she was six years old she went to the local catholic public school. She was a good pupil and hardly ever ill. In 1901 she was sent to a boarding school for girls in Sankt Pölten, the "Internat der Englischen Fräulein". Here too she got good grades and was hardly sick. In the third grade however she received the highest grades for only three subjects: manners, music and singing. Grete was musically very talented; already as a child she outperformed her siblings, who all received piano lessons.
In 1904 Grete moved from St. Pölten to Vienna to stay at the boarding school "Notre Dame de Sion". At this school she gained better opportunities to develop her talent. During the last year (1908–1909) of the "Higher French School" of this institute she was allowed to enroll at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna at the same time. She was admitted into the second year, skipping the first, because of her musical abilities. She left the Conservatory however before the year was over.
From autumn 1909 onwards Grete lived on her own in Vienna and was probably privately tutored by a (hitherto unknown) pianist, as was the practice with talented pupils. During this academic year she regularly met her brother Georg and his friend Erhard Buschbeck. Buschbeck provided Grete with opium. Over the years a long-lasting friendship developed between the two.
In late April 1910 Grete returned to Salzburg. In June the father died, an event that elicited the rapid economic downfall of the Trakl family. The inheritance, which was by law evenly divided between the mother and the children, consisted of a business debt of around 1 million Euros (converted to current purchasing power). Grete's half-brother Wilhelm was appointed her guardian; as the eldest son of Tobias Trakl he also took over the business.
In 1910 the Hungarian pianist Ernö Dohnányi, professor of music at the Königliche Hochschule für Musik (now called Berlin University of the Arts), selected Grete as one of his pupils. In October Grete moved to Berlin.
Marriage
In Berlin Grete came to live in the guesthouse Linder, Grolmanstraße 36-III. Soon after she met her future husband: Arthur Langen, 34 years older than she, magistrate at the Berlin Government and, in his spare time, publisher of theater literature and avid networker and talent scout in music and theater business. His sisters lived next-door and also owned a guesthouse.
Arthur is said to have supported Grete financially from March 1911 onwards, because her half-brother Willy and her mother refused to pay the education any further. From this date they were also engaged. This is revealed by the court procedure initiated by Langen in 1912 to acquire legal permission to marry Grete. During this judicial process Willy withdrew from custody. In his place her brother Georg was appointed, who eventually gave permission. Meanwhile, the Salzburg court tried to rule out matchmaking as the motive for the marriage. Georg, who watched over Grete's talent and well-being, would later regard himself as "the finest matchmaker" between his sister and Langen. Between Georg and Grete there has never been an incestuous relationship, as popular reception history still supposes. In Grete's biography there is also no trace of drug addiction, let alone as a result of her brother's drug use.