Georg Trakl Geburtshaus

This guide to the Georg Trakl Geburtshaus in Salzburg follows the poet from his birth in this apartment in 1887, the fifth of seven children of a hardware dealer and a mother struggling with opium addiction who often shut herself away. You'll hear about his unusually close bond with his younger sister Gretl, the rumors it stirred around Salzburg, and his teenage apprenticeship at a nearby pharmacy where he learned to measure out morphine and cocaine. It follows him into an army uniform in 1914 and onto the eastern front, where he was left alone to care for ninety wounded men with no doctor and almost no supplies. The two dates cut into the plaque by the doorway mark just how short a life that became.