Pharmacists in German Cultural History
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largely forgotten, apart from his ‘Lithuanian Stories’ (‘Litauische Geschichten’) or
his novel ‘Lady Sorrow’ (‘Frau Sorge’).Sudermann was born as the son of a brewery
tenant in the utmost East of Germany, in the Klaipėda Region, the Memel Territory,
in East Prussia. Because of his parents’ financial limits he had to drop out of
secondary school in Elbing ahead of time. As he later wrote, he chose to work as a
pharmacist which he regarded as half of a chemist (11). In his autobiographical
memories ‘The Picture Book of my Youth’ (‘Das Bilderbuchmeiner Jugend’) from
1922, he dedicates an entire chapter to his apprenticeship. The chief of his
pharmacy is illustrated as a sympathetic person who never showed any outburst of
anger, even when the overzealous Sudermann crashed a precious mortar. As a
consequence of a knee injury, which he received from a scuffle in his schooldays,
he was eventually forced to break off his unloved apprenticeship ahead of time. He
confessed: “The evil brute having thrown me against the hinge was my saviour,
otherwise I would still stand in front of the preparation table and brew
expectorant influenza drinks” (12).
The poet and pharmacist Georg Trakl (1887–1914), who became a famous
expressionistic lyricist, stuck to his profession until the end of his life, even though
enforced. Trakl was born as the fourth of seven children of the iron trader Tobias
Trakl in Salzburg. As a pupil he already showed great interest in literature and
lyric. Because he did not pass class seven, his father determined him to become a
pharmacist. In 1905 Trakl began his apprenticeship in Carl Hinterhuber’s
Pharmacy ‘To the White Angel’ (‘Zumweißen Engel’) in the ‘Linzer Gasse’.
Hinterhuber was an old man, a heavy drinker and in his pharmacy Trakl made his
first experience with narcotics, as the poem ‘The Sleep’ (‘Der Schlaf’) of that time
demonstrates: “Not your dark poisons again / White sleep! / This fantastically
strange garden / Of trees in deepening twilight / Fills up with serpents,
nightmoths, / Spiders, bats” (13).
In the autumn of 1918, he started studying pharmacy at the University of
Vienna in the regular course of four terms. Among others, his teachers were the
professor of chemistry, Zdenko Hans Skraup (1850–1910), who synthesized
quinoline for the first time, which was temporarily also used as an antipyretic.
Another famous teacher of Trakl’s was Joseph Moeller (1848–1924), co-‐author of
the important pharmaceutical ten-‐volumed ‘Real-‐Encyclopädie der gesamten
Pharmazie’ (14).
After his examination as a magister, Trakl worked for a short time in the
‘White Ange Pharmacyl’ again, but he could not stand the hectic everyday life there.
In 1910, he began a voluntary one-‐year military service in Vienna. Alongside he
wrote poems and faced the common dilemma of an artist’s life. Working as a
pharmacist, he could not spare much time for writing, but to be able to write he
depended on earning money to earn his living. In 1912 he started to work as a
