The poet and the countess

Hugo von Hofmannsthal's correspondence with Countess Ottonie Degenfeld

by Hugo von Hofmannsthal

2000 443 pages eng

"The early death in 1908 of her husband, Count Christoph Martin Degenfeld, combined with the birth of her child, left Ottonie Degenfeld confined to a wheelchair and in a state of severe depression. But two years earlier, in December 1906, she had met the famous young Austrian poet, Hugo von Hofmanns…