As a young adult Ernst Herbeck began to study trade, learned to play the mandolin and draw. He suffered from palatal problem and had to undergo several operations that reduced his ability to speak. At the end of a war that affected him deeply, he was hospitalized at the University Clinic of Vienna ; he was twenty years old. After a few months, he left the hospital and tried to resume a normal life, but two years later he needed to be hospitalized again. He felt that people and animals could enter his body. He became the resident of the House of the Artists in Gugging. Pr Navratil remarked his talent for writing and encouraged him to pursue this direction. 


In 1977 Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag published Herbeck’s entire poetic production under the title Alexanders poetische Texte (Alexander’s Poetry) and in 1982 a new selection of his poems entitled Alexander came out (the publisher Residenz).

SEE ALSO :

Navratil, Leo. Die Künstler aus Gugging. Vienna, Berlin: Medusa, 1983.