DAS “DING” ALS INDIKATOR DER ZUKUNFT

This essay focuses on Rainer Maria Rilke´s preoccupation with things, a new interest which goes back to his stay in Paris and his contact with the sculptor Rodin, and puts it into a wider context. Baudelaire and the literature of the beginning of the 20th century as well as philosophers like Heidegger showed a deep interest in things and discovered their vital relationship with man. Consequently, Rilke developed a new concept of things based on his belief that things contain a more fully intensity of life and thought than anything else in the collection of poems Neue Gedichte (1906/07). Accordingly, the things are continuously changing and passing from one state to another and thus become an indicator of what is to come, of future.