Ernst Herbeck

Ernst Herbeck (1920–1991) was a well-loved Austrian poet who was institutionalized at the Marie Gugging Psychiatric Institute on the outskirts of Vienna. He was encouraged to write poetry by Gugging’s Head Clinician, Leo Navratil, a champion of naive art who would later establish Gugging’s Haus der Künstler, or Artists’ House. From 1960 until Herbeck’s death in 1991, Navratil prompted Herbeck to write some 1,200 poems, always providing the poet with a theme, which often, though not always, became the poem’s title. With Herbeck’s permission, Navratil edited and published several books of Herbeck’s poetry; a year after Herbeck’s death, Navratil edited Herbeck’s collected writings, Im Herbst da reiht der Feenwind (In Fall the Wind-of Fairies Align), from which the poems in Everyone Has a Mouth were chosen.