Franz Werfel

The Austrian poet, novelist, and playwright Franz Werfel (1890-1945) was a leading representative of the expressionist movement in German literature.

Franz Werfel was born on Sept. 10, 1890, in Prague, the son of a Jewish businessman. He studied at the universities of Prague, Leipzig, and Hamburg and then worked (1912-1914) as a reader for a publishing house. After service in World War I (1915-1917) he lived and worked as a professional writer.

Werfel's first achievement was a play, Besuch aus dem Elysium (1909), which was followed by Die Troerinnen (1915), an expressionistic reworking of Euripides's The Trojan Women. However, his reputation was made by his lyric poetry, which he published in such collections as DerWeltfreund (1911) and Wir Sind (1913). His lyric poetry is distinctive and of considerable quality; like his plays, it is passionate, often ecstatic and rhapsodic, but equally often inclined toward the abstruse and the ratiocinative; tightly knit and full of rhetorical figures, it suffers from a certain lack of color and tactile quality.

A strong vein of religious feeling runs through Werfel's poems. In his earlier work this ardor is less overtly religious than philanthropic and humanitarian. The struggle to overcome selfishness is the theme of his trilogy of dramas in verse, Spiegelmensch (1920), a work that fluctuates between the profound and the trivial, the pithy and the diffuse. The element of social criticism in Werfel's work, often pungent, is well exemplified by his novel Der Abituriententag (1928), which deals with the problem of sadism in a school. His novellas, such as Nicht der Mörder, der Ermordete ist schuldig (1920) and Der Tod des Kleinbürgers (1926), reveal their author as a gifted narrator, a scholar of psychoanalytic lore, a shrewd psychologist, and the possessor of an acerbic and cynical wit.

In his later career the novel became Werfel's primary field of endeavor, and he developed for the most part a conventional but sophisticated realism. Verdi (1924), one of his most interesting and evocative novels, attacked the cult of the musical genius established in the German mind by the example of Richard Wagner. In Barbara, oder die Frömmigkeit (1929) Werfel combined an impressive portrayal of postwar Viennese life with the development of a moral theme. Die Geschwister von Neapel (1931; ThePascarella Family) studied the effects of fascism upon a small-time Italian banker, a pillar of austerity and morality.

Werfel fled from Nazi-occupied Austria to France and after the fall of France to the United States. Das Lied von Bernadette (1941; The Song of Bernadette) was written to fulfill a vow he had made when he found temporary refuge in Lourdes. The novel is a fictionalized history of the life and experiences of Bernadette Soubirous, and his choice of theme enabled him to illuminate that essential supremacy of the spiritual over the material that his writings constantly sought to assert. Werfel's posthumously published novel, Stern der Ungeborenen (1946), is a fantastic, futuristic vision of a world in which the intellect succumbs to the profusion and vitality of instinctive life. He died on Aug. 26, 1945, in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Further Reading

Biographical material may be gleaned from Alma M. Werfel, And the Bridge Is Love (1958). The only booklength literary study of Werfel in English is Gore B. Foltin, ed., Franz Werfel, 1890-1945 (1961). Werfel's dramatic work is discussed in Hugh F. Garten, Modern German Drama (1959). For material on the expressionist background see Richard Samuel and R. Hinton Thomas, Expressionism in German Life, Literature and the Theatre, 1910-1924 (1939), and Walter H. Sokel, The Writer In Extremis: Expressionism in Twentieth-century German Literature (1939).

Additional Sources

Giroud, Francoise, Alma Mahler, or, The art of being loved, Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Jungk, Peter Stephan, Franz Werfel: a life in Prague, Vienna, and Hollywood, New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990.

Steiman, Lionel B. (Lionel Bradley), Franz Werfel, the faith of an exile: from Prague to Beverly Hills, Waterloo, Ont., Canada: W. Laurier University Press; Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Distributed in the U.S.A. by Humanities Press, 1985.

Werfel, Franz (Prague, 1890-1945, Beverly Hills, California), grew up in the Jewish quarter of Prague and was a friend of Kafka. He studied at Prague, Leipzig, and Hamburg universities, served a year as a volunteer (Einjährig-Freiwilliger) in the Austrian army, and became a publisher's reader. During the 1914-18 War he served on the Russian front until 1917 and after the war lived in Vienna.

Werfel first came into prominence as a writer during his Viennese years. In 1929 he married Alma Mahler (1879-1964), widow of the composer Gustav Mahler. In 1938 Werfel and his wife emigrated to France, fled to Spain in 1940, and made their way with H. Mann to the USA, where they settled in California. Werfel had a serious heart attack in 1943, from which he did not fully recover. The basis of Werfel's convictions and work was religious, and his consciousness of participation in the Jewish fate and mission was fundamental; but he was also strongly attracted to the Roman Catholic Church and yearned for the brotherhood of man.

Werfel's earliest Expressionist verse, Der Weltfreund and Wir sind (1913), was followed by Einander (1915, containing his adaptation of the hymn ‘Veni creator spiritus’), Gesänge aus den drei Reichen (1917), Der Gerichtstag (1919), and Beschwörungen (1923), his last important contribution to poetry. A play, Besuch in Elysium, appeared in a periodical in 1912 (in book form 1920); more significant was an adaptation of Euripides' The Trojan Women, Die Troerinnen (1915) preceding his post-war plays Spiegelmensch (1920), Bocksgesang (1921), Schweiger (1922), Juarez und Maximilian (1924, dealing with the conflict between the deposed president and the emperor imposed by France and executed in 1867, see Maximilian, Erzherzog), Paulus unter den Juden (1926), Das Reich Gottes in Böhmen (1930, treating the conflict between Cardinal Cesarini and the Hussite leader Prokop in the 15th c.), and Der Weg der Verheißung (1935). Jacobowsky und der Oberst (1944), Werfel's last play, published as Komödie einer Tragödie, centres on the problems of race and emigration.

Best known as a novelist, Werfel expressed in Verdi. Roman der Oper (1924) his love for music, especially opera, which is further borne out by his excellent translations of La Forza del destino (Die Macht des Schicksals, 1926), Simone Boccanegra (1929), and Don Carlos (1932, based on Schiller's play.) The novel Der Abituriententag. Die Geschichte einer Jugendschuld (1925) was followed by Barbara oder Die Frömmigkeit (1929) and Die Geschwister von Neapel (1931). Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh (1933) recounts one of the overlooked horrors of the 1914-18 War; Höret die Stimme (1937) was posthumously retitled Jeremias (1956), Der veruntreute Himmel. Die Geschichte einer Magd (1939) has affinities with Barbara, and Das Lied von Bernadette (1941), written to fulfil a vow made at Lourdes in 1940, commonly referred to as the ‘Lourdes-Roman’. The posthumous novel Stern der Ungeborenen (1946), a Utopian work, expresses anxiety over the future. Of Werfel's few Novellen the most important are Nicht der Mörder, der Ermordete ist schuldig (1920), Der Tod des Kleinbürgers (1927), and Geheimnis eines Menschen (1927). Zwischen Oben und Unten is a collection of essays, published posthumously in 1946.

Werfel's Gesammelte Werke (8 vols.) appeared 1927-36, Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben (15 vols.), ed. A. D. Klarmann, 1946-67.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: United States writer (1890-1945)
  Synonym: Werfel

Franz Werfel, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1940

Werfel's grave in the Zentralfriedhof, Vienna

Franz Werfel (September 10, 1890 – August 26, 1945) was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Bibliography 3 References 4 External links

Biography

Born in Prague (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), Werfel was the first of three children of a wealthy manufacturer of gloves and leather goods. His mother, Albine Kussi, was the daughter of a mill owner. His two sisters were Hanna (born 1896) and Marianne Amalie (born 1899).^[1] He was a contemporary and colleague of Franz Kafka, Max Brod, Martin Buber, and other Jewish intellectuals who flourished in the first decades of the 20th century.^[2] He served in the Austro-Hungarian army on the Russian front and in the press office in Vienna, where he met and fell in love with Alma Mahler.^[2]

In 1920 Alma, widow of Gustav Mahler, divorced architect Walter Gropius in order to be with Werfel by whom she had had a son, Martin, who was born prematurely, and who soon died; they finally married in 1929.^[2] Werfel was already an established author, having assumed a leading place in German letters as an expressionist playwright; but his true claim to international fame came in 1933, when he published The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, a chilling novel that drew world attention to the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks.^[2]

An identified Jew, Werfel left Austria after the Anschluss in 1938 and went to France. After the German invasion and occupation of France during World War II, and the deportation of French Jews to the Nazi concentration camps, Werfel had to flee again.^[2] With the assistance of Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee in Marseille, he and his wife narrowly escaped the Nazi regime and traveled to the United States.^[2]

While in France, Werfel made a visit to the shrine of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes, where he found spiritual solace. He also received much help and kindness from the Catholic orders that staffed the shrine.^[2] He vowed to write about the experience and, safe in America, he published The Song of Bernadette in 1941.

In southern California, Werfel wrote his final play, Jacobowsky and the Colonel (Jacobowsky und der Oberst) which was made into the 1958 film Me and the Colonel starring Danny Kaye. Before his death, he completed the first draft of his last novel Star of the Unborn (Stern der Ungeborenen), which was published posthumously, in 1946.^[2]

Franz Werfel died in Los Angeles in 1945 and was interred there in the Rosendale Cemetery. However, his body was later exhumed and returned to Vienna for reburial in the Zentralfriedhof.

Bibliography

In English (some of these titles are out of print):

• The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
• The Song of Bernadette
• The Song of Bernadette – The Immortal Story of Bernadette of Lourdes by Franz Werfel (abridged by John Martin)
• The Man Who Conquered Death
• Listen to the voice (Höret di Stimme) publ. 1937
• Embezzled Heaven
• Verdi
• Class Reunion
• Juarez and Maximilian – play
• Star of the Unborn – science-fiction novel
• A pale-blue woman's handwriting (Eine blass-blaue Frauenschrift) -> Key sentence

References

1. ^ Hans Wagener. Understanding Franz Werfel (University of South Carolina, 1993) ISBN 0872498832
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} "Franz Werfel". Books and Authors. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi?fwerfel.htm. Retrieved 2007-12-05. 

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Franz Werfel

• Overview
• A small album of miscellaneous photographs
• Franz Werfel author profile
• Jeremiah - Symphony after the novel by Franz Werfel

Persondata
NAME	Werfel, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet who wrote in German
DATE OF BIRTH	September 10, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH	Prague
DATE OF DEATH	August 26, 1945
PLACE OF DEATH	Los Angeles

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