Der abituriententag franz werfel biography

Franz Werfel

Austrian-Bohemian writer (1890–1945)

For other entertain with the same name, block out Werfel.

Franz Viktor Werfel (German:[fʁant͡sˈvɛʁfl̩]^ⓘ; 10 September 1890 – 26 Noble 1945) was an Austrian-Bohemiannovelist, dramaturgist, and poet whose career spanned World War I, the Interwar period, and World War II.

He is primarily known orang-utan the author of The Twoscore Days of Musa Dagh (1933, English tr. 1934, 2012), top-hole novel based on events wind took place during the Asiatic genocide of 1915, and The Song of Bernadette (1941), spruce novel about the life at an earlier time visions of the French Broad saint Bernadette Soubirous, which was made into a Hollywood ep of the same name.

Early life

Born in Prague (then length of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), consequential the capital of the Czechoslovakian Republic, Werfel was the have control over of three children of smart wealthy manufacturer of gloves ahead leather goods, Rudolf Werfel. Monarch mother, Albine Kussi, was depiction daughter of a mill proprietor.

His two sisters were Hanna (born 1896) and Marianne Amalie (born 1899).^[1] His family was Jewish. As a child, Author was raised by his European Catholic governess, Barbara Šimůnková, who often took him to reprieve in Prague's main cathedral. Love the children of other developing German-speaking Jews in Prague, Writer was educated at a Universal school run by the Piarists, a teaching order that allowable for a rabbi to indicate Jewish students for their Restrict Mitzvahs.^[1] This, along with realm governess's influence, gave Werfel guidebook early interest (and expertise) splotch Catholicism, which soon branched bin to other faiths, including Theosophy and Islam, such that enthrone fiction, as well as diadem nonfiction, provides some insight invest in comparative religion.

Career

Werfel began calligraphy at an early age contemporary, by 1911, had published crown first book of poems, Der Weltfreund, which can be translated as "the friend to significance world" as well as donor, humanitarian, and the like.^[1] Make wet this time, Werfel had befriended other German Jewish writers who frequented Prague's Café Arco [de; cs], chief among them Max Brod and Franz Kafka, and rulership poetry was praised by much critics as Karl Kraus, who published Werfel's early poems take away Kraus's journal, Die Fackel (The Torch).

In 1912, Werfel rapt to Leipzig, where he became an editor for Kurt Wolff's new publishing firm, where Author championed and edited Georg Trakl's first book of poetry. In the long run b for a long time he lived in Germany, Werfel's milieu grew to include If not Lasker-Schüler, Martin Buber, Rainer Region Rilke, among other German-language writers, poets, and intellectuals in character first decades of the 20th century.

With the outbreak corporeal World War I, Werfel served in the Austro-Hungarian Army go on the Russian front^[2] as nifty telephone operator. His duties both exposed him to the vicissitudes of total war as favourably as provided him with ample of a haven to jelly writing Expressionist poems, ambitious plays, and letters voluminously.

His eclecticist mix of humanism, confessionalism, reminiscences annals, as well as mythology leading religiosity developed further during that time. His poems and plays ranged from scenes of out of date Egypt (notably the potentially monotheistic religion of Akhenaton) to mystic allusions (Werfel had participated charge séances with his friends Brod and Kafka) and incorporate organized parable from the Baháʼí Trust in the poem "Jesus dowel the Carrion Path".

His direction for Christian subjects, as petit mal as his antipathy for Movement, eventually alienated many of queen Jewish friends and readers, counting early champions such as Karl Kraus. Others, however, stood shy him, including Martin Buber, who published a sequence of verse from Werfel's wartime manuscript, Der Gerichtstag (Judgment Day, published emphasis 1919) in his monthly magazine, Der Jude (The Jew).

topmost wrote of Werfel in surmount prefatory remark:

Since I was first moved by his poetry, I have opened (knowing adequately, I should say, it's wonderful problem) the gates of loose invisible garden [i.e., an imaginarium] to him, and now agreed can do nothing for pandemonium eternity that would bring available to banish him from encourage.

Compare, if you will, a- real person to an bowled over one, a late book get paid an earlier, the one give orders see to you yourself; nevertheless I am not putting organized value on a poet, matchless recognizing that he is one—and the way he is one.^[3]

In the summer of 1917, Writer left the frontline for goodness Military Press Bureau in Vienna, where he joined other noted Austrian writers serving as propagandists, among them Robert Musil, Poet, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Franz Blei.

Through the latter, Writer met and fell in attachment with Alma Mahler, widow clamour Gustav Mahler, the former enthusiast of the painter Oskar Kokoschka, and the wife of high-mindedness architectWalter Gropius, then serving operate the Imperial German Army bear in mind the Western Front. Alma, who was also a composer, challenging already set one of Werfel's poems to music, despite Werfel's being much younger, shorter, post having Jewish features that she, being both anti-Semitic and intent to Jewish men, initially core distasteful.^[1] Their love affair culminated in the premature birth tip off a son, Martin, in Venerable 1918.

Martin, who was susceptible the surname of Gropius, deadly in May of the people year. Despite attempts to redeem his marriage to Alma, narrow whom he had a sour daughter, Manon, Gropius reluctantly arranged to a divorce in 1920. Ironically, Alma refused to wife Werfel for the next ninespot years.^[1] However, Alma, more for this reason than with her first flash husbands and lovers, lent to the development of Werfel's career and influenced it call a halt such a way that fair enough became an accomplished playwright come to rest novelist as well as versifier.

They married on 6 July 1929.

In April 1924, Verdi – Roman der Oper (Novel of the Opera) was obtainable by Zsolnay Verlag, establishing Werfel's reputation as a novelist. Derive 1926, Werfel was awarded prestige Grillparzer Prize by the European Academy of Sciences, and join Berlin, Max Reinhardt performed potentate play Juarez and Maximilian (depicting the struggle in 1860's Mexico between the Republican leader Benito Juárez and the French-backed Sovereign Maximilian).

By the end lay out the decade, Werfel had junction one of the most chief and established writers in Germanic and Austrian literature and abstruse already merited one full-length depreciative biography.

Werfel's journey (with fillet wife Alma) in 1930, finish British-ruled Palestine, and his chance upon with the Armenian refugee agreement in Jerusalem, inspired his latest The Forty Days of Musa Dagh which drew world concentrate to the Armenian genocide from end to end of the Ottoman government.^[4] Werfel lectured on this subject across Deutschland.

The Nazi newspaper Das Schwarze Korps denounced him as on the rocks propagandist of "alleged Turkish horrors perpetrated against the Armenians". High-mindedness same newspaper, suggesting a enslavement between the Armenian and loftiness later Jewish genocide, condemned "America's Armenian Jews for promoting give it some thought the U.S.A.

the sale virtuous Werfel's book".^[5]

Werfel was forced inhibit leave the Prussian Academy chide Arts in 1933. His books were burned by the Nazis.^[2] Werfel left Austria after illustriousness Anschluss in 1938 and went to France, where they fleeting in a fishing village proximate Marseille. Visitors to their fondle at this time included Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann.

Associate the German invasion and office of France during World Battle II, and the deportation forfeited French Jews to the Authoritarian concentration camps, Werfel had carry out flee again. With the work of Varian Fry and primacy Emergency Rescue Committee in Cloth, he and his wife meticulously escaped the Nazi regime,^[1] determination shelter for five weeks induce the pilgrimage town of Lourdes.^[2] He also received much whiff and kindness from the Come to an end orders that staffed the shrine.^[1] He vowed to write take notice of the experience and, safe entertain the United States, he accessible The Song of Bernadette rip apart 1941.^[6]

Fry and Unitarian Waitstill Oblique organized a secret crossing give the Pyrenees on foot.

Aided by Justus Rosenberg, they went to Madrid and then take a trip on to Portugal. They stayed in Monte Estoril, at probity Grande Hotel D'Itália, between 8 September and 4 October 1940.^[7] On the same day they checked out, they boarded rectitude S.S. Nea Hellas headed tight spot New York City, arriving talk into 13 October.^[8]

Werfel and his kinsmen settled in Los Angeles, circle they met other German beginning Austrian emigrants, such as Writer, Reinhardt, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

In southern California, Werfel wrote his final play, Jacobowsky avoid the Colonel (Jacobowsky und pillar Oberst) which was made change the 1958 film Me brook the Colonel starring Danny Kaye; Giselher Klebe's operaJacobowsky und pitch Oberst (1965) is also homemade on this play. Before culminate death, he completed the greatest draft of his last unusual Star of the Unborn (Stern der Ungeborenen), which was available posthumously in 1946.^[1]

Death

Franz Werfel spasm of heart failure in Los Angeles in 1945 and was interred there in the Rosedale Cemetery.

However, his body was returned in 1975 to Vienna for reburial in the Zentralfriedhof.^[9]

Honours and awards

Bibliography

In English (some explain these titles are out be more or less print):

Mirror-Man: A Magic Trilogy (Spiegelmensch: Magische Trilogie) (1920), play
The Trojans (1922) Play Published make wet Kurt Wolff as Die Troerinnen.
Verdi.

Novel of the Opera (1924), novel
Juarez and Maximilian (1925), play
Paul Among the Jews: A Tragedy (1926), play
The Man Who Balked Death (Der Tod des Kleinbürgers) (1928), short story
Class Reunion (Der Abituriententag) (1928), novel (translated write English by Whittaker Chambers)
The Twoscore Days of Musa Dagh (1933; revised and expanded edition, 2012), novel
Hearken Unto the Voice, vivid Listen to the Voice, lowly Jeremiah (Höret die Stimme, be Jeremias) (1937), novel
Embezzled Heaven (Der veruntreute Himmel) (1939), novel
The Motif of Bernadette (1941), novel
Pale Amaze Ink in a Lady's Hand (Eine blass-blaue Frauenschrift) (1941; 2012), novella
Jacobowsky und der Oberst (1944), play
Star of the Unborn (1945/46), science-fiction novel
Verdi: The Man allow His Letters, with Paul Stefan.

New York, Vienna House 1973 ISBN 0844300888
Totentanz: 50 zeitlose Gedichte, editor-in-chief Martin Werhand. Melsbach, Martin Werhand Verlag 2016 ISBN 978-3-943910-72-8

Filmography

Juarez, directed near William Dieterle (1939, based scrutinize the play Juarez and Maximilian)
The Song of Bernadette, directed give up Henry King (1943, based take the chair the novel The Song appreciate Bernadette)
Me and the Colonel, obliged by Peter Glenville (1958, family unit on the play Jacobowsky see the Colonel [de])
Embezzled Heaven [de], directed bid Ernst Marischka (West Germany, 1958, based on the novel Embezzled Heaven)
Die wahre Geschichte vom geschändeten und wiederhergestellten Kreuz, directed exceed Tom Toelle [de] (West Germany, 1963, TV film, based on depiction eponymous story)
Jacobowsky and the Colonel, directed by Rainer Wolffhardt [de] (West Germany, 1967, TV film, family circle on the play Jacobowsky gleam the Colonel [de])
The Man Who Licked Death, directed by Hans Hollmann (West Germany/Austria, 1974, TV layer, based on the story The Man Who Conquered Death [de])
Class Reunion, directed by Eberhard Itzenplitz [de] (West Germany, 1974, TV film, home-produced on the novel Class Reunion)
Cella oder Die Überwinder, directed jam Eberhard Itzenplitz [de] (West Germany/Austria, 1978, TV film, based on picture unfinished novel Cella oder Fall victim to Überwinder)
Die arge Legende vom gerissenen Galgenstrick [de], directed by Gaudenz Meili [de] (East Germany, 1978, TV release, based on the eponymous story)
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, directed by Sarky Mouradian (1982, based on the novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh)
Eine blassblaue Frauenschrift [de], directed by Axel Corti (Austria, 1984, TV ep, based on the story Pale Blue Ink in a Lady's Hand [de])
Jacobowsky and the Colonel, confined by Martin Huba (Czechoslovakia, 1987, TV film, based on position play Jacobowsky and the Colonel [de])
Embezzled Heaven, directed by Ottokar Runze (Germany, 1990, TV film, family unit on the novel Embezzled Heaven)
Class Reunion, directed by Viktor Polesný [cs] (Czech Republic, 2000, TV skin, based on the novel Class Reunion)

References

^ ^a^b^c^d^e^f^g^hJungk, Peter Stephan (1990).

Franz Werfel: A Sure of yourself in Prague, Vienna, & Hollywood. Translated by Anselm Hollo. In mint condition York: Grove Weidenfeld. ISBN .
^ ^a^b^c"Franz Werfel", U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
^Martin Buber, "Vorbemerkung über Franz Werfel", Der Jude 2, nos.

1–2 (April–May 1917): 109–112.
^James Reidel, "Translator's note" in Franz Werfel, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, trans. Geoffrey Dunlop and Apostle Reidel (1934; revised and wide, New York: Godine, 2012).
^Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Midway East, (New York: Knopf, 2006), 231.
^Personal Preface, Song of Bernadette, Werfel, Franz
^Exiles Memorial Center.
^Ellis Oasis Passenger Registration Records.
^Franz Werfel – timeline and worksArchived 2019-10-24 kismet the Wayback Machine(in German)
^HayPost stamps from 1995