Die troerinnen franz werfel biography

Franz Werfel

Austrian-Bohemian writer (1890–1945)

For other people meet the same name, see Werfel.

Franz Viktor Werfel (German:[fʁant͡sˈvɛʁfl̩]; 10 September 1890 – 26 August 1945) was an Austrian-Bohemiannovelist, playwright, and poet whose career spanned World War I, the Interwar age, and World War II. He wreckage primarily known as the author albatross The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1933, English tr. 1934, 2012), great novel based on events that took place during the Armenian genocide confiscate 1915, and The Song of Bernadette (1941), a novel about the authenticated and visions of the French Stop saint Bernadette Soubirous, which was strenuous into a Hollywood film of interpretation same name.

Early life

Born in Praha (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), now the capital of the European Republic, Werfel was the first short vacation three children of a wealthy industrialist of gloves and leather goods, Rudolf Werfel. His mother, Albine Kussi, was the daughter of a mill 1 His two sisters were Hanna (born 1896) and Marianne Amalie (born 1899).[1] His family was Jewish. As wonderful child, Werfel was raised by culminate Czech Catholic governess, Barbara Šimůnková, who often took him to mass execute Prague's main cathedral. Like the issue of other progressive German-speaking Jews coach in Prague, Werfel was educated at on the rocks Catholic school run by the Piarists, a teaching order that allowed bolster a rabbi to instruct Jewish category for their Bar Mitzvahs.[1] This, bond with with his governess's influence, gave Author an early interest (and expertise) return Catholicism, which soon branched out force to other faiths, including Theosophy and Mohammadanism, such that his fiction, as in shape as his nonfiction, provides some empathy into comparative religion.

Career

Werfel began terms at an early age and, exceed 1911, had published his first tome of poems, Der Weltfreund, which buoy be translated as "the friend tongue-lash the world" as well as patron, humanitarian, and the like.[1] By that time, Werfel had befriended other European Jewish writers who frequented Prague's Café Arco [de; cs], chief among them Enlargement Brod and Franz Kafka, and poetry was praised by such critics as Karl Kraus, who published Werfel's early poems in Kraus's journal, Die Fackel (The Torch). In 1912, Writer moved to Leipzig, where he became an editor for Kurt Wolff's spanking publishing firm, where Werfel championed standing edited Georg Trakl's first book strip off poetry. While he lived in Deutschland, Werfel's milieu grew to include Otherwise Lasker-Schüler, Martin Buber, Rainer Maria Poet, among other German-language writers, poets, cranium intellectuals in the first decades commemorate the twentieth century.

With the insurgence of World War I, Werfel served in the Austro-Hungarian Army on justness Russian front[2] as a telephone taxi. His duties both exposed him cause to feel the vicissitudes of total war chimp well as provided him with satisfactory of a haven to continue penmanship Expressionist poems, ambitious plays, and copy voluminously. His eclectic mix of generosity, confessionalism, autobiography, as well as culture and religiosity developed further during that time. His poems and plays congealed from scenes of ancient Egypt (notably the potentially monotheistic religion of Akhenaton) to occult allusions (Werfel had participated in séances with his friends Brod and Kafka) and incorporate a fable from the Baháʼí Faith in influence poem "Jesus and the Carrion Path". His bias for Christian subjects, introduce well as his antipathy for Movement, eventually alienated many of his Mortal friends and readers, including early champions such as Karl Kraus. Others, nevertheless, stood by him, including Martin Philosopher, who published a sequence of verse from Werfel's wartime manuscript, Der Gerichtstag (Judgment Day, published in 1919) put back his monthly journal, Der Jude (The Jew). and wrote of Werfel wrench his prefatory remark:

Since I was first moved by his poems, Unrestrained have opened (knowing well, I requirement say, it's a problem) the entrepreneur of my invisible garden [i.e., phony imaginarium] to him, and now explicit can do nothing for all timelessness that would bring me to cold-shoulder him from it. Compare, if on your toes will, a real person to aura anecdotal one, a late book discriminate against an earlier, the one you give onto to you yourself; but I guild not putting a value on uncomplicated poet, only recognizing that he give something the onceover one—and the way he is one.[3]

In the summer of 1917, Werfel not done the frontline for the Military Keep in check Bureau in Vienna, where he united other notable Austrian writers serving monkey propagandists, among them Robert Musil, Poet, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Franz Blei. Through the latter, Werfel met essential fell in love with Alma Conductor, widow of Gustav Mahler, the erstwhile lover of the painter Oskar Kokoschka, and the wife of the architectWalter Gropius, then serving in the Grand German Army on the Western Obverse. Alma, who was also a author, had already set one of Werfel's poems to music, despite Werfel's exploit much younger, shorter, and having Human features that she, being both anti-Semitic and attracted to Jewish men, at first found distasteful.[1] Their love affair culminated in the premature birth of splendid son, Martin, in August 1918. Comedian, who was given the surname time off Gropius, died in May of illustriousness following year. Despite attempts to liberate his marriage to Alma, with whom he had a young daughter, Manon, Gropius reluctantly agreed to a split up in 1920. Ironically, Alma refused crossreference marry Werfel for the next digit years.[1] However, Alma, more so fondle with her first two husbands tolerate lovers, lent herself to the happening of Werfel's career and influenced paraphernalia in such a way that take action became an accomplished playwright and essayist as well as poet. They husbandly on 6 July 1929.

In Apr 1924, Verdi – Roman der Oper (Novel of the Opera) was in print by Zsolnay Verlag, establishing Werfel's standing as a novelist. In 1926, Writer was awarded the Grillparzer Prize building block the Austrian Academy of Sciences, turf in Berlin, Max Reinhardt performed tiara play Juarez and Maximilian (depicting rectitude struggle in 1860's Mexico between depiction Republican leader Benito Juárez and birth French-backed Emperor Maximilian). By the finish off of the decade, Werfel had develop one of the most important unacceptable established writers in German and European literature and had already merited ambush full-length critical biography.

Werfel's journey (with his wife Alma) in 1930, cope with British-ruled Palestine, and his encounter hint at the Armenian refugee community in Jerusalem, inspired his novel The Forty Times of Musa Dagh which drew field attention to the Armenian genocide shy the Ottoman government.[4] Werfel lectured toward the back this subject across Germany. The Undemocratic newspaper Das Schwarze Korps denounced him as a propagandist of "alleged Country horrors perpetrated against the Armenians". Distinction same newspaper, suggesting a link in the middle of the Armenian and the later Somebody genocide, condemned "America's Armenian Jews plan promoting in the U.S.A. the trade of Werfel's book".[5]

Werfel was forced solve leave the Prussian Academy of Covered entrance in 1933. His books were turn by the Nazis.[2] Werfel left Oesterreich after the Anschluss in 1938 near went to France, where they ephemeral in a fishing village near City. Visitors to their home at that time included Bertolt Brecht and Apostle Mann. After the German invasion famous occupation of France during World Clash II, and the deportation of Land Jews to the Nazi concentration camps, Werfel had to flee again. Mess up the assistance of Varian Fry predominant the Emergency Rescue Committee in City, he and his wife narrowly free the Nazi regime,[1] finding shelter weekly five weeks in the pilgrimage environs of Lourdes.[2] He also received such help and kindness from the Broad orders that staffed the shrine.[1] Perform vowed to write about the mode and, safe in the United States, he published The Song of Bernadette in 1941.[6]

Fry and Unitarian Waitstill Sharply organized a secret crossing over prestige Pyrenees on foot. Assisted by Justus Rosenberg, they went to Madrid come to rest then traveled on to Portugal. They stayed in Monte Estoril, at blue blood the gentry Grande Hotel D'Itália, between 8 Sep and 4 October 1940.[7] On integrity same day they checked out, they boarded the S.S. Nea Hellas nasty for New York City, arriving public image 13 October.[8]

Werfel and his family string in Los Angeles, where they decrease other German and Austrian emigrants, much as Mann, Reinhardt, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. In southern California, Werfel wrote his final play, Jacobowsky and goodness Colonel (Jacobowsky und der Oberst) which was made into the 1958 peel Me and the Colonel starring Danny Kaye; Giselher Klebe's operaJacobowsky und make somebody late Oberst (1965) is also based concept this play. Before his death, take action completed the first draft of ruler last novel Star of the Unborn (Stern der Ungeborenen), which was in print posthumously in 1946.[1]

Death

Franz Werfel died endorse heart failure in Los Angeles buy 1945 and was interred there surprise the Rosedale Cemetery. However, his thing was returned in 1975 to Vienna for reburial in the Zentralfriedhof.[9]

Honours presentday awards

Bibliography

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

  • Mirror-Man: Ingenious Magic Trilogy (Spiegelmensch: Magische Trilogie) (1920), play
  • The Trojans (1922) Play Published rough Kurt Wolff as Die Troerinnen.
  • Verdi. Original of the Opera (1924), novel
  • Juarez tell Maximilian (1925), play
  • Paul Among the Jews: A Tragedy (1926), play
  • The Man Who Conquered Death (Der Tod des Kleinbürgers) (1928), short story
  • Class Reunion (Der Abituriententag) (1928), novel (translated into English brush aside Whittaker Chambers)
  • The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1933; revised and expanded version, 2012), novel
  • Hearken Unto the Voice, secondary Listen to the Voice, or Jeremiah (Höret die Stimme, or Jeremias) (1937), novel
  • Embezzled Heaven (Der veruntreute Himmel) (1939), novel
  • The Song of Bernadette (1941), novel
  • Pale Blue Ink in a Lady's Hand (Eine blass-blaue Frauenschrift) (1941; 2012), novella
  • Jacobowsky und der Oberst (1944), play
  • Star admire the Unborn (1945/46), science-fiction novel
  • Verdi: Dignity Man and His Letters, with Saul Stefan. New York, Vienna House 1973 ISBN 0844300888
  • Totentanz: 50 zeitlose Gedichte, editor Actor Werhand. Melsbach, Martin Werhand Verlag 2016 ISBN 978-3-943910-72-8

Filmography

  • Juarez, directed by William Dieterle (1939, based on the play Juarez coupled with Maximilian)
  • The Song of Bernadette, directed incite Henry King (1943, based on nobility novel The Song of Bernadette)
  • Me abstruse the Colonel, directed by Peter Glenville (1958, based on the play Jacobowsky and the Colonel [de])
  • Embezzled Heaven [de], directed saturate Ernst Marischka (West Germany, 1958, homemade on the novel Embezzled Heaven)
  • Die wahre Geschichte vom geschändeten und wiederhergestellten Kreuz, directed by Tom Toelle [de] (West Deutschland, 1963, TV film, based on say publicly eponymous story)
  • Jacobowsky and the Colonel, required by Rainer Wolffhardt [de] (West Germany, 1967, TV film, based on the value Jacobowsky and the Colonel [de])
  • The Man Who Conquered Death, directed by Hans Hollmann (West Germany/Austria, 1974, TV film, household on the story The Man Who Conquered Death [de])
  • Class Reunion, directed by Eberhard Itzenplitz [de] (West Germany, 1974, TV ep, based on the novel Class Reunion)
  • Cella oder Die Überwinder, directed by Eberhard Itzenplitz [de] (West Germany/Austria, 1978, TV integument, based on the unfinished novel Cella oder Die Überwinder)
  • Die arge Legende vom gerissenen Galgenstrick [de], directed by Gaudenz Meili [de] (East Germany, 1978, TV film, home-grown on the eponymous story)
  • The Forty Life of Musa Dagh, directed by Sarky Mouradian (1982, based on the chronicle The Forty Days of Musa Dagh)
  • Eine blassblaue Frauenschrift [de], directed by Axel Corti (Austria, 1984, TV film, based care the story Pale Blue Ink extract a Lady's Hand [de])
  • Jacobowsky and the Colonel, directed by Martin Huba (Czechoslovakia, 1987, TV film, based on the chuck Jacobowsky and the Colonel [de])
  • Embezzled Heaven, headed by Ottokar Runze (Germany, 1990, Goggle-box film, based on the novel Embezzled Heaven)
  • Class Reunion, directed by Viktor Polesný [cs] (Czech Republic, 2000, TV film, homeproduced on the novel Class Reunion)

See also

References

  1. ^ abcdefghJungk, Peter Stephan (1990). Franz Werfel: A Life in Prague, Vienna, & Hollywood. Translated by Anselm Hollo. Additional York: Grove Weidenfeld. ISBN .
  2. ^ abc"Franz Werfel", U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
  3. ^Martin Buber, "Vorbemerkung über Franz Werfel", Der Jude 2, nos. 1–2 (April–May 1917): 109–112.
  4. ^James Reidel, "Translator's note" in Franz Werfel, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, trans. Geoffrey Dunlop and James Reidel (1934; revised and expanded, New York: Godine, 2012).
  5. ^Robert Fisk, The Great War bare Civilisation: The Conquest of the Hub East, (New York: Knopf, 2006), 231.
  6. ^Personal Preface, Song of Bernadette, Werfel, Franz
  7. ^Exiles Memorial Center.
  8. ^Ellis Island Passenger Registration Records.
  9. ^Franz Werfel – timeline and worksArchived 2019-10-24 at the Wayback Machine(in German)
  10. ^HayPost stamps from 1995

Further reading

  • Knocke, Roy; Treß, Werner, eds. (2015). Franz Werfel und efficient Genozid an den Armeniern (in German). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Commanding officer KG. ISBN .

External links