FRANZ WERFEL: A Life in Prague, Vienna; and Hollywood

by Peter Stephan Jungk ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1990

Absorbing life of a literary genius whose early works were much admired by Rilke and Kafka but who was more often admired in person by his peers for his gargantuan good cheer, great warmth, and nonstop ability to sing complete Verdi operas. In California, fellow exile Thomas Mann especially loved Werfel while thinking his novels well-made bad books. Werfel is equally well known for being the young lover who took Alma Mahler from her second husband, famed architect Walter Gropius, married her after ten years, and had to put up with her maddening grand manner and anti-Semitism, although he was an apostate Jew. Born in Prague in 1890, Werfel was short, fat, not handsome, and a poor student. But he early got bitten by Verdi's operas and began his writing career as a poet, like Byron becoming famous overnight with his first book. He was a central celebrant of the Prague literati, and later of Viennese artistic circles that included Musil, Wittgenstein, Berg, Schoenberg, and Freud. He wrote poems, plays, and often very big novels without stop and almost always with great success. He also became the hero of Armenians everywhere for his The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, which was the first fictional account of modern genocide, with the Turks slaughtering the Armenians. Although knowing that he could never not be a Jew, he fell tremendously under the spell of Christianity and wrote his equally famous The Song of Bernadette, about the miracles at Lourdes, which when filled won Jennifer Jones her Oscar. Werfel and Alma went through great hardships to escape the Nazis and emigrate to America, where Werfel's success went on without stop. Socializing Alma still thought Hitler and the Nazis nice guys and Roosevelt a criminal, and raged at Franz that she would still be in top society in her beloved Austria if he weren't a Jew. Werfel died in Beverly Hills a few days after finishing his delightful futuristic novel, Star of the Unborn. Franz and Alma, a tragicomic team waiting for the fight playwright--but this bio does handsomely until then.

Pub Date: March 1, 1990

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Grove Weidenfeld

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990

Categories: NONFICTION