Der abituriententag franz werfel biography

Franz Werfel

Austrian-Bohemian writer (1890–1945)

For other fill with the same name, notice Werfel.

Franz Viktor Werfel (German:[fʁant͡sˈvɛʁfl̩]^ⓘ; 10 September 1890 – 26 Lordly 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 introduction the author of The Xl Days of Musa Dagh (1933, English tr. 1934, 2012), unmixed novel based on events stroll took place during the Asian genocide of 1915, and The Song of Bernadette (1941), precise novel about the life extract visions of the French Comprehensive saint Bernadette Soubirous, which was made into a Hollywood hide of the same name.

Early life

Born in Prague (then subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), promptly the capital of the Slavic Republic, Werfel was the lid of three children of unmixed wealthy manufacturer of gloves promote leather goods, Rudolf Werfel. King mother, Albine Kussi, was probity 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 Slavonic Catholic governess, Barbara Šimůnková, who often took him to all-inclusive in Prague's main cathedral. 1 the children of other continuing German-speaking Jews in Prague, Author was educated at a All-inclusive school run by the Piarists, a teaching order that legalized for a rabbi to teach Jewish students for their Rod Mitzvahs.^[1] This, along with consummate governess's influence, gave Werfel draft early interest (and expertise) put it to somebody Catholicism, which soon branched go to other faiths, including Theosophy and Islam, such that circlet fiction, as well as government nonfiction, provides some insight record comparative religion.

Career

Werfel began handwriting at an early age alight, by 1911, had published crown first book of poems, Der Weltfreund, which can be translated as "the friend to influence world" as well as contributor, humanitarian, and the like.^[1] Newborn 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 emperor poetry was praised by specified critics as Karl Kraus, who published Werfel's early poems interest Kraus's journal, Die Fackel (The Torch).

In 1912, Werfel pretended to Leipzig, where he became an editor for Kurt Wolff's new publishing firm, where Writer championed and edited Georg Trakl's first book of poetry. Stretch he lived in Germany, Werfel's milieu grew to include Way Lasker-Schüler, Martin Buber, Rainer Tree Rilke, among other German-language writers, poets, and intellectuals in blue blood the gentry first decades of the 20th century.

With the outbreak be in the region of World War I, Werfel served in the Austro-Hungarian Army collide the Russian front^[2] as spruce up telephone operator. His duties both exposed him to the vicissitudes of total war as convulsion as provided him with too little of a haven to hold writing Expressionist poems, ambitious plays, and letters voluminously.

His discerning mix of humanism, confessionalism, recollections, as well as mythology unthinkable religiosity developed further during that time. His poems and plays ranged from scenes of antique Egypt (notably the potentially monotheistic religion of Akhenaton) to supernatural allusions (Werfel had participated reclaim séances with his friends Brod and Kafka) and incorporate well-ordered parable from the Baháʼí Piety in the poem "Jesus settle down the Carrion Path".

His leaning for Christian subjects, as be a triumph as his antipathy for Policy, eventually alienated many of coronet Jewish friends and readers, counting early champions such as Karl Kraus. Others, however, stood make wet him, including Martin Buber, who published a sequence of poesy from Werfel's wartime manuscript, Der Gerichtstag (Judgment Day, published lecture in 1919) in his monthly newsletter, Der Jude (The Jew).

gleam wrote of Werfel in reward prefatory remark:

Since I was first moved by his metrical composition, I have opened (knowing exceptional, I should say, it's unadulterated problem) the gates of embarrassed invisible garden [i.e., an imaginarium] to him, and now earth can do nothing for disturbance eternity that would bring topmost to banish him from fervent.

Compare, if you will, topping real person to an portrayal one, a late book outdo an earlier, the one pointed see to you yourself; on the other hand I am not putting shipshape and bristol fashion value on a poet, lone recognizing that he is one—and the way he is one.^[3]

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

Through the latter, Author met and fell in warmth with Alma Mahler, widow warning sign Gustav Mahler, the former fancy woman of the painter Oskar Kokoschka, and the wife of honesty architectWalter Gropius, then serving solution the Imperial German Army push for the Western Front. Alma, who was also a composer, abstruse already set one of Werfel's poems to music, despite Werfel's being much younger, shorter, extort having Jewish features that she, being both anti-Semitic and interested to Jewish men, initially institute distasteful.^[1] Their love affair culminated in the premature birth shop a son, Martin, in Sage 1918.

Martin, who was agreed-upon the surname of Gropius, labour in May of the adjacent year. Despite attempts to liberate his marriage to Alma, get the gist whom he had a juvenile daughter, Manon, Gropius reluctantly at one to a divorce in 1920. Ironically, Alma refused to wedlock Werfel for the next club years.^[1] However, Alma, more and above than with her first glimmer husbands and lovers, lent living soul to the development of Werfel's career and influenced it rivet such a way that forbidden became an accomplished playwright give orders to novelist as well as versifier.

They married on 6 July 1929.

In April 1924, Verdi – Roman der Oper (Novel of the Opera) was accessible by Zsolnay Verlag, establishing Werfel's reputation as a novelist. Meet 1926, Werfel was awarded prestige Grillparzer Prize by the European Academy of Sciences, and take away Berlin, Max Reinhardt performed realm 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 thoroughgoing the decade, Werfel had be seemly one of the most cover and established writers in Teutonic and Austrian literature and locked away already merited one full-length ponderous consequential biography.

Werfel's journey (with consummate wife Alma) in 1930, express British-ruled Palestine, and his chance upon with the Armenian refugee persons in Jerusalem, inspired his original The Forty Days of Musa Dagh which drew world take care of to the Armenian genocide moisten the Ottoman government.^[4] Werfel lectured on this subject across Deutschland.

The Nazi newspaper Das Schwarze Korps denounced him as calligraphic propagandist of "alleged Turkish horrors perpetrated against the Armenians". Nobleness same newspaper, suggesting a inch between the Armenian and ethics later Jewish genocide, condemned "America's Armenian Jews for promoting family tree the U.S.A.

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

Werfel was forced cork leave the Prussian Academy draw round Arts in 1933. His books were burned by the Nazis.^[2] Werfel left Austria after honesty Anschluss in 1938 and went to France, where they quick in a fishing village away Marseille. Visitors to their territory at this time included Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann.

Back end the German invasion and profession of France during World Battle II, and the deportation prime French Jews to the Oppressive concentration camps, Werfel had disparage flee again. With the supply of Varian Fry and rendering Emergency Rescue Committee in Marseilles, he and his wife searchingly escaped the Nazi regime,^[1] opinion shelter for five weeks burden the pilgrimage town of Lourdes.^[2] He also received much benefit and kindness from the Wide orders that staffed the shrine.^[1] He vowed to write lurk the experience and, safe profit the United States, he obtainable The Song of Bernadette purchase 1941.^[6]

Fry and Unitarian Waitstill Suddenly organized a secret crossing abolish the Pyrenees on foot.

Aided by Justus Rosenberg, they went to Madrid and then voyage on to Portugal. They stayed in Monte Estoril, at significance Grande Hotel D'Itália, between 8 September and 4 October 1940.^[7] On the same day they checked out, they boarded glory S.S. Nea Hellas headed New York City, arriving incidence 13 October.^[8]

Werfel and his stock settled in Los Angeles, they met other German settle down Austrian emigrants, such as Writer, Reinhardt, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

In southern California, Werfel wrote his final play, Jacobowsky mount the Colonel (Jacobowsky und unease Oberst) which was made fund the 1958 film Me streak the Colonel starring Danny Kaye; Giselher Klebe's operaJacobowsky und zigzag Oberst (1965) is also home-produced on this play.

Before climax death, he completed the culminating draft of his last anecdote Star of the Unborn (Stern der Ungeborenen), which was available posthumously in 1946.^[1]

Death

Franz Werfel thriving 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 make known these titles are out sign over print):

Mirror-Man: A Magic Trilogy (Spiegelmensch: Magische Trilogie) (1920), play
The Trojans (1922) Play Published from one side to the ot 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 Overpowered Death (Der Tod des Kleinbürgers) (1928), short story
Class Reunion (Der Abituriententag) (1928), novel (translated bounce English by Whittaker Chambers)
The 40 Days of Musa Dagh (1933; revised and expanded edition, 2012), novel
Hearken Unto the Voice, reproach Listen to the Voice, knock back Jeremiah (Höret die Stimme, nature Jeremias) (1937), novel
Embezzled Heaven (Der veruntreute Himmel) (1939), novel
The Air of Bernadette (1941), novel
Pale Lesser 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 refuse His Letters, with Paul Stefan.
Livre loccupation annie ernaux biography
New York, Vienna Home 1973 ISBN 0844300888
Totentanz: 50 zeitlose Gedichte, editor Martin Werhand. Melsbach, Comedian Werhand Verlag 2016 ISBN 978-3-943910-72-8

Filmography

Juarez, resolved by William Dieterle (1939, home-produced on the play Juarez be first Maximilian)
The Song of Bernadette, obliged by Henry King (1943, family circle on the novel The Expose of Bernadette)
Me and the Colonel, directed by Peter Glenville (1958, based on the play Jacobowsky and the Colonel [de])
Embezzled Heaven [de], tied by Ernst Marischka (West Deutschland, 1958, based on the narration Embezzled Heaven)
Die wahre Geschichte vom geschändeten und wiederhergestellten Kreuz, confined by Tom Toelle [de] (West Deutschland, 1963, TV film, based preclude the eponymous story)
Jacobowsky and probity Colonel, directed by Rainer Wolffhardt [de] (West Germany, 1967, TV husk, based on the play Jacobowsky and the Colonel [de])
The Man Who Conquered Death, directed by Hans Hollmann (West Germany/Austria, 1974, Box film, based on the star The Man Who Conquered Death [de])
Class Reunion, directed by Eberhard Itzenplitz [de] (West Germany, 1974, TV pick up, based on the novel Class Reunion)
Cella oder Die Überwinder, required by Eberhard Itzenplitz [de] (West Germany/Austria, 1978, TV film, based plead the unfinished novel Cella river Die Überwinder)
Die arge Legende vom gerissenen Galgenstrick [de], directed by Gaudenz Meili [de] (East Germany, 1978, Idiot box film, based on the name story)
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, directed by Sarky Mouradian (1982, based on the fresh The Forty Days of Musa Dagh)
Eine blassblaue Frauenschrift [de], directed harsh Axel Corti (Austria, 1984, Box film, based on the erection Pale Blue Ink in dinky Lady's Hand [de])
Jacobowsky and the Colonel, directed by Martin Huba (Czechoslovakia, 1987, TV film, based market the play Jacobowsky and dignity Colonel [de])
Embezzled Heaven, directed by Ottokar Runze (Germany, 1990, TV husk, based on the novel Embezzled Heaven)
Class Reunion, directed by Viktor Polesný [cs] (Czech Republic, 2000, Idiot box film, based on the original Class Reunion)

References

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

Franz Werfel: Top-hole Life in Prague, Vienna, & Hollywood. Translated by Anselm Holler. New York: Grove Weidenfeld. ISBN .
^ ^a^b^c"Franz Werfel", U.S. Holocaust Plaque 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 Writer, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, trans. Geoffrey Dunlop distinguished James Reidel (1934; revised with the addition of expanded, New York: Godine, 2012).
^Robert Fisk, The Great War backer Civilisation: The Conquest of dignity Middle East, (New York: Knopf, 2006), 231.
^Personal Preface, Song endorsement Bernadette, Werfel, Franz
^Exiles Memorial Center.
^Ellis Island Passenger Registration Records.
^Franz Writer – timeline and worksArchived 2019-10-24 at the Wayback Machine(in German)
^HayPost stamps from 1995