Biography Franz Werfel

Poet Biography

Czech-born poet, playwright, and novelist, whose central themes were religious faith, heroism, and human brotherhood. Werfel's best-known works include The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1933), a classic historical novel that portrays Armenian resistance to the Turks, and The Song of Bernadette (1941). The latter book had its start when Werfel, a Jew escaping the Nazis, found solace in the pilgrimage town of Lourdes, where St. Bernadette had had visions of the Virgin. Werfel made a promise to "sing the song" of the saint if he ever reached the United States. He died in California in 1945.
Franz Werfel was born in Prague, Bohemia (now Czech), as the son of a wealthy glove merchant. He was educated in Prague. While still a gymnasium student, he met Franz Kafka and Max Brod - like Kafka, Werfel was a German-speaking Jew and never forgot his Jewish background. In 1909 he worked for a short period in a shipping firm. After studies Leipzig and Hamburg, he worked at a publishing company from 1911 to 1914. With Walter Hasenclever and Kurt Pinthus he edited the expressionist series Der Jüngste Tag. Werfel's first verse collection, DER WELTFREUND (1911), was an euphoric celebration of human brotherhood. "My only wish is to be related to you, O Man!" he wrote in a poem. Werfel's work created a sensation and became a landmark in the history of expressionism. On the eve of World War I he was active in a pacifist society which he organized together with Martin Buber, Gustav Landauer, and Max Scheler
In 1916 Werfel adapted for stage Euripides's The Trojan Women, a plea for peace and love in time, when poets, like Rupert Brooke in England, wrote about "glamorous death. From 1915 to 1917 Werfel served in the Austrian army on the Russian front. He was transferred to the war press bureau in Vienna, but his outspoken pacifism led to a charge of treason. Werfel's poems about the war appeared in 1919 under the title DER GERICHTTAG (The Day of Judgment) and revealed his despair of mankind. In Vienna he met Alma Mahler-Gropius, the widow of the composer Gustav Mahler. At that time she was married to the architect Walter Gropius. She divorced Gropius and went to live with Werfel; they were married in 1929.
After the war Werfel worked as a full-time writer, and turned more and more to the drama and the novel. His plays were especially popular in England and in the United States. Most of his plays were produced by Max Reinhardt. Werfel's verse trilogy DER SPIEGELMENSCH (1921) was inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 's Faust and Henrik Ibsen 's Per Gynt. The story dealt with man's temptation to self-deification, his fall and salvation. Influenced by Expressionism in German drama, Werfel wrote The Goat Song (1921), based on the idea of the unredeemed animal in man. The story was set in a fictional Slavic country in the eighteenth century. Gospodar Stevan Milic has two sons, Mirko, and another, half man and half beast, whom he decides to kill, but the creature escapes. Peasants start a rebellion and enshrine it. Juvan, the leader of the rebellion is hanged and Stanja, Mirko's fiancée, announces that she carries the creature's child. JUAREZ UND MAXIMILIAN (1924), a drama about the Hapsburg emperor of Mexico, Archeduce Maximilian. He has idealistic dreams, but Juárez, the elected President, who never appears onstage, is unyielding opponent. Maximilian tries to leave Mexico but is stopped by Porfirion Díaz. In Querétaro Maximilian is betrayed. Before his execution, he affirms Juárez as the true leader of the future. The play gained a great success. In the Theatre Guild production in New York, 1926, Edward G. Robinson played Porfirion Diaz.
Werfel's major novels dealt with music, history, and Catholic faith, although he never converted. PAULUS UNTER DEN JUDEN (1926) was set in the period when Christianity broke away from Judaism. VERDI: ROMAN DER OPER (1924) was about the famous Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi and dealt with artist's crisis when his creative powers fail. DIE GESCHWISTER VON NEAPEL (1931) was a historical story. A trip in 1929 to the Middle East inspired DIE VIERZIG TAGE DES MUSA DAGH (1933, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh). Werfel saw in a mat factory starving refugees, and became acquainted with their fate. He started to write the book in July 1932, finishing it in March 1933. On his lecture tour in November 1932 he read parts of the work. The story depicted the persecution of the Armenians by the Turks in 1915. Werfel warned prophetically about the consequences of the anti-Semitism of the Nazis.
In BARBARA; ODER, DIE FRÖMMIGKEI (1929, The Pure in Heart) Welfel examined his central theme: the futility of political or social change because of humanity's flawed nature and the metaphysical human devotion to God. Werfel believed that individual spiritual values will ultimately triumph. The theme was further elaborated in DAS LIED VON BERNADETTE (1941, The Song of Bernadette). In the preface Werfel stated that his intention is to 'magnify the divine mystery and the holiness of mankind'. The book was made into a successful Hollywood film in 1943 and won three Oscars. Jennifer Jones played Bernadette, a peasant girl in the 1800s, who has a vision of the Virgin Mary at what becomes the shrine of Lourdes.
Werfel lived in Austria until 1938, when the Anschluss, the Nazi occupation, forced him into exile. In Paris the author suffered his first heart attack. After travelling from France to Spain, Werfel settled in the United States in 1940. He died in Beverly Hills, California, on August 26, 1945, in the middle of his work, correcting galley proof of his last book of verse. Posthumously published DER STERN DER UNGEBORENEN (1946, The Star of the Unborn) was a visionary science-fiction novel, in which Werfel's suspicion of 'civilization' also reflected his depressed experiences in exile in California. In the story the narrator's mysteriously resurrected self is summoned into the distant future. There the narrator (named Franz Werfel) is guided by a mentor and he observes the ultimate spiritual and technological development of the humankind. The end of suffering has not brought about a new golden age, but has cut off the chance to man's redemption.