Alma MAHLER WERFEL & Franz WERFEL

Alma Mahler-Werfel (1879-1964)
& Franz Werfel (1890-1945)

Alma, widow of composer Gustav Mahler, divorced from architect Walter Gropius and linked to painter Oskar Kokoschka, was the muse and femme fatale of the Viennese cultural scene. In 1929, she married Franz Werfel, a writer, poet and playwright from Prague’s German-Jewish bourgeoisie.

Faced with the Nazi threat, the couple went into exile in France, first in Paris, then in Sanary. At the dawn of the Second World War, German-speaking exiles became undesirable and Sanary inhospitable. Thanks to Varian Fry, sent by the Emergency Rescue Committee from New York to Marseille, they fled via the Pyrenees and Lisbon to the United States, accompanied by Heinrich Mann, his wife Nelly and Thomas Mann’s son Golo. Werfel would later recount their perilous journey in his play Moi et le colonel.

When Alma, Mahler, met the poet Franz Werfel in Vienna in November 1917, eleven years her junior, Franz had a beautiful tenor voice and Alma, an excellent pianist, accompanied him at the piano. He adores her, she belittles him, but a wild passion unites them. In 1920, Alma divorced Walter Gropius, then lived with Franz Werfel for many years. She finally agreed to marry him in 1929, but their marriage soon fell apart and she wrote in her diary: “My marriage no longer exists, I am unhappy living next to Werfel”.

As for her husband, he was stunned, unable to understand his wife’s anti-Semitic attitude and her admiration for Hitler. But political developments, such as Austria’s Anschluss (annexation) to Germany in 1938, forced them to stick together. Alma was still able to liquidate the bank accounts before they left Vienna, first for Italy, then London, Paris and finally Sanary.

With the help of her friend Anne Marie Meier-Graefe, Alma found a former watchtower, the Moulin Gris, for rent, high above the village with a breathtaking view over the picturesque bay of Sanary. They stayed there for almost two years. Franz sets up his studio-office on the second and top floor of the tower, in a circular room with twelve windows. The beautiful room on the floor below became his bedroom. Alma stays on the first floor in a small living room and kitchen. She suffers from the heat, the mosquitoes and complains in her diary of “living in a Jewish-Communist tribe to which I don’t belong”. She exchanges a little with Marta Feuchtwanger or Hilde Stieler, but it doesn’t compare with the social life she’s used to.

The Werfels spent the winter of 1938/39 in Paris, Sanary being too isolated for them. They returned for the summer in deceptively calm conditions. When war broke out, opinion in the village turned upside down, and German speakers were no longer welcome. Franz suffers from the contempt and suspicion he encounters. On several occasions, their homes were searched. Franz is even controlled by a policeman in public in the street.

After the Wehrmacht invaded Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, the Werfels realised that Hitler would soon invade France. On 2 June 1940, they left the Moulin Gris and Sanary to begin their perilous flight to the United States.

In August 1940, Alma and Franz Werfel made it to Marseille after significant detours but were unable to leave due to lacking exit papers. There, they met Heinrich and Nelly Mann, as well as their nephew Golo, who were also desperate to escape Europe. The group’s salvation came with the arrival of Varian Fry, a member of the U.S.-founded Emergency Rescue Committee, who organized their escape route through Spain and Portugal. On October 4, they boarded a Greek ship to the USA and arrived on October 13. Like many other emigrants, the Werfels settled in California, where Alma found a social circle that met her standards. Franz Werfel died of a heart attack at his home in Beverly Hills on August 26, 1945. Initially buried in California, his remains were transferred in 1975 to an honorary grave at Vienna’s Central Cemetery. Alma, now la grande veuve, continued to hold court but eventually fell into obscurity. She died on December 11, 1964, at the age of 85 in her New York apartment and was interred in February 1965 at the Grinzinger Cemetery in Vienna alongside her daughter Manon.