[321] On Kafka’s relationship to Otto Gross, see the outstanding work by Thomas Anz, “Jemand musste Otto G. verleumdet haben...,” in Akzente (Munich), February 1984, pp. 184ff. On Otto Gross, see also Emanuel Hurwitz, Otto Gross: Ein Paradies-Sucher zwischen Freud und Jung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1979).
[322] See Schnitzler’s unpublished diaries, which Peter Michael Braunwirth was kind enough to let me read. On December 12, 1922, Schnitzler notes that FW presented him with a copy of his new play Schweiger that evening. He finds nothing to praise in this “tortured, confused play” but “a couple of intense spots of dialogue. Telephoned Alma about it; she, too, noted Werfel’s lack of concentration.” On December 26 Schnitzler says that he has informed FW of his objections to Schweiger and that “Alma seemed glad someone spoke honestly with him.”
[323] See Foltin, p. 49.
[324] In Goat Song Steven Milič says to his wife, “Word-twister, clever one! Who sired him on you? Not my child, he. Well born, my clan, for ten generations!” His wife replies, “How you must have spoiled your seed, by abominations, to have it degrade me so, for I am healthy, and I was healthy when you wooed me” (DD, vol. 1, p. 262). See also note 278.
[325] See “Zufalls-Tagebuch,” ZOU, p. 679.
[326] Richard Specht (1870-1932). In 1926, Paul Zsolnay Verlag published Specht’s biography Franz Werfel: Versuch einer Zeitspiegelung, op. cit. He was also the author of the first monograph on Arthur Schnitzler, Arthur Schnitzler: Der Dichter und sein Werk (Berlin: S. Fischer Verlag, 1922).
[327] In SL, pp. 33ff., Max Brod gives a very amusing account of FW’s rejection of Wagner at that time.
[328] Unpublished letter from FW to Gerhart Hauptmann, Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.
[329] Notes on FW’s research in a notebook dated Venice, 1923, at UCLA; see also an unpublished letter to Kurt Wolff dated June 5, 1923, in KW Archive.
[330] “Zufalls-Tagebuch,” ZOU, p. 685.
[331] ML, p. 159.
[332] At this time, she had already divorced Rupert Koller. A little later she married Ernst Křenek. See Foltin, p. 57. Later editions of Verdi depict Fischböck more humanely and far more sympathetically than the first edition of 1924.
[333] Born in 1900, he made his name with the jazz opera Johnny spielt auf (1927).
[334] Josef Matthias Hauer, 1883-1959; Arnold Schoenberg, 1874-1951.
[335] Manuscript of the first version of Verdi, M-W Coll. Also see Hans Kühner, Giuseppe Verdi (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 1961), p. 115: “On November 1, 1886, Giulio Ricordi [Verdi] proclaims, ‘Otello completely finished!!! At last!!!!!!!!’ Eight exclamation points seem to him an appropriate expression of deliverance.”
[336] See SL, pp. 202f.
[337] Unpublished letter from FW to Kurt Wolff, September 30, 1923; KW Archive.
[338] Jakob Wassermann (1873-1934). The dedication in the copy of Verdi FW gave him reads: “Master Jakob Wassermann, with reverential thanks for his productive help with this book. Franz Werfel, Venice, 1924.” See ML, p. 160.
[339] Unpublished letter from FW to Kurt Wolff, Prague, December 3, 1923; KW Archive.
[340] Paul von Zsolnay (1895-1961). According to Anna Mahler, Zsolnay came up with the idea of starting his own publishing house after Alma Mahler told him in the course of a conversation that all the publishers with whom FW had done business were crooks.
[341] The play was performed at the Theater in der Königgrätzerstrasse, with Ernst Deutsch, a friend of FW’s youth, in the title role. FW wrote Alma Mahler on October 29, 1923: “It is truly horrendous that we won’t get a penny from such a theatrical success... It is an outrage... Something must be done” (FW/Mahler).
[342] On FW’s leaving Kurt Wolff Verlag, see Wolff’s radio talk on Norddeutscher Rundfunk, May 19, 1962, and BeV, p. 349.
[343] On the history of Kafka’s illness, see Rotraut Hackermüller’s remarkable study Das Leben das mich stört (Vienna: Medusa Verlag, 1984).
[344] Markus Hajek (1861-1941), Julius Tandler (1869-1936).
[345] Unpublished letter from FW to Max Brod.
[346] Kafka wrote to Brod, probably on April 20, 1924: “[FW] sent me the novel (I was frightfully hungry for a suitable book) and roses. And although I had to ask him not to come (for it’s marvelous here for the patients; for visitors, and in this regard therefore also for the patients, horrible), a card from him indicates that he means to come today anyhow; in the evening he is leaving for Venice” (Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors, op. cit., p. 413). It is not known whether FW actually made this visit to Kierling.
[347] “Zufalls-Tagebuch,” ZOU, p. 687.
[348] See ML, pp. 162f.
[349] See “Zufalls-Tagebuch,” ZOU, pp. 687f.
[350] DD, vol. 1, pp. 385-465.
[351] Unpublished notebook on Juarez and Maximilian, M-W Coll.
[352] See “Ägyptisches Tagebuch,” ZOU, pp. 705ff.; all details of the trip to the Near East have been derived from this diary.
[353] On FW’s love of travel, see Adolf D. Klarmann, “Franz Werfel, der Dichter des Glaubens,” Forum, nos. 19-20 (1955), pp. 278f.
[354] The text “Die tanzenden Derwische” (EzW, vol. 1, pp. 285ff.) derives from FW’s “Egyptian Diary” but was also published independently in Ewige Gegenwart (Berlin: Die Buchgemeinde, 1929) and elsewhere.
[355] On Werfel’s great crisis in the spring of 1925, see FW/Mahler.
[356] On the Magdeburg premiere, FW wrote to Alma, “Boundless disappointment over Juarez: I had firmly expected it to overcome the hostility directed against me” (FW/Mahler).
[357] Paulus unten den Juden, DD, vol. 1, pp. 467-534. In May 1928 FW was planning a sequel to the play, Paul Among the Pagans (Paulus unter den Heiden); see the unpublished notebook titled “Firenze, 1928,” M-W Coll.
[358] Unpublished notebook, UCLA.
[359] Unpublished letter from FW to Hugo von Hofmannsthal, M-W Coll.
[360] ML, p. 170.
[361] Ibid., p. 171.
[362] Unpublished letter from Ullstein Verlag to FW, January 5, 1925: “We permit ourselves to recapitulate the content of our conversation as follows: You will travel to India in the fall of 1925. At the outset of this trip, Ullstein Verlag will pay you the sum of 10,000 marks. You undertake to write columns, impressions, etc., from India for our daily newspapers, and for these you will receive honoraria at the highest going rates... Furthermore, you assign to us the option on a novel dealing with the world of India” (UCLA).
[363] In an unpublished notebook, FW says that Verdi’s work requires restoration similar to that performed on old paintings: “to peel off the overpaintings of the theater, to reach the true dramat[ic] coloration of which [Verdi] himself was not aware.” The exact descriptive title of the translation was “Freely translated from the Italian by F. M. Piave and adapted for the German operatic theater by Franz Werfel.” See also FW, “Meine Verdi-Bearbeitungen,” Die Bühne (Vienna) vol. 3, no. 105, November 11, 1926; I thank Dr. Kafka (FK letters) for referring me to this article, which has not yet been reprinted.
[364] Alban Berg (1885-1935). On Berg’s relationship with Hanna Fuchs-Robetin, see the exhibition catalogue Alban Berg (Vienna: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, 1985), pp. 83ff. Berg wrote to Hanna Fuchs-Robetin in October 1931, “Not a day passes, not half a day, no night without my thinking of you, no week in which I am not flooded with a longing that immerses my entire thinking and feeling and wishing into a passion that does not seem to me the least whit diminished from May 1925” (ibid.).
[365] FW wrote his opinion of Berlin to Paul Zech on October 7, 1926: “Berlin is the latrine and dumping ground of all Bolshe- and Americanisms that are no longer true or never have been true. The clash of the Jews with the Mark Brandenburg has sounded a horrendous discord. Because this Berlin that considers itself so real, sober, disciplined, and productive is in fact the most fantastic imprint of irreality... Berlin is an unworldly hypersophisticated Jew
’s dream of the validity of what he regards as modern and radical: in the economy and in art!” (Edschmid, Briefe des Expressionismus, op. cit., p. 16).
[366] Haas, “Der junge Werfel,” M-W Coll.
[367] FW, unpublished letter to Arthur Schnitzler, Breitenstein, June 7, 1926; I thank Peter Michael Braunwarth of Vienna for pointing it out to me.
[368] For instance, Arnold Zweig wrote to FW on October 18, 1926: “First of all: I have not been spreading a rumor. Among my closest acquaintances there are two who many years ago, out of an inner need... , converted to Catholicism... One of these, a critically minded man not at all given to gossip, told me with absolute certainty that you had converted” (UCLA).
[369] I am not familiar with Freud’s letters to FW, but their contents can be clearly extrapolated from FW’s replies in M-W Coll.
[370] Unpublished letter from Zweig to FW: “The idea is genius, the realization great — sometimes colored by an unconscious partisanship, the one with which our blood has stricken us, despite all our resistance to it... You have laid bare the decisive wound... The undoubtedly tremendous success will be merely a vehicle for carrying the argument farther into the world. All in all: how successful you have been in so much! You are practically the only one in this generation who has an ‘oeuvre’ with annual rings... In old friendly feeling and entirely warmed by the experience of the world you have given me — most truly, Your Stefan Zweig” (UCLA).
[371] See Die Literatur, June 1926, p. 546: “As an immediate consequence of the enthusiasm for Werfel, another theatrical enterprise tried to stage Schweiger in English translation. However, its performance ended up putting a damper on that somewhat strident acclaim.”
[372] ZOU, pp. 358ff.
[373] EzW, vol. 2, pp. 336ff. FW incorporated this prose piece in his novel Barbara, chapter 6. See also “Erguss und Beichte,” ZOU, pp. 690ff., from which we learn that Pogrom harks back to a scene FW had actually experienced.
[374] DD, vol. 2, pp. 7-90.
[375] EzW, vol. 2, pp. 7ff.
[376] FW wrote to Alma in the spring of 1925: “The old one and Klara welcomed me. The old one, who looks quite pitiful, started weeping hideously right away, and it took a long time to calm her down. Without delay she then told me about old Gubsch’s death. Despite the horrible subject, this was grotesque, as she kept transposing words in the Czech manner and insisted on saying ‘Babylon’ instead of ‘pavilion.’ According to her, her hospitalized husband had died of hunger. Klara, with her strong slave face, stood beside her, casting her slightly cross-eyed glance that did not really glisten with tears down onto her dirty bodice” (FW/Mahler). See also FW to Alma Mahler in Jungk, ed., Das Franz Werfel Buch, op. cit., p. 428; and FW, “Zufalls-Tagebuch,” ZOU, p. 663: “Today the old Gubsch woman came to show me her family treasures.”
[377] MD conversations.
[378] The luxury hotel still exists, under the same name. FW liked to work in spacious rooms; see ML, p. 180.
[379] A Man’s Secret (Geheimnis eines Menschen), published by Paul Zsolnay in 1927. The original title of the cycle was to be The Ages of Life (Die Lebensalter), M-W Coll. In addition to The Man Who Conquered Death, Poor People, and The House of Mourning, the cycle contained Estrangement, Severio’s Secret (Geheimnis eines Menschen), and The Staircase (Die Hoteltreppe). Estrangement was originally titled The Sister’s Love (Die Liebe der Schwester). The story describes the intense relationship between Erwin, a musician, and his sister Gabriele, which is terminated by Erwin’s domineering wife, Judith. It is a parable of the relationship between Alma, FW, and his favorite sister, Hanna. Childhood memories figure prominently in this story (see also FW’s idea for a novella he wanted to call The Sister (Die Schwester) in “Zufalls-Tagebuch,” ZOU, pp. 666f.). Severio’s Secret was the first novella FW wrote in Santa Margherita. It was based on an actual occurrence: Alma’s stepfather, Carl Moll, already a recognized painter, had once fallen victim to a notorious Roman forger of statuary by the name of Alceo Dossena, who had been deceiving the world’s most renowned connoisseurs of art for years. Dossena inflicted particular damage on an art dealer in Venice whom FW knew personally, and the novella’s locale is, therefore, Venice (author’s conversations with Anna Mahler).
[380] EzW, vol. 2, pp. 235ff. The earlier short story “Knabentag” (EzW, vol. 1, pp. 57ff.) reflects similar moods.
[381] See note 37.
[382] EzW, vol. 2, pp. 181ff. FW’s poet Peppier is a caricature of the Prague poet Paul Leppin; see Goldstücker, Weltfreunde, op. cit., p. 225. See also Egon Erwin Kisch’s one-act play Piccaver im Salon Goldschmied, first performed in Prague in 1926, which takes place in the bordello on Gamsgasse.
[383] The character of the successful Schulhof corresponds to FW’s friend Ernst Deutsch. On the genesis of Class Reunion, see also Alma Mahler’s version in ML, p. 180, with which I disagree.
[384] In this context, Willy Haas promulgated an anecdote for which there is no corroboration, as the Professor Millrath mentioned by Haas does not appear in the teachers’ lists Dr. Kafka consulted in Prague (FK letters). FW’s German teachers had other names. It is possible that the story is true and Haas only mis-remembered the name: “Werfel had a wonderful talent of reproducing other voices which he remembered even after decades: a source of inexhaustible amusement for both of us in those hours of our later life. There was only one of the professors we did not love in any way, as either a funny or serious memory. He was our German professor Millrath... Werfel was his chosen victim. He never missed an opportunity to make Werfel look foolish in front of the class for some trivial reason and hardly ever gave him more than ‘Unsatisfactory’ on his German essays. [This statement does not correspond with the facts.] We remembered him well, and I asked, ‘What happened to Millrath?’ ‘You won’t believe this,’ said Werfel, ‘he is now the theater critic of the Wiener Arbeiterzeitung and pans all my plays.’ One has to grant that the man is consistent” (Haas, “Der junge Werfel,” M-W Coll.).
[385] See Elias Canetti, Die Fackel im Ohr: Lebensgeschichte, 1921-1931 (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1983), pp. 274ff. On Alma Mahler’s political orientation, see ML, for instance, p. 170: “Austria is already lost. Perhaps a cesarean would save it: joining up with Germany.” In 1928 she visits Margherita Sarfatti, Benito Mussolini’s mistress and thus “the uncrowned queen of Italy”: “We noted once again that only a worldwide organization could help. She was of the opinion that an international fascism based on the national one would be possible only if the fascists in other countries were wise enough, like Mussolini, to leave the Jewish question alone. And that had been my express purpose in coming to see her, to discuss this question... ‘At long last we have a leader [this refers to Mussolini] — it was almost too late! But even more important than his genius is his character!’ She shouted these two sentences in rapid succession.”
[386] Gedichte was published by Paul Zsolnay Verlag in 1927; quotation appears on p. 446.
[387] ML, pp. 177ff.
[388] Unpublished notebook, M-W Coll.
[389] The original name of the writer Peter Altenberg, a friend of FW’s, was Richard Engländer. It is possible that FW was thinking of Altenberg when he gave his character that name.
[390] See Franz Blei, Erzählung eines Lebens (Leipzig: Paul List Verlag, 1930), pp. 346ff.
[391] See Hautmann, “Franz Werfel: Barbara oder Die Frömmigkeit und die Revolution in Wien 1918,” op. cit., pp. 469ff.: “It must not be forgotten that a large sector of the public and all his fellow writers in the time between the wars knew about Werfel’s faux pas in November 1918. It can be imagined how embarrassing the scuttlebutt ‘he sided with the Communists’ must have been to a man of Werfel’s allegiance to bourgeois pacifist thinking. This is probably why he created an apology — masterfully told — for his contemporaries and posterity, in The Pure in Heart, in which the character of Barbara appears rather like a religious figurehead for a political autobiography.”
[392] See Albert Soergel and Cur
t Hohoff, Dichtung und Dichter der Zeit: Vom Naturalismus bis zur Gegenwart (Düsseldorf: Bagel, 1964), vol. 2, p. 491: “The novel contains the schema of Werfel’s evolution from a disappointed revolutionary to a homeless conservative, from intellectual nihilism to Catholicism.”
[393] See Radetzkymarsch (1932) and Kapuzinergruft (1938), by Joseph Roth. Both, however, appeared after Barbara.
[394] “Santa Margherita, February 4, 1929 — arrived at noon, my old room (House of Mourning, Severio’s Secret, The Staircase, Class Reunion) Hotel Imperial” (unpublished notebook, M-W Coll.).
[395] The verso of FW’s birth certificate (original in M-W Coll.) bears this notation: “Vienna, June 27, 1929. Notification of withdrawal from the Mos. [Mosaic] faith community acknowledged on the basis of the law of May 25, 1868, R. G. Bl. No. 49, for Chief Administration Officer: [Signature].” The document is stamped “Magistratisches Bezirksamt f. d. I. Bezirk, Wien.”
[396] See ML, pp. 201f., 205.
[397] On July 15, 1929.
[398] FW’s eulogy appears in ZOU, pp. 428f.
[399] See ML, pp. 211f.
[400] Below a photograph in an album that belonged to Alma Mahler-Werfel is the legend, in her handwriting: “1930. Tina Orchard, the cause of Die Geschwister von Neapel — Grazia.” On the photograph itself are the words “To my dearest Alma and Franz Werfel, with Tina’s love.”
[401] See Foltin, p. 70.
[402] “One should perhaps send him abroad, without a lot of money, to Canada or northern Russia, anywhere with a cold climate. One would have to protect him from the opera and satiation, all just for the sake of the lightning he created when we were younger and more helpless” (Die Weltbühne, December 24, 1929). See also Herbert Ihering in Das Tage-Buch, December 14, 1929: “Franz Werfel has long since become one of these false priests of the word. He was a poet. He was intoxicated with language. He was a creator of language. But this language intoxication affected him like a sweet poison, like opium. It put him into a state in which the words escaped him. Sound without sense. Tone without meaning. A soothsayer without content. A prophet without a goal... We have had enough. Enough compromises, enough prattle. One of the powerful driving forces of literary life, the masculine resilience of the intellectual will, has been extinguished.”
Franz Werfel: A Life in Prague, Vienna, and Hollywood Page 38
