Franz Werfel: A Life in Prague, Vienna, and Hollywood

by Peter Stephan Jungk

  [88] FW, “Autobiographische Skizze,” ZOU, p. 702.

  [89] Unpublished notebook, Hamburg, 1910, UCLA.

  [90] SL, pp. 43ff. Brod claims that his correspondence with Juncker “went back and forth for a long time” (p. 45), but it cannot have taken place this way, since it is obvious from FW’s letter to Juncker dated October, 24, 1910, that poet and publisher had already arrived at an agreement at this time. We cannot discount the possibility that FW and Juncker made an agreement entirely without Brod’s intervention.

  [91] FW to Axel Juncker, October 24, 1910.

  [92] The unpublished 1910 Hamburg notebook (UCLA) mentions, among others, the titles “Der neue Tenor,” “Eifersucht,” “Der Liebhaber aus Taktgefühl,” and “Seestadt.” (On “Seestadt,” see the description of contents in EzW, vol. 2, p. 391.)

  [93] See FW’s poem “Das interurbane Gespräch” in the collection Wir sind, DlW, p. 103.

  [94] See the quotation from FW’s 1910 Hamburg notebook in ZOU, p. 742. See also Adolf D. Klarmann, “Zu Werfels Besuch aus dem Elysium,” in Herder-Blätter, facsimile edition on the seventieth birthday of Willy Haas (Hamburg: Freie Akademie der Künste, 1962). I was referred to Klarmann’s text by Dr. František Kafka.

  [95] DD, vol. 2, pp. 11ff.

  [96] See Anton Kuh’s Prager Presse review of the premiere in Vienna, October 10, 1917.

  [97] FW, “Karl Kraus,” ZOU, pp. 340f. Annie Kalmar, a famous actress adored by Kraus, had a long career in the Viennese theater.

  [98] Ibid.

  [99] Unpublished letter from FW to Karl Kraus, Hamburg, May 17, 1911; manuscript collection of the Vienna Stadtbibliothek.

  [100] Unpublished letter from FW to Karl Kraus, May 23, 1911; manuscript collection of the Vienna Stadtbibliothek. Concerning Kraus’s first letter to FW, FW had already written to him from Hamburg on April 6, 1911: “Most esteemed sir, Herr Haas has been kind enough to send you some of my poems. You were good enough to make notes on these with a view to a change. Please forgive me for putting yet another demand on your kindness by sending you some other things instead of the previous ones, about which I was not too sure myself. It would make me happy if this selection would be accepted for Die Fackel. Finally, allow me, most esteemed sir, to assure you of my admiration and reverence. Yours gratefully, Werfel” (unpublished letter, Vienna Stadtbibliothek). FW’s romanticized description of the chain of events in his portrait “Karl Kraus” is a distortion, as Kraus’s first letter to FW was his reply to the April 6 letter.

  [101] This was a privilege of those who had graduated from a gymnasium; everyone else had to serve two to three years. The original of FW’s military record is in the Vojensky historicky ustav-Archiv, Prague; a copy is in the Kriegsarchiv, Vienna.

  [102] FW, “Autobiographische Skizze,” ZOU, p. 702. On the atmosphere of the barracks and FW’s volunteer year, see FW, “Die Stagione,” ZOU, pp. 821ff.

  [103] ADK notes. Among other things, the irredentists encouraged Czech soldiers to respond to roll call not with the German “Hier!” but with the Czech “Zdé!”

  [104] See Kurt Krolop, “Zur Geschichte und Vorgeschichte der Prager deutschen Literatur des ‘expressionistischen Jahrzehnts,’“ in Eduard Goldstücker, ed., Weltfreunde: Konferenz über die Prager deutsche Literatur (Prague: Academia, 1967), p. 47; see also SL, p. 36.

  [105] Franz Kafka’s diary entry for December 18, 1911, contains this unpublished passage: “Max came from Berlin yesterday — in the Berliner Tageblatt, some Fackel person called him selfless because he had read the ‘far more significant Werfel.’ Max had to delete this sentence when he took the review to the Prager Tagblatt for them to reprint.”

  [106] “Who renders the world so lovable in his song provides the misanthrope with a happy moment” (Die Fackel, vol. 13, nos. 339-40, pp. 47-51).

  [107] See, for example, Berthold Viertel’s review in Der Strom, the journal of the Vienna Volksbühne, August 1912: “When he is moved, he is not sentimental, his joy is infectious, his flights make you fly. Life becomes richer, more attractive, fanciful and at the same time more concrete through these poems; there is a light sort of magic in them, grace, a gentle humor that never allows them to become too mundane or too young.”

  [108] Kafka’s diary entry for December 18, 1911: “I hate Werfel, not because I envy him, but I envy him too. He is healthy, young, and rich; everything that I am not. Besides, gifted with a sense of music, he has done very good work early and easily, he has the happiest life behind him and before him, I work with weights I cannot get rid of, and I am entirely shut off from music” (Franz Kafka, Diaries: 1910-1913, ed. Max Brod, trans. Joseph Kresh [New York: Schocken Books, 1948], p. 182).

  [109] See Haas, p. 30.

  [110] See SL, pp. 26f.

  [111] DD, vol. 1, pp. 25ff. “Written in one maneuver day 1912.”

  [112] See Johannes Urzidil, “Der Weltfreund: Erinnerungen an Franz Werfel,” in the journal Das Silberboot: Zeitschrift für Literatur (Vienna), 1946, pp. 45ff.: “We loved the young Werfel as perhaps only few poets have been loved by their circle of friends. When he recited from his poems... we listened to every word with the greatest anticipation, we were in a trance. He was, in the classical sense, the bard of his poetry... He debated with enthusiasm, passion, and such powers of persuasion that one never knew how to contradict him in his presence. Responses and counterarguments came to mind later, but when one presented them to him, they just melted away.”

  [113] See EzW, vol. 3; in FW’s short story “Weissenstein, the World Improver” (“Weissenstein, der Weltverbesserer”), we read: “On what evening, in what season, did we not discuss Dostoyevsky? He was the patron saint of our generation.” The story, written in 1939, contains FW’s reminiscences of Prague in 1911.

  [114] I owe the description of the Café Arco in its present state to Dr. Kafka (FK letters) and to Christoph Tölg of Vienna.

  [115] See SL. On the story of Kurt Wolff’s relationship with FW and on the disputes between Wolff and Rowohlt, see Kurt Wolff, Autoren, Bücher, Abenteuer (Berlin: Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, 1969). It is apparent from ADK notes that it was Brod who took FW to Kurt Wolff; Wolff himself told Klarmann, “Max Brod brought Werfel to me.”

  [116] FW/Spirk.

  [117] Rudolf Werfel to Kurt Wolff, unpublished letter in KW Archive. See also Wolff, Autoren, Bücher, Abenteuer, op. cit.

  [118] On November 5, 1912, Rudolf Werfel wrote to Axel Juncker: “If I am not in receipt of the agreed sum of M 300 for the second edition by Wednesday noon, I will retain all proprietary rights in the second edition and enforce these in a manner I deem appropriate. You know very well that you do not have any right to a third edition; quite apart from the fact that no agreement exists between me, as the representative of my underage son, and yourself” (KW Archive).

  [119] I thank Helen Wolff, Kurt Wolff’s widow, for the description of FW in his Leipzig days. See also a radio talk by Kurt Wolff on Norddeutscher Rundfunk, May 19, 1962: “[FW] sailed down the streets, singing or humming Verdi arias, and did not notice that people turned to stare at him, holding their foreheads.”

  [120] See Kurt Pinthus, “Erinnerungen an Franz Werfel,” in Der Zeitgenosse: Literarische Portraits und Kritiken, Marbacher Schriften 4 (Marbach am Neckar: Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Schiller-Nationalmuseum, 1971), pp. 82-85. This volume was published on the occasion of Pinthus’s eighty-fifth birthday, on April 29, 1971.

  [121] ZOU, pp. 821ff.

  [122] Walter Hasenclever (1890-1940), Kurt Pinthus (1886-1975).

  [123] See Pinthus, “Erinnerungen an Franz Werfel,” op. cit.

  [124] The volumes of the Day of Judgment series cost 80 pfennigs.

  [125] ZOU, pp. 474f.

  [126] See Krolop, “Zur Geschichte und Vorgeschichte der Prager deutschen Literatur des ‘expressionistischen Jahrzehnts,’“ in Weltfreunde, op. cit., p. 79, n. 80.

  [127] See, for example, Kafka to Felice Bauer, December 12, 1912: “You know, Felice, Werfel is really miraculous; whe
n I read his book The Friend of the World for the first time (I had heard him recite poetry before that), I thought I was going off my head with enthusiasm. The man has tremendous ability... I have no idea how to end, since this strange young man has come between us” (Letters to Felice, ed. Erich Heller and Jürgen Born, trans. James Stern and Elisabeth Duckworth [New York: Schocken Books, 1973], p. 102). See also Kafka’s diary entry for December 23, 1911: “All yesterday morning my head was as if filled with mist from Werfel’s poems. For a moment I feared the enthusiasm would carry me along straight into nonsense” (Diaries: 1910-1913, op. cit., p. 188); and Kafka to Felice Bauer, February 1-2, 1913: “I spent the whole afternoon with Werfel, the evening with Max [Brod]... Werfel read to me some new poems; again they undoubtedly spring from a tremendous personality. Astonishing how this kind of poem, carrying its inherent end in its beginning, rises with a continuous, inner, flowing development — how one opens one’s eyes while lying doubled up on the sofa. And the young man has grown handsome and reads with such ferocity (to the monotony of which I actually have some objections)! He knows by heart everything he has ever written, and his passion seems to set fire to the heavy body, the great chest, the round cheeks; and when reading aloud he looks as if he were about to tear himself to pieces” (Letters to Felice, pp. 178-79).

  [128] FW, “Wenn die Russen tanzen, wenn Battistini singt,” ZOU, pp. 199f.

  [129] See Wolfgang Göbel, Der Kurt Wolff Verlag 1913-1930: Expressionismus als verlegerische Aufgabe, with a bibliography of Kurt Wolff Verlag and associated publishing houses, 1910-1930 (Frankfurt am Main: Buchhändler-Vereinigung, 1977), pp. 133, 253, 212.

  [130] See Wolff, Autoren, Bücher, Abenteuer, op. cit., pp. 77ff.

  [131] See BeV, p. 101.

  [132] FW to Georg Trakl, April 1913; in Wolfgang Schneditz, Georg Trakl in Zeugnissen der Freunde (Salzburg: Otto Müller Verlag, 1951), p. 52.

  [133] See the dissertation by Vincent Consentino, “Walt Whitman und die deutsche Literaturrevolution.”

  [134] ADK notes on a conversation with Kurt Wolff: “Here [i.e., in Malcesine] Werfel stayed with Hasenclever and wrote a large number of the Each Other [Einander] poems.”

  [135] FW/Spirk.

  [136] DlW, pp. 186ff.; the poem reflects the beautiful surroundings of Malcesine.

  [137] See Foltin, p. 29; on Werfel’s meeting with Rilke (1875-1926), see also FW, “Begegnungen mit Rilke,” ZOU, pp. 418ff. FW’s reply to Rilke is dated August 15, 1913 (M-W Coll.). On Rilke’s view of Werfel, see his essay “Über den jungen Dichter,” in Rainer Maria Rilke, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 11 (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1975), pp. 1046-55.

  [138] See Rilke’s letter to Hofmannsthal, October 22, 1913: “I was truly ready to simply embrace this young person; but I realized immediately that this was quite impossible... The Jew, the Jewboy, to be quite plain about it, wouldn’t have bothered me so much, but I must also have become aware of his clearly Jewish attitude to his work... in any case, an exceptional talent, firmly determined to create perfect things... only that there was, finally, this almost imperceptible alien quality to all of it, a smell as if of another species, something insurmountable” (Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Rainer Maria Rilke, Briefwechsel 1899-1925 [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1978], pp. 77f.).

  [139] Paul Claudel (1868-1955) spent some time in Prague as the consul-general of France.

  [140] See Rilke’s letter to Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, October 21, 1913: “At Hellerau and Dresden I saw a lot of Franz Werfel. It was sad, ‘a Jewboy’ [Judenbub], said Sidie Nádherný (who had come from Janowitz, quite startled), and she was not entirely wrong” (Rainer Maria Rilke and Marie von Thurn und Taxis, Briefwechsel, vol. 1 [Zurich: Niehaus und Rokitansky Verlag; Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1951], p. 323; original in French and German).

  [141] In her diary for September 14, 1913, Sidonie Nádherný wrote: “K.K. has gotten into my blood, he makes me suffer. He pursued my inmost being like none other, he understood, like none other. I won’t be able to do anything unless I forget him” (p. 49).

  [142] See Karl Kraus, Briefe an Sidonie Nádherný von Borutin 1913-1936, vol. 1 (Munich: Kösel Verlag, 1974), pp. 127f.

  [143] Ibid., pp. 154, 201.

  [144] Author, translator, publisher. Hegner (1882-1962) both translated and published Claudel’s Annunciation.

  [145] See FW’s letter to Rilke, end of February 1914: “I have translated the Euripides Hegner recommended to me in Hellerau. It is a tremendous piece of theater” (M-W Coll.).

  [146] DD, vol. 1, pp. 41ff.

  [147] Ibid., pp. 546ff.

  [148] See FW, “Erguss und Beichte,” ZOU, pp. 690ff.

  [149] Haas, pp. 38f.

  [150] See Haas; and see FW’s short story “Weissenstein, der Weltverbesserer” (written in the emigration period), EzW, vol. 3, pp. 59ff.

  [151] See Rudolf Werfel’s letter, Prague, April 2, 1914: “He [FW] holds you in much high regard that if you could transmit my wish that he get his doctorate in Leipzig, he would surely comply. In view of his successes as a poet and his talent, the completion of this task won’t be too difficult for him. In two years, when he has achieved his doctorate, he can... aspire to a professional position commensurate with his talent. His unfettered way of life makes me very anxious... a way of life that is bound to have a negative effect on his health in the long run. Since you have known him, you have demonstrated so much friendly interest in him that I feel I may ask you... to influence Franz — who is now in his twenty-fourth year and thus almost grown up — and encourage him to adopt a normal way of life and point out to him the value of a professional position for his future, when he may want to establish a family of his own. Any — even the smallest — success you may achieve in this direction will earn you not only the knowledge of having done a good deed for a not inconsiderable human being but also the warmest thanks of his anxious parents” (KW Archive).

  [152] FW to Karl Kraus, Prague, April 6, 1914 (manuscript collection of the Vienna Stadtbibliothek). See also Kraus, Briefe an Sidonie Nádherný von Borutin, op. cit., pp. 126f.

  [153] Kraus to Sidonie Nádherný, April 7, 1914: “Nothing but unpleasantness in Vienna. Today, this letter from Herr W. As we agreed, I gave him the cold shoulder in Prague, but I suppose that I have to answer it... Or should I let it go? I’m in favor of answering. Pleased with the opportunity ‘to forge the logical chain out of low deeds.’ That letter voices the indignation of a sponge to whom the suggestion has been made that it can’t hold water. Too disgusting!” (ibid., p. 27).

  [154] No. 398 (April 21, 1914), p. 19: “In Prague, where they’re all very talented, everyone has grown up with someone who writes poetry, and writes poetry himself, and the child virtuoso Werfel pollinates them all, so that poets are multiplying there like muskrats, growing lyric verses like these...” Kraus goes on to quote poems by Hans Gerke and Max Brod that he considers particularly disastrous.

  [155] See FW’s military records, original in the Vojensky historicky ustav-Archiv, Prague; copy in the Kriegsarchiv, Vienna.

  [156] DD, vol. 2, pp. 343ff.

  [157] Cf. ibid., pp. 378ff.; see also p. 514. In later years FW found this text “ideologically vague, lacking the highest degree of responsibility to itself, childish, random, well intentioned, and poorly thought out.” He indicated that it was never to be published.

  [158] FW to Kurt Wolff, January 12, 1915: “Now I have the firm and happy conviction that any book of mine is a matter that can only come about through your love and participation.” Elsewhere in the same letter: “Is it not at all possible for you to obtain some leave? Follow my example! I have been released, partly because I am considered a madman. The feeling you describe, of longing for the front — I know a variant of it. At first I suffered a great deal from such moral self-recriminations” (KW-Archive; published in Briefe des Expressionismus, op. cit., pp. 13f.).

  [159] See BeV, pp. xxviiiff.; on Meyer’s “distance” to FW’s works, see pp. 107f.

/>   [160] See Martin Buber, Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten, vol. 1, 1897-1918, (Heidelberg: Verlag Lambert Schneider, 1972), p. 361.

  [161] See Specht, Franz Werfel, op. cit., p. 45: “Werfel...joined... such strong heads and hearts as Martin Buber, Gustav Landauer [1870-1919], and Max Scheler [1874-1928] in a secret group against the militaristic grimace of power.” (It should be noted that Max Scheler had published, only a few months before this time, a book that glorified war: Der Genius des Krieges und der deutsche Krieg [Berlin: Der Neue Geist Verlag, 1914].) See the unpublished letter from Buber to FW, February 12, 1915: “At the last meeting we divided up and discussed our separate areas of study; Scheler will deal mainly with the psychological, I myself with the ethical, and Landauer with the organizational aspect of our subject. Our next and probably most important meeting will take place next Friday the 26th at a quarter past four at Landauer’s... Will you be able to come? We all agreed that your presence would be particularly desirable at this time” (M-W Coll.).

  [162] Unpublished letter from FW to G. H. Meyer, Bozen, April 19, 1915: “You have probably received my note from Vienna in which I told you that the Supreme Command of the army had sense enough to remove me from my responsibility-laden post to another where my nerves won’t be under so much strain. I hope you are sharing my gladness about this, even though you are a proud German male” (KW Archive). Possibly FW or his family was acquainted with a high-ranking officer in the Supreme Command; it is hard to explain FW’s transfer to Bozen otherwise.

  [163] See Kraus’s letter to Sidonie Nádherný, April 14, 1915: “... I was brusque last Sunday in a clash with the poet W, who suddenly accosted me in a restaurant. At last I was able to take care of this old business. I was left holding a sponge... All in all: pseudo-humanity, no better in contrition than in trespass. The case is a prime example of the need to protect oneself from the kind of talent that has mastered an entire register of beauty while being so ugly in itself” (Kraus, Briefe an Sidonie Nádherný von Borutin, op. cit., pp. 154f.). Kraus wrote this letter from Rome, but the incident described took place in Vienna.