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Emigration (1938 - 1945)
On 12 February 1938, Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg signed
the Berchtesgaden Agreement with Nazi Germany, which paved
the way for the end of Austria as an independent state. Alma
and Franz Werfel heard the news on the island of Capri, where
they had ended up during a trip to Italy lasting several weeks.
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Alma with her daughter Anna Mahler
in the villa on the Hohe Warte, 1933
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Alma and Franz Werfel in New York,
1935
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At the end of February 1938, Alma travelled incognito and
alone back to Vienna, where she closed all her bank accounts
and arranged for the money to be smuggled into Switzerland
by her long-time confidante, Ida Gebauer, known as "Schulli".
On 12 March, the date of Austria's Anschluss to the Greater
German Reich, she travelled with her daughter Anna who, being
half Jewish, was now in danger, via Prague and Budapest to
Milan, where Werfel was already waiting for her.
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Alma and Werfel, 1937
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Alma and Werfel 1933
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Alma in Santa Margherita
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The relationship between Franz Werfel and Alma Mahler-Werfel
had not yet been re-cemented; in her diary, Alma wrote of
"two people who, after 20 years together, speak two
different languages", and whose "racial difference"
could not be overcome. Nevertheless, the two settled in the
southern-French fishing village of Sanary-sur-Mer near Marseilles
where, until 1940, numerous emigrants such as Bertolt Brecht,
Ludwig Marcuse, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger
and Ernst Bloch occasionally spent time.
At this time, Alma Mahler-Werfel was considering divorce,
and put out feelers through the Reich Propaganda Office to
ascertain whether she would be welcome in Austria. The reason
why she however decided to follow her Jewish husband into
exile may lie in the fear which Alma had, aged now almost
60, of being alone
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Moulin Gris, Alma and Werfel's
refuge in Sanary-sur-Mer, 1938
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Alma (right) wearing a hat during
a cable-car ride in Lourdes, 1940
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When, in June 1940, the couple left Sanary-sur-Mer, the German
army had already occupied Paris. They did not have a visa
for the United States and had to wait at the pilgrimage centre
of Lourdes for five weeks in order to obtain permission to
travel to Marseilles. During this time, Werfel engaged himself
with the story of Saint Bernadette Soubirous and vowed to
write a novel about her if their flight to America succeeded.
Thus there arose "The Song of Bernadette", Werfel's
most successful novel, which was turned into an Oscar-winning
film in Hollywood in 1943.
In Marseilles, the Werfels finally met up with Heinrich,
Nelly and Golo Mann, with whom they crossed the Pyrenees on
foot in a trek which took many hours. American journalist
Varian Fry from the Emergency Rescue Committee organized the
secret crossing to Spain and onward travel to Madrid, with
Alma courageously heading up the group. "Franz would
simply have been left behind and perished without her,"
wrote Carl Zuckmayer later of her heroism.
>
Read the details of their eventful flight
From Madrid, the refugees went on by plane to Lisbon, and
from there with the "Nea Hellas" to freedom and
safety. On 13 October 1940, they arrived in New York:
"The landing in New York Harbour was as grandiose
an experience as ever. A mob of friends awaited us on the
pier; all of them were in tears, and so were we."
Exile in California
Alma and Werfel settled in Los Angeles, where numerous
German and Austrian emigrants, such as Thomas Mann, Max Reinhardt,
Alfred Döblin, Arnold Schönberg and Erich Wolfgang
Korngold lived; they were soon regular visitors to Alma's
house. Through these contacts, Alma's stay in California became
a pleasant one; her salon was soon flourishing once more as
in Vienna, and she enjoyed being at the centre of all intrigues.
A stir was caused by a dispute ignited by Alma between Arnold
Schönberg and Thomas Mann over intellectual property
rights to the novel "Dr Faustus".
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Alma with her butler August Hess,
Franz Werfel and their new car outside the house in
Los Tilos Road, 1941
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Alma and Franz Werfel in the garden
of their house in Los Angeles, 1941
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The couple's financial resources were sufficient to allow
them to settle in an elegant residential area above the city
at 6900 Los Tilos Road, and even to engage August Hess, who
worked simultaneously as valet, chauffeur and gardener. Werfel
worked industriously on the novel about Bernadette Soubirous.
This work - "The Song of Bernadette" - became a
US best-seller, and sold 400,000 copies within just a few
months. 20th Century Fox acquired the film rights. Reviews
appeared in numerous American daily newspapers, and radio
interviews with Werfel were broadcast throughout the country.
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Alma and Werfel in front of their
house in Los Tilos Road, 1941
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Alma and Werfel on the set of "Midnight"
(1939), with Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche (Director:
Mitchel Leisen)
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Werfel's secretary Albrecht Joseph, later to be Anna Mahler's
husband, reported a characteristic experience from this period:
"One morning when I came to The Outpost for our day's
work on “Bernadette” I was plunged into just such
a situation. The quarrel was about the news, which were, as
usual, pretty bad. Alma took the position that it could not
be otherwise since the Allies - America was not in the war
yet - were weaklings and degenerate, the Germans, including
Hitler, supermen. Werfel did not let this nonsense pass but
Alma would not yield. The pointless quarrel went on for about
ten minutes, then Werfel clapped me on the shoulder and said:
“Let's go downstairs and work.” In the middle of
the narrow winding staircase, the chicken ladder, he stopped,
turned around to me and said, with a tinge of real sorrow:
“What is one to do with a woman like that?” It sounds
rather good-natured but there was not a trace of humour in
his voice. He was desperate. I tried some feeble explanation.
He shook his head: 'One just has to remember that she is an
old woman.' "
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Alma with Thomas
Mann and Eugene Ormandy after a performance of Mahler's
8th Symphony at the Hollywood Bowl in July 1948
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The house at 610 Bedford Drive,
Beverly Hills, where Alma and Werfel moved in September
1942
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The improvement in the couple's financial circumstances resulting
from Werfel's success as a novelist enabled them to buy a
more comfortable villa in Beverly Hills, at 610 Bedford Drive,
where the conductor Bruno Walter would later become their
neighbour. Werfel often retreated to Santa Barbara to work,
a geographical separation which enabled the couple to retain
common ground despite the massive differences between them,
and to keep the relationship stable over 25 years.
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Alma with Igor Stravinsky in Los Angeles,
1946
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Alma with her godchild, Erika, daughter
of Walter Slezak, 1945
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Alma with Franz Werfel on a film set
in Hollywood, 1943
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Not far from the new villa lived not only Friedrich Torberg,
but also the actor Ernst Deutsch, a friend of Werfel's from
his youth, the composer Arnold Schönberg and his wife,
and Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife. Author Erich Maria Remarque
became Alma's drinking companion; after the first time they
partied through the night, he gave her a bottle of Russian
vodka hidden in a huge bunch of flowers.
During the night of 13 September 1943, Franz Werfel suffered
a massive heart attack, from which he only gradually recovered
during the first half of 1944. In the summer of 1945 he was
just completing his utopian novel "Star of the Unborn"
when his state of health dramatically worsened. On 26 August
1945, he suffered a further, fatal heart attack.
Alma herself did not attend the funeral. Father Georg Moenius
gave the eulogy; in his address he went into the baptism rites
of the Catholic church in great detail, which led to speculation
that Alma had arranged for Werfel to have a last minute "emergency
baptism" after his death.
Franz Werfel left behind on the one hand an extensive body
of work, which Alma now embarked on organizing, and on the
other hand a "Grande Veuve", who increasingly tried
to overcome her loneliness with the help of her favourite
cognac, Bénédictine.
> next: La
Grande Veuve (1945 - 1964)
< back: Heaven
and hell (1911 - 1917)
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