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| | | Walter Gropius (1883-1969)
architect & Alma´s husband no.2 Listen to Walter Gropius' voice:
Statement on the "Bauhaus" movement (0,3 MB)
In 1910, during time spent in the spa resort of Tobelbad with her second daughter Anna, Alma became acquainted with the young German architect Walter Gropius. After eight years of marriage with Gustav Mahler, characterized by privation and austerity, Alma´s pent-up longing to be taken seriously as a woman now exploded within her. The two became utterly absorbed in unbridled nights of love. After she had departed, Gropius committed an unbelievable blunder; he wrote Alma a passionate love letter which he mistakenly addressed to Gustav Mahler. Although, in the confrontation that inevitably followed, Mahler defeated his rival, the price he paid was the loss of his virility, of which it was Sigmund Freud´s task to cure him in a short session of analysis.
| |  | | Walter Gropius as a soldier | | |
Following Mahler´s death in 1911, a four-year separation ensued between Alma and Gropius when the latter learnt that Alma had given herself to Mahler as he lay dying, at a time when Gropius supposed her already to be his. But it was Alma´s separation from her amour fou, Oskar Kokoschka, which brought reconciliation in Berlin, in 1915. This led to Alma´s marriage to Gropius, from which their beautiful daughter Manon was born. 1919, following a dramatic premature labour, Alma gave birth to little Martin, of whom paternity was however claimed by her then lover Franz Werfel. Finally, in 1920, Gropius agreed to a divorce and withdrew from Alma´s life. | |
