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Love at first sight: Alma's men
Paulus Manker
Alma was able to scrutinize ambition and creativity, and to
pick up geniuses even before the men themselves knew that
they were capable of being a world famous author as Werfel,
for instance, was. Or when she met Gropius he was nothing
at all, and Kokoschka was a wild, furios guy, but not even
accepted by his collegues in Vienna. And Mahler was accepted
and famous as a conductor, and as the director of the Royal
opera house, but not yet as a composer.
Joshua Sobol
When she met Werfel he was an inspiring poet. People like
Karl Kraus believed at that time, that he was going to be
the most important German modern poet. But he was making his
first steps at that time, he was not yet an established author,
not at all. The interesting thing is that Alma probably made
of Werfel an author of novels, and later a playwright, and
a filmscriptwriter. I think that she pushed him in that direction,
because she felt that a novel is going to be or is already
the expression of our time, more than lyric poetry.
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It is interesting that Alma fell in love probably on first
sight with people. She didn´t have to make a very long
and deep acquaintance with someone in order to realize that
a person was potentially a great artist like Kokoschka. We know
that there was a meeting between them, and on that evening when
they met, there was the "click", and it happened between
the two of them. And he could not take his eyes of her, and
she already was also fixed on him. And probably the next day
or the next two or three days they were already making love,
and became lovers to one another. It did not take more than
two or three days. It´s obvious that at that moment she
couldn´t resist, although she did not know much about
Kokoschka. But she had this flair, she felt that here is one
of the "monsters". The same thing happened to her
when she saw Gropius probably. Again the feeling that this is
one of the "monsters" of our time, and the same thing
with Werfel. With Mahler it´s obvious. But he was already
established when she met him. So she could not ignore him.
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