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Alma's relation to Judaism
Paulus Manker
Talking about Alma and her husbands Mahler and Werfel, we
have to talk about her Alma's relation to Judaism.
Joshua Sobol
Alma didn´t seem to be a great lover of Jews in general.
She was not a admirer of Jews, but she said once that she
could not live without, and she could not imagine her life
without Jews, that both, Mahler and Werfel, ment a lot to
her, and probably because they were Jewish. That played an
important part.
The funny thing is that Alma picked those two great persons
who were physically very non-attractive. On the other hand
with Gropius, who was very attractive, she did not seem to
develop a very deep relationship. It was shallow, it was short,
short lived, and somehow he bored her. That was my impression
when I read what she had to say about Gropius, the way she
dismissed him. It is very interesting to see that Alma speaks
with such great enthusiasm about his physical beauty, and
then she just dismisses him, and takes that unenchanting person
- physically speaking - of Werfel, who was a spoiled child,
and had this tendency to grow fat, and became very, very heavy
later.
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left: Gustav Mahler
center: Franz Werfel
right: Alma Mahler-Werfel |
What attracted her to Jews? I am speculating here, but I
think that she felt that the Jewish spirit at that moment
in history was probably very much alive, and very much at
the front line of artistic expression. It had to do with the
fact that Jews were freshly emancipated, that Jewish young
artists or writers were given the freedom to join the European
society in the German cultural circle, to join German society
only a few decades earlier. And the urge to join, and to cut
a place for themselves in that culture made them extremely
creative.
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left: Alma and Franz Werfel
right: Alma with Franz Werfel in Palestine, 1930 |
I think it has also to do with the fact that the Jews were
beween two cultures or sometimes between three cultures, like
Mahler was. Mahler was born in Bohemia, he grew up in the
German culture in Vienna, he was neither Bohemian, he was
nor Viennese, nor German, he was a Bohemian Jew. And the fact
that he grew up on the crossing borders between these three
cultures, fertilized him very much. We hear it in his music,
Leonhard Bernstein made great efforts to prove that Mahler´s
music is full with Jewish motives, and he interpreted almost
everything in Mahler´s music as a transformation of
Jewish themes. There is obviously a very strong influence
of Jewish themes in Mahler´s music. But there ist also
a very strong influence of Wagner on his music, there is a
very strong influence of the German tradition on Mahler. And
Werfel also came from a Jewish family, and grew up on the
borderland between Judaism and Christianity. He was flirting
with the idea of converting to Christianity. On the other
hand when he went to Palastine with Alma, this contact with
the new Jewish life in Palestine, the renewal of Jewish existence
there, shattered him, and he decided to learn Hebrew. That
influenced him in a very strong way: he decided not to convert
to Christianity, but he played with the idea to bring together
modern Judiasm and Christianity. Alma felt that these Jewish
artists and writers at that moment in history were extremely
meaningful to the history of art and literature. This was
one of the things that attracted her to them, or made them
attractive to her. Alma was interested in that front line
of what was taking place in art. This was one of the reasons
that she was choosing and picking out those Jews.
< Mother
figure or femme fatale?
> Love at first sight: Alma's men
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