LIFE TORN BY HISTORY, A: Franz Werfel, 1890-1945

By Peter Stephan Jungk

The life of Franz Werfel is the story of cultural epochs: Kafka's Prague, 1920s Vienna, the Nazi terror, Hollywood in the 1940s. It is also a story of a genius dissipated by the need for money, by sentimentality, and by the love for a glittering but difficult woman. Franz Werfel is today best known for two things: he was Alma Mahler's third and last husband, and he was the author of Song of Bernadette, the story of the vision at Lourdes which was a huge bestseller and became a classic film. 

Weidenfeld and Nicolson (1990)