Werfel, Franz

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Werfel, Franz

 

Born Sept. 10, 1890, in Prague; died Aug. 26, 1945, in Beverly Hills, California. Austrian writer.

Werfel studied at the German university in Prague. In the collections of versed Friend of the World (1912),We Exist (1913), and Judgment Day (1919) he exposed the horrors of war. A pioneer of expressionism in lyrics and drama, Werfel collaborated on the Berlin jounal Aktion. His plays Mirror Man (1920; Russian translation, 1922) and Paul Among the Jews (1927) and novels The Murdered Man Is Guilty (1920; Russian translation, 1924), The Class Reunion (1928), and The Star of the Unborn (1946) are characterized by ideas of abstract humanism with an inclination toward the mysticism of passive antimilitarism. His play Jacobowsky and the Colonel (1944) is antifascist.

WORKS

Gesammelte Werke [vols. 1-4]. Stockholm, 1948-56.
In Russian translation:
Smert’ meshchanina. Leningrad, 1927.
Verdi: Roman opery. Moscow, 1962.

REFERENCES

Puttkammer, A. von. Franz Werfel: Wort und Antwort. Würzburg [1952].
Turrian, M. Dostojewski} und Franz Werfel. Bern [1950].
Keller, E. Franz Werfel: Sein Bild des Menschen. Aarau, 1958.

S. D. KOMAROV

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.