Franz Viktor Werfel ( German: [fʁant͡s ˈvɛʁfl̩] ; 10 September 1890 – 26 August 1945) was an Austrian - Bohemian novelist , playwright , and poet whose career spanned World War I , the Interwar period , and World War II . He is primarily known as the author of The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1933, English tr. 1934, 2012), a novel based on events that took place during the Armenian genocide of 1915, and The Song of Bernadette (1941), a novel about the life and visions of the French Catholic saint Bernadette Soubirous , which was made into a Hollywood film of the same name .
40-630: Kisch is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: Egon Kisch (1885–1948), Austrian and Czechoslovak writer and journalist Enoch Heinrich Kisch (1841–1918), Austrian balneologist and gynecologist Frederick Kisch (1888–1943), British Army officer and Zionist leader Royalton Kisch (1920–1995), British conductor See also [ edit ] Kisch, Illinois , an unincorporated community in Cass County, Illinois, United States [REDACTED] Surname list This page lists people with
80-738: A crowd of 18,000 in the Sydney Domain warning of the dangers of Hitler's Nazi regime, of another war and of concentration camps . In 1937 and 1938, Kisch was in Spain, where left-wingers from across the world had been drawn by the Spanish Civil War . He travelled across the country, speaking in the Republican cause, and his reports from the front line were widely published. Following the Munich Agreement of 1938 and
120-565: A real person to an anecdotal one, a late book to an earlier, the one you see to you yourself; but I am not putting a value on a poet, only recognizing that he is one—and the way he is one. In the summer of 1917, Werfel left the frontline for the Military Press Bureau in Vienna, where he joined other notable Austrian writers serving as propagandists, among them Robert Musil , Rilke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal , and Franz Blei . Through
160-629: A reporter should remain impartial, Kisch came to feel that it was necessary for a writer to engage politically with what he was reporting on. On 28 February 1933, the day after the Reichstag fire , Kisch was one of many prominent opponents of Nazism to be arrested. He was briefly imprisoned in Spandau Prison , but as a Czechoslovak citizen, was expelled from Germany. His works were banned and burnt in Germany, but he continued to write for
200-471: A sequence of poems from Werfel's wartime manuscript, Der Gerichtstag (Judgment Day, published in 1919) in his monthly journal, Der Jude ( The Jew ). and wrote of Werfel in his prefatory remark: Since I was first moved by his poems, I have opened (knowing well, I should say, it's a problem) the gates of my invisible garden [i.e., an imaginarium ] to him, and now he can do nothing for all eternity that would bring me to banish him from it. Compare, if you will,
240-596: A transit visa moved on to Mexico in October 1940. He remained in Mexico for the next five years, one of a circle of European communist refugees, notable among them Anna Seghers and Ludwig Renn and the German-Czech writer Lenka Reinerová . He continued to write, producing a book on Mexico and a memoir, Marktplatz der Sensationen ( Sensation Fair ) (1941). In this period of exile, Kisch's work regularly returned to
280-486: A weekly column of Kisch's essays. “Prague Forays” ran for more than a year and, along with several books containing reprinted and original material, made Kisch a local celebrity. These feuilletons, which consisted of he called "little novels" about the city, were characterised by an interest in prisons, work houses, and the lives of the poor of Prague. His style was inspired by Jan Neruda , Émile Zola and Charles Dickens 's Sketches by Boz . Before World War I, he uncovered
320-821: Is a minor character in Frank Hardy 's Power Without Glory (1950), which was filmed for television in (1976), and plays a central, if fictionalised, role in Nicholas Hasluck 's Our Man K (1999). He appears in Sulari Gentill 's detective novel Paving the New Road (2012) along with other real persons such as Nancy Wake and Unity Mitford . English titles are given where the work has been translated into English. All dates refer to earliest publication. Franz Werfel Born in Prague (then part of
360-558: Is different from Wikidata All set index articles Egon Kisch Egon Erwin Kisch (29 April 1885 – 31 March 1948) was an Austro-Hungarian and Czechoslovak writer and journalist, who wrote in German. He styled himself Der Rasende Reporter (The Racing Reporter) for his countless travels to the far corners of the globe and his equally numerous articles produced in a relatively short time ( Hetzjagd durch die Zeit , 1925), Kisch
400-675: The Austro-Hungarian Empire ), now the capital of the Czech Republic, Werfel was the first of three children of a wealthy manufacturer of gloves and leather goods, Rudolf Werfel. His mother, Albine Kussi, was the daughter of a mill owner. His two sisters were Hanna (born 1896) and Marianne Amalie (born 1899). His family was Jewish . As a child, Werfel was raised by his Czech Catholic governess, Barbara Šimůnková, who often took him to mass in Prague's main cathedral. Like
440-665: The Comintern run by communist propagandist Willi Münzenberg . In 1928 Kisch was one of the founders of the Association of Proletarian-Revolutionary Authors . Through the late twenties and early thirties, Kisch wrote a series of books chronicling his journeys to the Russian SFSR , the U.S.A., Soviet Central Asia and China. These later works are more strongly informed by Kisch's communist politics. Whereas in his earlier collections of reportage he had explicitly stated that
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#1732765737160480-644: The Czech and émigré German press, bearing witness to the horrors of the Nazi takeover. In the years between the Machtergreifung and the outbreak of World War II, Kisch continued to travel widely to report and to speak publicly in the anti-fascist cause. Following the Reichstag Fire Trial organised by the Nazi government to lay the blame for the fire on Communist opponents, a counter-trial
520-845: The Vinohrady Cemetery , Prague, Czech Republic. After his death, Kisch's life and work were held up as exemplary in the GDR . The attitude to both in West Germany was more complicated due to his communism. Nonetheless, when Stern magazine founded a prestigious award for German journalism in 1977, it was named the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize in his honour. Kisch's work as a writer and communist journalist inspired Australian left wing intellectuals and writers such as Katharine Susannah Prichard , E. J. Brady , Vance and Nettie Palmer and Louis Esson . This group formed
560-656: The potentially monotheistic religion of Akhenaton ) to occult allusions (Werfel had participated in séances with his friends Brod and Kafka ) and incorporate a parable from the Baháʼí Faith in the poem "Jesus and the Carrion Path". His bias for Christian subjects, as well as his antipathy for Zionism , eventually alienated many of his Jewish friends and readers, including early champions such as Karl Kraus . Others, however, stood by him, including Martin Buber, who published
600-406: The surname Kisch . If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name (s) to the link. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kisch&oldid=705767859 " Category : Surnames Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description
640-671: The 1958 film Me and the Colonel starring Danny Kaye ; Giselher Klebe 's opera Jacobowsky und der Oberst (1965) is also based on this play. Before his death, he completed the first draft of his last novel Star of the Unborn ( Stern der Ungeborenen ), which was published posthumously in 1946. Franz Werfel died of heart failure in Los Angeles in 1945 and was interred there in the Rosedale Cemetery . However, his body
680-684: The Armenian and the later Jewish genocide , condemned "America's Armenian Jews for promoting in the U.S.A. the sale of Werfel's book". Werfel was forced to leave the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1933. His books were burned by the Nazis. Werfel left Austria after the Anschluss in 1938 and went to France, where they lived in a fishing village near Marseille. Visitors to their home at this time included Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann . After
720-634: The Armenian refugee community in Jerusalem, inspired his novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh which drew world attention to the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman government . Werfel lectured on this subject across Germany. The Nazi newspaper Das Schwarze Korps denounced him as a propagandist of "alleged Turkish horrors perpetrated against the Armenians". The same newspaper, suggesting a link between
760-611: The Captain on the grounds that he was illegally detaining Kisch. Justice H. V. Evatt ordered that Kisch be released. Under the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 , visitors could be refused entry if they failed a dictation test in any European language. As soon as Kisch was released, he was re-arrested and was one of the very few Europeans to be given the test; he was tested in Scottish Gaelic because it
800-748: The Catholic orders that staffed the shrine. He vowed to write about the experience and, safe in the United States, he published The Song of Bernadette in 1941. Fry and Unitarian Waitstill Sharp organized a secret crossing over the Pyrenees on foot. Assisted by Justus Rosenberg , they went to Madrid and then traveled on to Portugal. They stayed in Monte Estoril, at the Grande Hotel D'Itália, between 8 September and 4 October 1940. On
840-599: The German invasion and occupation of France during World War II, and the deportation of French Jews to the Nazi concentration camps , Werfel had to flee again. With the assistance of Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee in Marseille , he and his wife narrowly escaped the Nazi regime, finding shelter for five weeks in the pilgrimage town of Lourdes . He also received much help and kindness from
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#1732765737160880-779: The children of other progressive German-speaking Jews in Prague, Werfel was educated at a Catholic school run by the Piarists , a teaching order that allowed for a rabbi to instruct Jewish students for their Bar Mitzvahs . This, along with his governess's influence, gave Werfel an early interest (and expertise) in Catholicism , which soon branched out to other faiths, including Theosophy and Islam , such that his fiction, as well as his nonfiction, provides some insight into comparative religion . Werfel began writing at an early age and, by 1911, had published his first book of poems, Der Weltfreund , which can be translated as "the friend to
920-723: The development of Werfel's career and influenced it in such a way that he became an accomplished playwright and novelist as well as poet. They married on 6 July 1929. In April 1924, Verdi – Roman der Oper (Novel of the Opera) was published by Zsolnay Verlag, establishing Werfel's reputation as a novelist. In 1926, Werfel was awarded the Grillparzer Prize by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and in Berlin, Max Reinhardt performed his play Juarez and Maximilian (depicting
960-576: The events of this period and Kisch was the inspiration for one of the novel's characters. Although the revolution failed, in 1919 Kisch became a member of the Austrian Communist Party and remained a Communist for the rest of his life. Between 1921 and 1930 Kisch, though a citizen of Czechoslovakia , lived primarily in Berlin, where his work found a new and appreciative audience. In books of collected journalism such as Der rasende Reporter ( The Whirling Reporter ) (1924), he cultivated
1000-701: The first decades of the twentieth century. With the outbreak of World War I, Werfel served in the Austro-Hungarian Army on the Russian front as a telephone operator. His duties both exposed him to the vicissitudes of total war as well as provided him with enough of a haven to continue writing Expressionist poems, ambitious plays, and letters voluminously. His eclectic mix of humanism , confessionalism , autobiography, as well as mythology and religiosity developed further during this time. His poems and plays ranged from scenes of ancient Egypt (notably
1040-603: The front that criticised the Austrian military's conduct of the war, but nonetheless later served in the army's press quarters along with fellow writers Franz Werfel and Robert Musil . The war radicalised Kisch. He deserted in October 1918 as the war came to an end and played a leading role in the abortive left-wing revolution in Vienna in November of that year. Werfel's novel Barbara oder die Frömmigkeit (1929) portrays
1080-552: The image of a witty, gritty, daring reporter always on the move, a cigarette clamped doggedly between his lips. His work and his public persona found an echo in the artistic movement of Neue Sachlichkeit , a major strand in the culture of the Weimar Republic . From 1925 onwards Kisch was a speaker and operative of the communist international and a senior figure in the publishing empire of the West European branch of
1120-661: The latter, Werfel met and fell in love with Alma Mahler , widow of Gustav Mahler , the former lover of the painter Oskar Kokoschka , and the wife of the architect Walter Gropius , then serving in the Imperial German Army on the Western Front. Alma, who was also a composer, had already set one of Werfel's poems to music, despite Werfel's being much younger, shorter, and having Jewish features that she, being both anti-Semitic and attracted to Jewish men, initially found distasteful. Their love affair culminated in
1160-536: The nucleus of what later became the Writers League, drawing on the example of Egon Kisch’s own journalistic dedication to reportage. Kisch has appeared as a character in novels by Australian authors. Without naming him, his visit to Australia, the leap from the ship and the court case challenging the validity of the language test are mentioned in Kylie Tennant 's Ride on Stranger (novel) (1943). He
1200-527: The premature birth of a son, Martin, in August 1918. Martin, who was given the surname of Gropius, died in May of the following year. Despite attempts to save his marriage to Alma, with whom he had a young daughter, Manon , Gropius reluctantly agreed to a divorce in 1920. Ironically, Alma refused to marry Werfel for the next nine years. However, Alma, more so than with her first two husbands and lovers, lent herself to
1240-404: The same day they checked out, they boarded the S.S. Nea Hellas headed for New York City, arriving on 13 October. Werfel and his family settled in Los Angeles, where they met other German and Austrian emigrants, such as Mann, Reinhardt, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold . In southern California, Werfel wrote his final play, Jacobowsky and the Colonel ( Jacobowsky und der Oberst ) which was made into
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1280-648: The ship Strathaird at Fremantle and Melbourne because of his previous exclusion from the UK. Kisch then took matters into his own hands. He jumped five metres from the deck of his ship onto the quayside at Melbourne , breaking his leg in the process. He was bundled back on board but this dramatic action mobilised the Australian left in support of Kisch. When the Strathaird docked in Sydney, proceedings were taken against
1320-606: The spy scandal involving Alfred Redl , which he published anonymously at the time. At the outbreak of World War I, Kisch was called up for military service and became a corporal in the Austrian army. He fought on the front line in Serbia and the Carpathians and his wartime experiences were later recorded in Schreib das auf, Kisch! ( Write That Down, Kisch! ) (1929). He was briefly imprisoned in 1916 for publishing reports from
1360-557: The struggle in 1860's Mexico between the Republican leader Benito Juárez and the French-backed Emperor Maximilian ). By the end of the decade, Werfel had become one of the most important and established writers in German and Austrian literature and had already merited one full-length critical biography. Werfel's journey (with his wife Alma) in 1930, to British-ruled Palestine, and his encounter with
1400-469: The subsequent Nazi occupation of Bohemia six months later, Kisch was unable to return to the country of his birth. Once war broke out, Paris, which he had made his main home since 1933, also became too dangerous for an outspoken Jewish communist whose native land no longer existed. In late 1939, Kisch and his wife Gisela sailed for New York where, once again, he was initially denied entry. He eventually landed at Ellis Island on 28 December, but as he only had
1440-510: The themes of his Prague home and his Jewish roots and in March 1946 (after troubles in securing a Czechoslovak visa) he was able to return to his birthplace. Immediately after the return he started to travel around the country and work as a journalist again. Kisch died of a stroke two years after his return to Prague, shortly after the Communist party seized complete power. Kisch is buried in
1480-793: The world" as well as philanthropist, humanitarian, and the like. By this time, Werfel had befriended other German Jewish writers who frequented Prague's Café Arco [ de ; cs ] , chief among them Max Brod and Franz Kafka , and his poetry was praised by such critics as Karl Kraus , who published Werfel's early poems in Kraus's journal, Die Fackel (The Torch). In 1912, Werfel moved to Leipzig, where he became an editor for Kurt Wolff 's new publishing firm, where Werfel championed and edited Georg Trakl 's first book of poetry. While he lived in Germany, Werfel's milieu grew to include Else Lasker-Schüler , Martin Buber , Rainer Maria Rilke , among other German-language writers, poets, and intellectuals in
1520-411: Was noted for his development of literary reportage , his opposition to Adolf Hitler 's Nazi regime , and his Communism . Kisch was born into a wealthy German-speaking Sephardi Jewish family in Prague , at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire , and began his journalistic career as a reporter for Bohemia , a Prague German-language newspaper, in 1906. In 1910, Bohemia began publishing
1560-813: Was organized in 1933 in London by a group of lawyers, democrats and other anti-Nazi groups under the aegis of German Communist émigrés. Kisch was to be a witness at the counter trial but was refused leave to land in the United Kingdom because of his "known subversive activities". Kisch's visit to Australia as a delegate to the All-Australian Congress Against War and Fascism in 1934 was later chronicled in his book Landung in Australien ( Australian Landfall ) (1937). The right-wing Australian government refused Kisch entry from
1600-552: Was thought he might pass if tested in other European languages. The officer who tested him had grown up in northern Scotland but did not have a particularly good grasp of Scottish Gaelic himself. In the High Court case of R v Wilson; ex parte Kisch , the court found that Scottish Gaelic was not within the fair meaning of the Act, and overturned Kisch's convictions for being an illegal immigrant. On 17 February 1935, Kisch addressed
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