Franz Verfel biography

He was born in the year in Prague in the family of the manufacturer. The population of Prague at the end of the last century was about half a million people and for thirty thousand of its inhabitants the German language was native. The father of Verfel wanted the only son in the family to be two more daughters to become a successor to his business. Disagreements between the father and son were discovered early.

Verfel almost did not remember his family, about childhood, adhering to the principle of one with Giuseppe Verdi: “Wash the traces of his life.” Nevertheless, some of his works shed light on the atmosphere that prevailed in the father of the shipyard. In the parental houses described by him, emptiness, recklessness, cruelty “not a killer, but the murdered is to blame”, “a man from a mirror”, “for each other” reign; With love, he spoke only about his nanny Babi.

According to the biographer of Verfel, Richard Specht, already in early youth he painted his father's accounting papers with poems. The contemporary of the shipyard, the writer Max Brod described him: “The blond, he knew all his poems by heart, read them without hesitation, in memory, incendiary, then loudly, then jubilantly, but always in a voice, rich modulations. I was humble.

I have never heard this. " I always loved Franz Verfel, admired him as a lyric, often inspired, and highly appreciated his invariably interesting prose. ” The favorite place of the shipyard in Prague was the Argo cafe, where he and his friends spent long hours in conversations and disputes. Prague, located at the turn of the West and East, was influenced by two worlds. With tender love and quiet longing, Verfel recalls in his works this ancient city, the country of Bohemia.

Aufzeichnen and Erinnerungen Der Zeitgenossen S. Dichtung U. Wupperfal, he is trying to make up for his education. Studies at universities in Prague, Leipzig, Hamburg. In the year, serving military service in the Austrian army, he was arrested for sharp performances against the militarism that reigned in the country. To this time, his acquaintance with Kurt Wolf, the publisher of writers, representing a new literary and artistic direction, is expressionism.

He set up a shipyle to work in his publishing house and helped him become financially independent. Their friendship lasted until the last days of the writer's life. Dreaming of the revival of mankind in the close unity of the spiritual beginning of the East with the material beginning of the West, the expressionists believed that "the inferiority of a man of the West should be replenished with self -deepening man of the East." Verfel pulled to Wolf and into the circle of expressionists of his friends, novice writers - Willy Haas and Walter Hazencleire.

Thus, the core of the opposition -minded bourgeois world of artistic intelligentsia was formed. Verfel begins his work with poetry - a peculiar diary of the author. The first collection of poems “Friend of the World” was published in the city of Verfel, a soldier of the First World War, later - a witness to the fall of the Gabsburg monarchy. Upon returning from the front of the year in Vienna, he meets Alma Maler, the daughter of the famous Austro-Hungarian artist Emil Shintler, who became the wife of the composer Gustav Malera, the largest representative of expressionism in music.

The glory of the father and husband, her remarkable mind and beauty contributed to the fact that the most interesting people of time willingly visited the salon of Alma Maler. Among them was a shipyard. Music is firmly included in the circle of his spiritual interests. In the same years, another Viennese composer Richard Strauss became one of his friends. A typical theme of the work of playwrights and composers of the post -war decade is a fear of all -destructive forces.

Images of devastation, violence, death, a gigantic fight with the forces of reaction dominate in the works of expression musicians. The influence of modern composers on shipyards - as the researchers of his work write is no doubt. However, the writer also had a strong influence on them. It is no accident that he took a large place for the musical accompaniment of his dramas.

He wrote: “If it were possible, I would compose operas, the text of which would be exclamations of glee, sighs, groans of pain, sounds of joy and cries of revenge. Why verbose sentences that no one understands when the music carries them. Musical speech has a different logic that is different from the logic of words. ” In the postwar years, evolution is also in the political views of the shipyard.

He participates in the revolutionary events of the year, becomes one of the creators of the antimilitarian secret union and, with the help of Egon, Erwin Kish, joins Marxist ideas. Friends of the writer, and among them Franz Kafka, considered the shipyard the prophet of their generation - generation of expressionists. But, as Thomas Mann wrote, "he was too richly gifted and too big a person to connect himself to the framework of one school, and went far beyond expressionism." Here for the first time the plan of the novel “Forty days of Musa-Dag” was born.

After Syria, Verfel visited Palestine and Egypt. In the year, Verfel marries the widowed Alma Mahler.The house of the spouses Verfel becomes a meeting place for famous musicians, artists, writers, playwrights and poets. The threat of impending fascist terror was alarming in the hearts of advanced people not only in Europe, but also of America. Ernest Hemingway, when reprinting the collection “In our time”, includes the story “In the port of Smirna” in it.

Anxiety for the fate of mankind is imbued with this work. What just did not swim in her waters. For the first time in my life, I got to the fact that I dreamed about at night. Giving birth to women - it was not as scary as women with dead children could not persuade women to give their dead children. Sometimes they held them in their arms for six days, for no reason they gave the Nazis to the Austria to the Austria to go to Rome; For some time they lived on the island of Capri.

After Capri was France. On the French Riviera, long -standing friends met - Haas, Khazenklever, Verfel - all three exiles of the homeland. Meet to part forever. Verfel and Khazenklever went to accompany Haas to the station. Haas says about this: “ - How much money do you have? Verfel quickly hugged me, shook his hand. I felt something rustling in my hand.

It was a thousand -puff piece of paper, for that time a solid amount. ” In this small episode, a shipyard is revealed - a man and a friend. Seeing a comrade, he only thought about him, forgetting that he also had to continue the unknown, distant path of exile. For two years, a shipyard and wife lived in Paris. Here he joined the International Association of Writers in Protection of Culture.

On one of Hitler’s performances in the year, Verfel responded with a sharp political pamphlet. In the poem “A good place in Vienna”, exposing injustice and evil, the writer calls for nature to allies. The fascist terror is described by him in the Prague Ballad. This is a poem in the same way as the “city of dreams of an emigrant”, permeated with a feeling of a nimble longing for the homeland.

Verfel stigmatizes the shame of the Nazi thugs, exposes the aggressive policy of German militarism. Of great interest is his performance on the pages of the newspaper “CE Soir”, in which he warns the people of France about the impending threat of fascist occupation: “Hitler wants to press the life of the world with his hand in order to carry out the alpha and omega of his program: to avenge France, destroy France and, triumph, repay the French mind.

When Bohemia is torn to pieces, and the Czechoslovak people are turned into slavery, then the realization of its fantastic dream will turn out to be a matter of short time. The first two steps to this goal-the occupation of the Rhine region and the annexation of Austria-National Socialism managed to commit without receiving any rebuff. Moreover, the shameless player had no trump cowards, except for the cowardice of other countries.

” It is known that the best encouragement for new crimes is arrogance and impunity. The prophecies of the shipyard came true. In the year, Paris capitulated. The writer and his wife are now hiding in Western France - the city of Lourda, to which he devotes the novel "The Song of Bernadetta." From here they go to the United States of America. Beauverli Hills-a town in California-was the last refuge of Franz Verfel.

Thomas Mann received a letter from a shipyard, dictated by him during an illness, and possibly in anticipation of death. In a letter, Verfel called "Buddenbrooki" "an immortal masterpiece." His message deeply excited Thomas Mann, for he considered Verfel "an artist to the brain of bones." Longing for the homeland shines in all works of the shipyard of the period of emigration.

Again, I come to an unfamiliar city, and everywhere - a stranger, ”he wrote. The writer never had a chance to return to his homeland! .. In the evening of the year of August, in his office, having looked at the proof of the last edition of poems, the shipyard fell in the way from the desk to the door. The heart could not stand it! This was the destiny of many representatives of emigration.

Panicida took place on August 29 in the chapel of the town of Biverley Hills.