Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel

Starting point is 00:00:00 In the movie Forrest Gump, one man finds himself at the center of historical events, encountering famous people over the course of decades. While Forrest Gump was fictitious, there have been people who have served as a nexus at certain places and times in history. One such person existed in the early 20th century, and her life intersected with several important figures in the world of art in Central Europe, three of which she married. Learn more about the incredible life of Alma Margaritha Marie Schindler-Maller-Gropius Verfil on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Starting point is 00:00:32 What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. The story of the woman born Alma, Margarita, Maria Schindler, hereby refer to simply as Alma is a fascinating one. However, I don't think she should be considered

Starting point is 00:01:21 the heroine of this story, and I don't think she should be upheld as a role model. The men in her life, and there were many, really aren't heroes either. Nonetheless, the story of Alma is one that seems to at least touch on the lives of so many famous people from the era she lived in. The story of Alma begins with her birth on August 31, 1879 in Vienna, Austria. Vienna at that time, and for decades before, was a center of music and art. Anna was born into an artistic family in one of the world's great artistic cities. Alma's father was Emel Jacob Schindler, a noted landscape painter in Vienna. Her mother, Anna Sophie, had a short career as an opera singer.

Starting point is 00:02:01 Alma adored her father, and many psychologists think that her attachment to her father may have influenced her later relationships with the men in her life. Emil Schindler eventually found a patron in the Austrian crown prince Rudolf, who commissioned him to paint landscapes of the prince's vacation to the Adriatic in 1886. Schindler took his entire family with him on the trip, including seven-year-old Alma. In 1892, when accompanying the prince on another trip to the North Sea, Emel Schindler died at the age of 50 when Alma was only 13. Alma had been tutored her whole life, but after the death of her father, she threw herself into music.

Starting point is 00:02:37 She played piano and studied composition under the tutelage of the composer and organist Joseph Labour. She also was later mentored by Max Bucard, a friend of her deceased father and the director of Vienna's Berg Theater. On her 17th birthday, he gave Alma two laundry baskets full of books. Her mother remarried three years after the death of her father, marrying one of her deceased husband's former students, Carl Mall. Mall became a noted painter in his own right, and later became a supporter of the Nazi party in Austria. Carl and Alma's mother, Anna, had a child by the name of Maria in 1890. Side note, Carl Moll and Alma's half-sister Maria were such devoted Nazis that they killed themselves at the end of the war when the Soviets were about to enter Vienna. By this time, Alma had become a sensation in artistic social circles in Vienna.

Starting point is 00:03:26 She was a young woman who was stunningly beautiful, as well as incredibly talented and intelligent. By all accounts, she was considered to be an enchanting dinner guest to have. A childhood case of the measles left her partially deaf in one ear, which required her to lean into any conversation, giving the impression that she was deeply ingress. in the discussion. Through her stepfather, she met the famed artist Gustav Klimt, who was 15 years her senior. Klimt fell in love with Alma, the first of many talented artists to do so, and Klimph was the first man she supposedly ever kissed. She joined the Vienna Secession Movement, which Klimt co-founded in 1897. The Vienna Secession Movement was a group of artists who rejected traditional art styles. Alma, however, soon grew disinterested with Klimt, but remained friends with him until his

Starting point is 00:04:08 death in 1918. In 1900, she began studying composition under the Austrian composer and conductor Alexander Zimlinski. Zimlinski fell in love with Alma and the two began a relationship, although keeping it quiet telling only close friends and family. By all accounts, Alma was very cruel to Zemlinsky, constantly berating him about his look, saying that she could have ten other suitors to replace him. It was also claimed that she said marrying Zemlinski would mean, quote, bringing short, degenerate Jewish children into the world. End quote. I told you, Alma is not the heroine of this story.

Starting point is 00:04:45 Alma eventually, gradually, broke off the relationship due to pressure from her friends, who didn't think that Zemlinsky was accomplished enough and wasn't very good looking. In the autumn of 1901, she began a relationship with the famed composer Gustav Mahler, who was 19 years her senior. It was a whirlwind affair, and the pair were engaged in December 1901. She wrote a letter to Zemlinsky, notifying him that she was engaged to Maller, which was a heck of a dear John letter.

Starting point is 00:05:11 If Zimlinski wasn't accomplished enough, Moller certainly was. Moller was arguably the greatest composer of the era, and remains one of the greatest symphonic composers of all time. The two were married in March 1902. Together they had two daughters, Maria, who died at the age of five, and Anna, who went on to become an accomplished sculptor.

Starting point is 00:05:31 Alma, at the time of her marriage to Gustav Moller, was beginning her own career as a composer. She had several compositions completed by the time of her marriage. However, Gustav Mahler didn't want Alma to continue composing. In fact, he wrote her a lengthy letter while they were still engaged, indicating that he wanted her to be a loving wife who supported her husband's music career. He said, quote, The role of a composer, the worker's role, falls to me.

Starting point is 00:05:57 Yours is that of a loving companion and understanding partner. I'm asking a very great deal. And I can and may do so because I'm, know what I have to give and will give in exchange." Also, in this letter, he told her that if she were ugly, men wouldn't really care about her intellect or talent. Like I said, there are no heroes in this story. The relationship was rocky.

Starting point is 00:06:20 Alma had a great deal of respect for Mahler, but actually didn't particularly like his music. Life with Mahler was very regimented and difficult. After the death of her daughter, Alma became depressed and began an affair with the noted architect Walter Gropius. more on him in a bit. In a fitted despair in 1910, Mahler sought the advice of none other than Sigmund Freud about what to do about his marriage.

Starting point is 00:06:42 It's believed that Freud told Mahler that much of his wife's depression may have stem from her being discouraged from writing music. Mahler then took an interest in Alma's compositions and helped her edit and publish five of them with his publisher. And at this point, he did seem genuinely remorseful for having discouraged Alma's career as a composer.

Starting point is 00:07:01 However, it all soon ended after Mahler died, in May of 1911. After his death, Alma didn't take up musical composition again. In fact, as far as we know, she never created anything musical again for the rest of her life.

Starting point is 00:07:14 Despite her affair with Walter Gropius, she didn't rush into her relationship with him. From 1912 to 1914, she had an affair with the artist Oscar Kokoshka. During their relationship, Kokashka painted one of his greatest works, the bride of the wind,

Starting point is 00:07:28 which depicts himself in Alma. The painting is currently on display at the Kunstmuseum in Bosch Switzerland. The relationship ended with the onset of the First World War. After Kukoshka enlisted in the Austrian army, she renewed her relationship with Gropius. Her and Gropius married in August 1915 while he was on leave from the army. Gropius founded the Bauhaus School in 1919 in the city of Vimar. Bauhaus became one of the most influential design movements of the 20th century, and it can be argued that modern 20th century design really stemmed from Bauhaus, everything from furniture to architecture

Starting point is 00:08:03 to typography. One of the defining principles of Bauhaus is that form should always follow function. Even if you aren't familiar with the term Bauhaus, do a search on Bauhaus on the internet, and you will instantly recognize Bauhaus designs. Bauhaus is worth its own episode in the future. Gropius and Alma had two children. Maybe. Manon was born in 1916 and later died at the age of 18, and Martin was born in 1918 and died as an

Starting point is 00:08:30 infant. Gropius and Alma officially divorced in 1920. However, she had been having an affair with the writer and poet Franz Verfel since 1917. It's widely suspected that her son Martin was, in fact, Weirfuls. And by the way, I realize I've been using Alma's first name and the men in her life's last name, but she changed her last name so many times that's rather necessary, and history knows most of these men by their last name, so I'm sticking to it. Alma and Verifel openly lived together and didn't formally get married until 1929. The marriage with Verfil was Alma's longest. She probably did more to encourage Verfil's career than any of her previous husbands. Their time together was the high point of Verifel's career as a writer. He published the novel Verdi, Roman Der Oper, or the novel of the opera

Starting point is 00:09:16 in 1924. His play wore as in Maximilian, about 1860s Mexico, was performed in 1926, and he wrote the 40 days of Musa Dogg in 1930 about the Armenian genocide. Werfel was Jewish. and when the Germans annex Austria at 1938, the couple had to flee. They first went to live in France, but when France was invaded in 1940, they fled over the Pyrenees to Spain, and then eventually to Portugal, where they got on a ship to New York, where they arrived in October 1940. They eventually moved to Los Angeles, where Alma again became the center of a community of artists, mostly consisting of Europeans who fled the war.

Starting point is 00:09:52 Her circle included the likes of Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, the Russian Igor Stravinsky, and the German Nobel laureate in literature, Thomas Mann. Verful published perhaps his best-known novel, The Song of Bernadette, which was then made into a Hollywood film in 1943. Franz Verifle died in 1945. After the death of her husband, she moved to New York City and became an American citizen in 1946. There she continued to be the center of a community of artists, which included the conductor Leonard Bernstein, who was an advocate of the works of Gustav Mahler. It was in this last period of her life that she began to publish books and letters, in particular, a but her first husband Gustav Mahler. For years, she was considered to be the primary authority on

Starting point is 00:10:35 Mahler, but eventually biographers began to notice a problem. There were glaring factual errors in her writing. She only published a fraction of the hundreds of letters that Mahler wrote to her and only a single letter that she ever wrote to Mahler. Of the letter she published, many were edited, and some were merged with other letters. She even edited her own diary entries to make herself look good. Mahler's biographers have dubbed this the Alma problem, as researchers found her to be a very unreliable witness. In interviews she conducted when she was older, she displayed the anti-Semitism which she carried her entire life, despite having married and had relationships with several Jewish men. In one interview, she described her husband Walter Gropius as, quote,

Starting point is 00:11:18 the true Aryan type, the only man who was racially suited to me. All the others who fell in love with me were little Jews, like Mahler. I go for both kinds. End quote. After abusing alcohol late in her life, she passed away in 1964 at the age of 85 in New York. After her death, the New York Times ran what the satirist songwriter Tom Laird described as, quote, the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary that it's ever been my pleasure to read. There have been 17 musical compositions of Alma's which were published, 14 during her lifetime, and three which were published posthumously.

Starting point is 00:11:53 The relationships I've mentioned aren't even the full accounting of the famous men she was involved with, with. She claimed other relationships of various degrees with the German dramatist and Poes Gerhard Haupman, the biologist Dr. Paul Krammer, and the Russian pianist Oslip Gaberlowich. Many people who knew Alma said she wasn't necessarily the nicest person. She could be extremely cold and cruel in addition to her anti-Semitism. Yet she always seemed to be in the middle of social circles with famous artists. Nonetheless, despite her many flaws, Alma, Margarita Maria Schindler-Maller Gropius Verfel led one of the most interesting lives of anyone in the 20th century.

Starting point is 00:12:30 The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Amy 1066 from Apple Podcasts in the United States. She writes, The Best Podcasts for Families. This is a great podcast for the whole family. The episodes are entertaining, but not too complicated. My daughter Rebecca is 10 and listens to the backlog constantly,

Starting point is 00:12:56 and it prompts so many interesting conversations. I love that my kids talk about polo. Polonium 210 at the dinner table. Thanks, Gary. Well, thank you, Amy. I just want to give you a reminder that discussions of Polonium 210 are perfectly acceptable at the dinner table. However, Polonium 210 itself should not be allowed at the dinner table. If any of your kids bring highly toxic and radioactive Isisotopes to dinner, please ask them to put it away. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostogram, you two can have it read on the show. newspapers, the juiciest, spiciest,

Starting point is 00:13:29 wist obituary it has ever been my pleasure to read. It was that of a lady named Alma Maller Gropius Verfil, who had in her lifetime managed to acquire as lovers practically all of the top creative men in Central Europe. And among these lovers, who were listed in the obituary, by the way, which is what made it so interesting, there were three whom she went so far as to marry, one of the leading composers of the day, Gustav Mahler,

Starting point is 00:13:58 composer of Das Lied von der Erda and other light classics. One of the leading architects, Walter Gropius, of the Bauhaus School of Design, and one of the leading writers, Franz Verfel, author of the Song of Bernadette and other masterpieces. It's people like that who make you realize how little you've accomplished. It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years. It seemed to me on reading this obituary that the story of Alma was the stuff of which, ballads should be made so here is one theliest girl in Vienna was Alma the smartest as well once you picked her up on your antenna you'd never be free of her spell her lovers were

Starting point is 00:15:09 many and varied from the day she began her bigine there were three famous ones whom she married and God knows how many between Alma Tell us, all modern women are jealous, Which of your magical ones got you Gustav and Walter and France?

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel

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