WERFEL, FRANZ. (1890-1945). Czech novelist, playwright and poet best known for his novels The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, which raised awareness of the Armenian genocide, and his popular The Song of Bernadette. Signed book. (“Franz Werfel”). 195pp. 8vo. (Berlin/Vienna/Leipzig: Paul Zsolnay Verlag, 1924). Number 17 of 100 signed copies of Werfel’s play Juarez und Maximilian bound in vellum bearing a purple ink stamp from the Gestapo’s Politische Buecherei (Political Library) of the Nazi Staatspolizeileitstelle Muenchen (State Police in Munich). In German.
Werfel published his first poems in 1911, at the age of 20, and quickly became a leading figure in Prague and Vienna’s pre-war literary milieu that included Franz Kafka, Max Brod, Martin Buber, and Ranier Maria Rilke. After publishing several poetry collections, Werfel shifted to other literary forms in the 1920s, including his novel Verdi: Novel of the Opera, and often satirical and political dramatic works including Mirror-Man, Goat Song, Paul Among the Jews, and Juarez and Maximilian. The latter, a play that premiered in Berlin in 1924 under Max Reinhardt’s direction, explored the power struggle between indigenous Mexican revolutionary and president Benito Juarez and Maximilian, the Austrian archduke installed by France’s Napoleon III as emperor of Mexico who was executed in 1867. The 1934 Columbia Pictures Mexican motion picture production, Juárez y Maximiliano, was based on Werfel’s play.
With the rise of Hitler, Werfel, who was Jewish, fled Austria with his wife, Alma Mahler-Werfel, widow of composer Gustav Mahler and ex-wife of architect Walter Gropius, and relocated to the French Riviera in 1938. But the Nazi occupation of France again threatened the couple’s safety, and they crossed into Spain on foot, continuing to Portugal and sailing for the United States. Upon their arrival in New York City in October 1940, the Werfel’s took rooms at the Hotel St. Moritz, where Alma held a salon, where she continued to inspire artists, writers and composers. In 1941, Werfel penned his best-selling novel The Song of Bernadette. He died in California in 1945.
Broadly signed on the copyright/limitation page and bound in vellum with gold embossed titles and borders with gilt-edged pages. Some bumping and wear to the surface. In very fine condition and extremely rare. According to Spalek and Hawrylchak’s Werfel bibliography only one copy of this limited edition is in an institution – the University of Pennsylvania. We could find no auction records for this special limited edition and its provenance is most unusual.
