10 Facts About Franz Werfel

Franz Viktor Werfel was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet whose career spanned World War I, the Interwar period, and World War II.

Franz 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 the world" as well as philanthropist, humanitarian, and the like.

In 1912, Franz Werfel moved to Leipzig, where he became an editor for Kurt Wolff's new publishing firm, where Franz Werfel championed and edited Georg Trakl's first book of poetry.

In 1926, Franz Werfel was awarded the Grillparzer Prize by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and in Berlin, Max Reinhardt performed his play Juarez and Maximilian.

Franz Werfel was forced to leave the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1933.

Franz Werfel left Austria after the Anschluss in 1938 and went to France, where they lived in a fishing village near Marseille.

Franz Werfel received much help and kindness from the Catholic orders that staffed the shrine.

Franz Werfel vowed to write about the experience and, safe in the United States, he published The Song of Bernadette in 1941.

In southern California, Franz Werfel wrote his final play, Jacobowsky and the Colonel which was made into the 1958 film Me and the Colonel starring Danny Kaye; Giselher Klebe's opera Jacobowsky und der Oberst is based on this play.

Franz Werfel died of heart failure in Los Angeles in 1945 and was interred there in the Rosedale Cemetery.