22 Facts About Manon Gropius

Alma Manon Anna Justina Carolina Gropius was the Austrian-born daughter of the German architect Walter Gropius and the Austrian composer and diarist Alma Mahler and the stepdaughter of the novelist and poet Franz Werfel.

Manon Gropius is a Randfigur whose importance lies in her relationships to major figures: a muse who inspired the composer Alban Berg, as well as Werfel and the Nobel Prize-winning writer Elias Canetti.

Manon Gropius is most often cited as the "angel" and dedicatee of Berg's Violin Concerto.

Manon Gropius, christened in a Lutheran church as Alma Manon Anna Justina Carolina, was born in Vienna during the height of World War I, on 5 October 1916, the third child of Alma Mahler, the widow of the composer and conductor Gustav Mahler, and wife of the architect and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius.

Manon Gropius's parents separated soon after Gropius discovered Alma's affair with the writer Franz Werfel in the summer of 1918 and the true paternity of her fourth child, Martin Johannes Gropius.

Manon Gropius's travels included many German cities, including Leipzig, where Franz Werfel's play Spiegelmensch premiered in 1921.

Manon Gropius's cooperation came with the understanding that Manon would be allowed to stay with him and his new wife, Ise Gropius, at Dessau, where the Bauhaus had relocated.

Walter Manon Gropius enjoyed only one more extended visit in 1932.

Manon Gropius was educated at home by Schulli and various tutors.

Manon Gropius attended the same progressive girls' school that her mother attended, Institut Hanausek, in Vienna's First District.

Manon Gropius had a way with animals and was often followed by cats and dogs.

Manon Gropius, who had been baptized a Lutheran Protestant, converted to Catholicism in 1932 and came under the influence of her mother's admirer, Fr.

Manon Gropius radiated timidity even more than beauty, an angelic gazelle, not from the ark but from heaven.

The teenage Manon Gropius was used by her aging mother to attract the kind of sensual male attention that she had readily enjoyed in her youth.

Manon Gropius even wrote the famous Burgtheater actor Raoul Aslan a letter and a poem in which she expressed her desire to one day perform on the same stage.

Manon Gropius returned to Vienna, where she recovered some use of her arms and hands.

Manon Gropius was still determined to act; teachers from the famous Reinhardt-Seminar made house calls.

Manon Gropius had been receiving an aggressive form of diathermy that employed X-ray machines, which can induce iatrogenic complications.

Manon Gropius died on 22 April 1935, and was buried in Grinzing Cemetery in a ceremony that Canetti described in great detail.

Berg soon adapted and finished the concerto, which included programmatic allusions to Manon Gropius and, according to some musicologists, Berg's illegitimate daughter, Albine, in much the same way his Lyric Suite alludes to its secret dedicatee, Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, Werfel's sister, with whom Berg had an affair in the 1920s.

Manon Gropius is a minor character in Max Phillips's 2001 novel The Artist's Wife, based on Alma Mahler's life.

Manon's grave lacked a permanent marker until the 1950s, when Walter Gropius designed the flat, triangular marker and landscaping.