Franz Werfel

Franz Werfel (1890–1945) was a Prague-born German-language writer of Jewish heritage. He published poetry while still at school and first became known as an Expressionist poet before turning to drama and prose. His best-known works include The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, The Song of Bernadette, and The Class Reunion. He met Alma Mahler-Gropius in 1917 and married her in 1929. After the annexation of Austria, Werfel emigrated and reached the United States in 1940 via France and the Iberian Peninsula. He died in Beverly Hills in 1945.