Alma Mahler-Werfel

Alma Mahler-Werfel (Vienna, 1879 -- New York, 1964) - born in a wealthy bourgeois Viennese family, the daughter of the popular painter Emil Jakob Schindler and his wife Anna von Bergen - was arguably one of the greatest femmes fatales of the turn-of-the-century Europe: an era that was not only rich in femmes fatales, but worshiped - and feared - them. As a young girl, Alma was hailed as "the most beautiful girl in Vienna"; and throughout her life she inspired the admiration and love of some of the most talented men of her time. She was courted by Gustav Klimt, Paul Kammerer, Max Burckhard, and Alexander von Zemlinsky, among others.

In 1902, at the age of twenty-two, Alma married the famous composer (and director of the Vienna Court Opera) Gustav Mahler, with whom she then had two daughters (one of them, Maria, died at a very early age, the other one, Anna, grew up to be a well-known sculptor). Shortly after the death of her young daughter, Alma began an affair with the up-and-coming architect Walter Gropius (who became of the leading masters of 20th century architecture).

After Mahler's death, in 1911, she engaged in a lengthy affair with the painter Oskar Kokoschka, who became obsessed with her (which led to a series of bizarre incidents, including the making of a life-size doll in Alma's likeness).

In 1915, Alma married her old flame Gropius. The following year she gave birth to their much-adored daughter, Manon.

) As early as 1917, during one of Gropius' frequent military leaves, she met the writer Franz Werfel, with whom she started living around the time of her divorce from Gropius (1920) and whom she eventually married (1929).

(Manon died suddenly, in April of 1935, leaving her mother - and a host of admirers - distraught with grief.