Correspondence to Alma Mahler and Franz Werfel, 1933-1944.

Format:

Other

Author/Creator:

Fischer, Cyrill, 1892-1945.

Contributor:

Roddy, Patrick.

Reichenberger, Emmanuel J., 1888-1966.

Language:

German

Physical Description:

16 items (43 leaves)

Contained In:

Mahler-Werfel Papers. Folder 306.

Place of Publication:

1933-1944.

Language Note:

In German.

Biography/History:

A Catholic priest of the Franciscan order, Fischer was a critic of National Socialism and the author of the book Die Hakenkreuzler (1932); upon the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938, he fled Austria, ultimately emigrating to the U.S. and settling eventually in the Old Mission monastery in Santa Barbara, Calif., where Werfel frequently visited him in the early to mid 1940s. Patrick Roddy was also a Fransciscan priest at the Old Mission monastery. Reichenberg was a Catholic priest from German-speaking Bohemia (Czechoslovakia), who had emigrated to the U.S. in 1938 and was a good friend of Cyrill Fischer.

Summary:

Werfel knew Fischer since the 1930s, in Vienna; in the first letter, dated 1933, Fischer gives his response to Werfel's book Können wir ohne Gottesglauben Leben? In this and later letters Fischer reflects on Nazi politics. With a letter of April 1941 Fischer encloses 17 pages of notes on matters related to Catholic religious life, as references for Werfel in his work on his novel Das Lied von Bernadette. Other subjects in the letters include Fischer's current writings and his efforts to find a publisher in the U.S.; Werfel's visits to Santa Barbara; and, in 1944, Fischer's struggle with illness. Letters to Alma Mahler in 1943 and 1944 concern in particular Franz Werfel's religious faith and the possibility of his converting to Catholicism. A letter from Emmanuel Reichenberger to Werfel, written upon Fischer's death in 1945 and requesting Werfel to write a memorial article about Fischer, encloses a transcript made by Fischer of an article which Werfel had apparently published about Fischer several months before.

Notes:

Includes 1 letter written by Patrick Roddy, on behalf of Cyrill Fischer.

1 item from Fischer is a photocopy (original in Franz Werfel archive at UCLA).