PASSIONATE SPIRIT

Biography of a woman of “powerful allure” who attracted men of genius.

Biographer, historian, and filmmaker Haste (Craigie Aitchinson: A Life in Colour, 2014, etc.) creates a sharp, sympathetic portrait of the sexually and emotionally voracious Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel (1879-1964), whose three husbands and many lovers brought her both prestige and notoriety. A gifted composer, she gave up a career in music to devote herself to her first husband, Gustav Mahler, who swept her off her feet while at the same time stringently delineating the terms of their marriage: “It’s not so simple to marry a person like me,” he told her. “I am free and must be free. I cannot be bound, or tied to one spot.” He was 41 and she 22 when they married, and although both had doubts, Alma was convinced that she could not live without him. “I felt that only he could shape my life,” she recalled. “I sensed his true worth and significance, which placed him streets ahead of every other man I had met.” There was no lack of men—artists, musicians, and other creative types—in pursuit of the beautiful Alma, and Haste draws largely on Alma’s sometimes self-serving diaries and memoirs to recount her affairs before, after, and during her several marriages. Life with Mahler proved difficult. He was demanding, and without her own music to sustain her, Alma felt bored, suffocated, and subject to “nervous torments.” After Mahler’s death, “a series of suitors” lavished attention on the 32-year-old widow, “a statuesque beauty with a magnetic charisma.” As much as she longed to return to composing, she longed, even more, to be worshiped. She married handsome young architect Walter Gropius, had a passionate affair with “the provocative, savage, eccentric artist” Oscar Koskoschka, divorced Gropius, and eventually married poet Franz Werfel. Haste is cleareyed about Alma’s emotional neediness, her “occasional intransigence,” and her “deeply conservative, anti-Semitic” political views.

A well-rounded portrait of an imperious woman and her eventful life.