Out of the Archives: Franz Werfel Family Correspondence
by Kevin Schlottmann, Levy Processing Archivist, Center for Jewish History

Above: Telegram from Marianne Rieser to mother Albine Werfel regarding meeting with Varian Fry. January 14, 1941.

The Leo Baeck Institute, as part of its DigiBaeck project, has digitized the Franz Werfel Family Correspondence (AR 6225). This small collection documents the 1940 escape from France to the United States of noted author Franz Werfel and his wife Alma Mahler-Gropius Werfel. It also shows the efforts of the Werfel family, primarily Franz’s sisters, to help their parents escape Europe. Rudolph and Albine Werfel had reached Bergerac, France, by 1940, and with the help of Varian Fry, Albine managed to obtain the necessary Portuguese transit visas, boat tickets and American visas to travel to New York. Rudolph Werfel was already in ill health at the beginning of the journey and died in France.

Telegrams, postcards and letters from the collection also address other topics, such as the war situation, and family matters such as health, children and jobs. These documents probably originated with Franz Werfel’s sister Marianne Rieser and her husband Ferdinand. The collection also contains a few autographed letters from Franz Werfel to Marianne Rieser and to his parents.