Passionate Spirit

Starred review from May 13, 2019
In this sympathetic, engrossing biography of Viennese socialite and composer Alma Mahler (1879–1964), Haste (Sheila Fell: A Passion for Paint) traces Mahler’s struggle to find equilibrium among her men (all creative geniuses), her erotic desires, and her own musical ambition. Haste mines Mahler’s diaries and memoirs, and interviews her granddaughter to uncover her complexities and contradictions (she had many close Jewish friends, but nevertheless spouted anti-Semitic remarks). Ever excited by brilliant minds, Mahler married three men; each relationship began as an affair: composer Gustav Mahler; architect Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus movement; and the bestselling Jewish novelist and poet Franz Werfel (whom she escorted over the Pyrenees mountains by foot and across the Atlantic by ship to protect him from Nazi persecution). One lover—the eccentric artist Oskar Kokoschka, who “satisfied her yearning to be loved and worshipped”—commissioned a life-size Alma doll to dote on after their split. Mahler hosted legendary salons throughout Europe and the U.S., as Haste enthusiastically details (“What drives me around the world—like a flame in too much wind. I am forever yearning!”), but also suffered hardship (three of her four children died tragically). Haste beautifully reprises the life of this force of nature.

July 1, 2019

Alma Mahler's last name forever cast her in the shadow of her husband, composer Gustav Mahler, and her subsequent affairs with artists and musicians relegated her to the role of muse. To date, biographies about her are rarely titled without the attribution (Oliver Hilmes's Malevolent Muse; Karen Monson's Alma Mahler, Muse to Genius). Haste (Nazi Women: Hitler's Seduction of a Nation; Sheila Fell: A Passion for Paint) envisions Alma not as a mere font of inspiration but an immensely talented artist in her own right. The author pinpoints the death of Alma's father, a renowned painter, as the moment that she decided to be an artist. However, there was no path forward. Through colorful vignettes and historical research, this work depicts a gifted composer and painter whose only available route was through her relationships. VERDICT Considering the sexism of the 19th and 20th centuries, Alma Mahler's status as a "muse" can be understood as a strategic attempt to signal her own talents to the world. Haste presents a necessary update and reframing of Mahler's life and legacy.--Joshua Finnell, Colgate Univ., Hamilton, NY

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2019
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.

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September 1, 2019
Landscape painter Emil Schindler's elder daughter, Alma, grew up at the heart of Viennese high culture. Musically precocious, she composed accomplished lieder, though only 17 of about 100 survive. Called the most beautiful woman in Vienna, she maintained, lifelong, the manner of a society doyenne. She cultivated the most advanced Austrian artists of her time and married composer Gustav Mahler, Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius, and poet and novelist Franz Werfel. Before Mahler, she was courted by painter Gustav Klimt and composer Alexander Zemlinsky. Between Mahler and Werfel and during marriage to Gropius, she was the lover of painter Oskar Kokoschka. For her affairs and as the primary informant about Mahler, she remains famous and controversial. Mahler authorities, mostly male, skewer her as untrustworthy and self-aggrandizing. In riposte, Haste points out how Alma constricted herself by deferring to men. Haste builds a convincing case substantially out of Alma's own words in many diaries and thousands of letters. If Alma's florid romanticism?returned in kind by her lovers?is rather much for readers nowadays, her grandness still stuns.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)