50th anniversary of death of Franz Werfel - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1995 - 100 Pfennig

Franz Werfel, one of the wealthy Jewish manufacturers in Prague, is one of the most important writers of our century. He dies on August 26, 1945 in Beverly Hills / USA while working on a selection of his favorite poems. The bright student quickly finds access to beautiful literature, makes friends with Franz Kafka, Max Brod and many other contemporaries. The literary success sets in early. In addition to poetry, he writes psychoanalytically influenced short stories, symbolic dramas and biographical novels, in which he incorporates his comprehensive education and his varied life experiences. In the twenties and thirties he lives in Vienna, but withdraws from public life to write continuously. After the Anschluss of Austria on March 13, 1938, the painful years of the exile begin. The poet, marked by illness and death, completes his utopian travel novel "Star of the Unborn" in American exile. Werfel's life was endeavored to write for a broad readership. He managed to communicate confessions and insights problem-consciously, yet understandably and sensitively, and to integrate them into a complete work of art that makes him a classic of the modern age. (Text: Dr. Nicolai Riedel, German Literature Archive / Schiller National Museum, Marbach am Neckar)