The bride of the wind

the long version

This volume is biography of Viennese-born socialite Alma Mahler (1879-1964). Mahler became well known in her youth for her beauty and vivacity. She became the wife, successively, of composer Gustav Mahler, architect Walter Gropius, and novelist Franz Werfel, as well as the consort of several other prominent men. Born in Austria, Alma saw her native Vienna decline from the peak of its glory, weathered World War I and the Weimar years, survived three children, and made a hairbreadth escape from the Nazis by fleeing to America, where she died at the age of eighty-five. The author further paints the portrait of Alma -- a gifted musician who sublimated her own talent, and an anti-Semite who married two Jews and became a refugee from Hitler.