4. Alma Mahler
Alma Mahler, the wife of famed Austrian composer Gustav Mahler, was a tremendous musician and composer in her own right. Born Alma Margaretha Maria Schindler to a wealthy Viennese family, Alma was a renowned socialite known for her beauty and spark of intelligence and personality. Alma was mentored in music from a young age and showed a talent for composition. Her marriage to Gustav Mahler was quite turbulent, as he did not approve of his wife attempting to compose music. She fell into a depression due to being stifled and controlled by Mahler and began an affair with the architect who would become her second husband after Mahler’s death.
Her second husband, famed architect Walter Gropius, did not share Mahler’s hang-ups about his wife’s work and encouraged Alma with her compositions. Alma eventually had an affair with novelist Franz Werfel, who became her third and final husband. They fled Europe in 1938 after the Anschluss, as Werfel was Jewish. They settled in the United States, and Alma’s homes became noted cultural salons.
Alma was, in her youth, a classical Edwardian beauty. She had the long, gently curling dark hair that was so prised in the era as well as clear, pale skin. She also possessed the wit, charm and artistic skills valued in high-class women at the time.
