ALMA ON TOUR   HISTORY   PLAY   PRESS   PHOTOS   VIDEO   INFORMATION   TICKETS Alma
  Abstandhalter  
 
 


1879 - 1901
1901 - 1911
1911 - 1919
1919 - 1938
1938 - 1945
1945 - 1964

 
Gustav Klimt
Alexander Zemlinsky
Gustav Mahler
Walter Gropius
Dr. Paul Kammerer
Oskar Kokoschka
Franz Werfel
Johannes Hollnsteiner

Alma the composer
Kokoschka's Alma portraits

Alma Fetish

The Puppet
Reserl (Chamber Maid)
 
Emil Jakob Schindler, father
Anna von Bergen, mother
Carl Moll, stepfather
Maria Anna Mahler, daughter
Anna Mahler, daughter
Manon Gropius, daughter
Martin Carl Johannes, son
 
Berta Zuckerkandl
Max Burckhard
Bruno Walter
Sigmund Freud
Gerhart Hauptmann
Lili Leiser
Hanns Martin Elster
August Hess
Georg Moenius
  Alma & Venice
Alma & Lisbon
Alma & Los Angeles
Alma & Jerusalem
Alma & New York
 

Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) 
painter & Alma´s lover

Listen to Oskar Kokoschka's voice:
Alma Mahler and Wagner's Tristan (2,8 MB)
World War 1 (7 MB)
About his life (1,6 MB)
Berlin in the 1920s (1,1 MB)
About the Puppet (0,4 MB)

In 1912 Alma met the young painter Oskar Kokoschka, who was known as the enfant terrible of the Viennese art scene. He was violent and unbridled, and the press derided him as »the wildest beast of all«. The acquaintanceship led on to an unrestrained amour fou, an intensive sexual relationship interrupted only during those hours when Alma posed as a model for her loved one. When he was not loving her, he painted her. Kokoschka´s consuming passion was soon transformed into subjugation, and his jealousy into obsession. Kokoschka´s mother rushed to her son´s assistance and wrote to Alma: »If you see Oskar again, I´ll shoot you dead!« Kokoschka´s most famous painting, »The Bride of the Wind«, testifies to this anguished time. When Alma became pregnant by him but had the child aborted, she caused him such a blow that he was never able to recover from it. She sealed his physical downfall by sending him to the front as a volunteer, where he received a serious bayonet injury in russia, in 1915.

 
Oskar Kokoschka The notorious Alma dol
above: The notorious Alma doll, a life-size
copy of Alma
left: Oskar Kokoschka
 

But the news of Alma´s marriage to Walter Gropius hurt him still more. In deepest desperation, he ordered a life-size doll from a doll-maker in Munich which should resemble Alma in every detail, and he thought it would help him console himself for the loss of his loved one. Not surprisingly, the result was disappointing: a clumsy construction of fabric and wood-wool, which Kokoschka had beheaded at a wild, orgiastic party in his atelier in Dresden, in 1919. And so he separated himself from the curse of his life, Alma, in effigy form.