Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel: Ah, The Alma Problem. Feminist icon or conniving vixen?

Alma Maria Mahler Gropius Werfel: Notorious Viennese socialite, wife and/or lover of multiple famous men (including composer Gustav Mahler, architect/Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, and artist Gustav Klimt). Alma was a talented composer and writer, but as terms of her marriage to Mahler (who was 19 years her senior) Alma agreed to stop composing, the better to support Mahler’s career. She kept detailed diaries and correspondence and became the primary source of information about Mahler’s life, whom she outlived by fifty years, later writing several books about him and their life together. Historians now believe Alma altered the facts (and actual letters), often to portray herself in a more favorable light, a matter often referred to as “The Alma Problem.”

Her compositions have slowly started to be performed again, including the Lieders (German songs that set poetry to music) that are layered in this artwork.