Born Sept. 10, 1890, in Prague; died Aug. 26, 1945, in Beverly Hills, California. Austrian writer.

Werfel studied at the German university in Prague. In the collections of versed Friend of the World (1912),We Exist (1913), and Judgment Day (1919) he exposed the horrors of war. A pioneer of expressionism in lyrics and drama, Werfel collaborated on the Berlin jounal Aktion. His plays Mirror Man (1920; Russian translation, 1922) and Paul Among the Jews (1927) and novels The Murdered Man Is Guilty (1920; Russian translation, 1924), The Class Reunion (1928), and The Star of the Unborn (1946) are characterized by ideas of abstract humanism with an inclination toward the mysticism of passive antimilitarism. His play Jacobowsky and the Colonel (1944) is antifascist.