Franz Viktor Werfel was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet whose career spanned World War I, the Interwar period, and World War II. He is primarily known as the author of The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, a novel based on events that took place during the Armenian genocide of 1915, and The Song of Bernadette (1941), a novel about the life and visions of the French Catholic saint Bernadette Soubirous, which was made into a Hollywood film of the same name.
Werfel photographed by Van Vechten, 1940
Memorial to Werfel in Vienna. The granite pillar carries the inscription: "In Dankbarkeit und Hochachtung – Das Armenische Volk" (In gratitude and respect, the Armenian people)
Werfel's grave in the Zentralfriedhof, Vienna
Armenian stamp (1995): Franz Werfel and a Hero of Musa Dagh
Bernadette Soubirous, also known as Bernadette of Lourdes, was the firstborn daughter of a miller from Lourdes, in the department of Hautes-Pyrénées in France, and is best known for experiencing apparitions of a "young lady" who asked for a chapel to be built at the nearby cave-grotto. These apparitions occurred between 11 February and 16 July 1858, and the woman who appeared to her identified herself as the "Immaculate Conception".
Bernadette Soubirous
The Chapel of St Joseph, where Bernadette Soubirous was interred for forty years.
Full-body relic of Bernadette Soubirous. The photograph was taken at the last exhumation (18 April 1925). The saint died 46 years before the photo was taken; face and hands are covered with a wax coat.
The gold sarcophagus/reliquary containing the incorrupt body of Saint Bernadette Soubirous.