Franz Werfel Human Rights Award
The Franz Werfel Human Rights Award is a human rights award of the German Federation of Expellees' Centre Against Expulsions project. It is awarded to individuals or groups in Europe who, through political, artistic, philosophical or practical work, have opposed breaches of human rights by genocide, ethnic cleansing, and the deliberate destruction of national, ethnic, racial or religious groups.
Franz Werfel (1890–1945)
Herta Müller, the 2009 laureate, received the award in particular recognition of her novel Everything I Possess I Carry With Me
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