The articles in this volume examine the various aspects of Judaism and facets of Jewish figures in the work of Franz Werfel. The topics covered range from Jewish assimilation through to Werfel s attempt to define the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. The compilation begins with a biographical examination of Judaism in the life of Franz Werfel and concludes with an article on film adaptations of Werfel s work; the volume as a whole gives a broader perspective on half a century of productive reception of this author, who died in exile in California."

The volume reflects the history of modern biography since Johann Gottfried Herder. The historical status and methodology of significant paradigm-forming biographies are systematically examined. The processes deployed here are principally those of hermeneutics, ideology critique and narratology. Together with the volume Die Biographie - Zur Grundlegung ihrer Theorie [Towards a Theory of Biography], this work is published on behalf of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History and Theory of Biography in Vienna.