Manon Gropius

Manon Gropius (* October 5, 1916, † April 22, 1935 in Vienna), with full name of Manon Gropius, Alma Anna Justine Caroline, daughter of Walter Gropius and Alma Mahler -Werfel was from her brief marriage. Her half sister Anna Mahler was the daughter of Alma Mahler - Werfel's first marriage to the composer and conductor Gustav Mahler. The name Alma was named after her mother, paternal the name Manon after her grandmother.

Numerous eyewitnesses such as Elias Canetti or Ernst Krenek report in their memories, as the heavily marked by anti-Semitism Alma Mahler-Werfel always emphasized the Aryan descent of their daughter, who came not unlike her half-siblings from his marriage to a Jew. They tell how the both good-looking and acting talented daughter - but rather retiring nature was - was presented by her mother as a " show piece ". Oliver Hilmes ( biographer of Alma Mahler -Werfel ) also points out that the mother had made ​​efforts, the young girl to marry the much older Austrian politician Anton Rintelen.

Manon Gropius became ill in April 1934 during a stay in Venice with polio. There was rampant at the time of a secretive public authorities polio epidemic. After one year period of suffering she died on Easter Monday 1935. The funeral was a major social event. The theologian and religious priests John Hollnsteiner, at the time the lover of mother, delivered the funeral oration. By Ludwig Karpath an obituary appeared in a prestigious Wiener Zeitung. Alban Berg composed for Manon Gropius his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, calling it the Memory of an Angel. Her stepfather Franz Werfel described her life and death in two stories (among Manon).

Manon Gropius lies with her mother Alma Mahler- Werfel on Grinzing Cemetery ( Group 6, Series 6, No. 7) in Vienna buried.