Alma Mahler: The Femme Fatale Who Collected Geniuses

Alma Mahler was called "the most beautiful woman in Vienna" and became the ultimate muse and destroyer of early 20th-century geniuses. She married composer Gustav Mahler (who made her give up her own musical career), architect Walter Gropius (founder of the Bauhaus), and writer Franz Werfel - three of the most influential minds of their era. But her marriages were just the beginning.

Her affair with painter Oskar Kokoschka became legendary for its intensity and madness. When Alma ended the relationship, the devastated Kokoschka commissioned a life-size doll made to look exactly like her - complete with realistic skin and hair. He took the doll to the opera, threw dinner parties for it, and allegedly destroyed it in a drunken rage at a party. Some historians believe  ...