Klaus Mann

Klaus Heinrich Thomas Mann (18 November 1906 – 21 May 1949) was a German writer and dissident. He was the son of Thomas Mann, a nephew of Heinrich Mann and brother of Erika Mann, with whom he maintained a lifelong close relationship, and Golo Mann. He is well known for his 1936 novel, ''Mephisto''.

Background

Born in Munich, Klaus Mann was the son of German writer Thomas Mann and his wife, Katia Pringsheim. His father was baptized as a Lutheran, while his mother was from a family of secular Jews.

Career

Mann began writing short stories in 1924 and the following year became drama critic for a Berlin newspaper. His first literary works were published in 1925.

Mann's early life was troubled. His homosexuality often made him the target of bigotry, and he had a difficult relationship with his father. After only a short time in various schools, he traveled with his sister Erika Mann, a year older than himself, around the world, visiting the U.S. in 1927; they reported on the trip in essays published as a collaborative travelogue entitled ''Rundherum'' in 1929.

In 1924 he had become engaged to his childhood friend Pamela Wedekind, the eldest daughter of the playwright Frank Wedekind, who was also a close friend of his sister Erika. The engagement was broken off in January 1928.

He traveled with Erika to North Africa in 1929. Around this time they made the acquaintance of Annemarie Schwarzenbach, a Swiss writer and photographer, who remained close to them for the next few years. Klaus made several trips abroad with Annemarie, the final one to a Soviet writers' congress in Moscow in 1934.

Since young adulthood, Klaus was using drugs, mostly opiates, to which he later became heavily addicted. His diaries document an attempted morphine-injection in 1933 when Hitler took power. Initially, the aspiring writer used opium, Eukodal and later heroin to possibly increase his creative energy, as this was often the case for artists and intellectuals in literary circles at the time. He underwent drug detoxification in Budapest during his frantic travels and at the Kilchberg Sanatorium in Switzerland. After 1936, during his stay in New York his drug use and sexual adventures became unconstrained.

In 1932 Klaus wrote the first part of his autobiography, which was well received until Hitler came to power.

In 1933 Klaus participated with Erika in a political cabaret, called ''Die Pfeffermühle'' (''The Pepper-Mill''), which came to the attention of the Nazi regime. To escape prosecution he left Germany in March 1933 for Paris, later visiting Amsterdam and Switzerland, where his family had a house. Also in 1933, Klaus Mann and Annemarie Schwarzenbach, together with Fritz Landshoff and Dutch publisher Emanuel Querido, founded '' Die Sammlung'', a literary magazine, first published in September 1933 in Amsterdam. It was primarily affiliated with a number of influential German writers who fled from the Hitler regime during the first years of the establishment and consolidation of Nazi rule. The magazine was funded by the wealthy Annemarie Schwarzenbach, and Klaus Mann served as its editor-in-chief from 1933 to 1935, when ''Die Sammlungs activity ceased.

Klaus Mann not only played an important role in the consolidation of the German ''Exilliteratur'' but also communicated with authors who remained in Germany after 1933. In a letter exchange with Gottfried Benn, whose ambivalence towards Nazi rule was well known, Klaus expressed concern about his continued membership in the national German academy of writers, pointing out the moral dilemma it posed, even urging him to leave the country to join the German intellectuals in exile.

In November 1934 Klaus was stripped of German citizenship by the Nazi regime. He became a Czechoslovak citizen. In 1936, he moved to the United States, living in Princeton, New Jersey, and New York. In the summer of 1937, he met his partner for the rest of the year Thomas Quinn Curtiss, who was later a longtime film and theater reviewer for ''Variety'' and the '' International Herald Tribune''. In 1940 Klaus Mann founded another literary magazine for German writers living in exile in the United States, ''Decision''. It lasted for only a year. During that time, he also lived at his father's house in Pacific Palisades when he was unable to support himself financially.

Mann became a U.S. citizen in 1943. The process of naturalization was delayed because of an investigation the FBI conducted into Klaus Mann's political and sexual activities; he was openly gay but not an adherent of marxist ideologies. Throughout his life in the U.S., he identified himself as a liberal antifascist and cosmopolitan. In World War II, he served as a Staff Sergeant of the 5th U.S. Army in Italy. In summer 1945, he was sent by the '' Stars and Stripes'' to report from Postwar-Germany.

Mann's most famous novel, ''Mephisto'', was written in 1936 and first published in Amsterdam. The novel is a thinly-disguised portrait of his former brother-in-law, the actor Gustaf Gründgens. The literary scandal surrounding it made Mann posthumously famous in West Germany, as Gründgens' adopted son brought a legal case to have the novel banned after its first publication in West Germany in the early 1960s. After seven years of legal hearings, the West German Supreme Court upheld the ban, although it continued to be available in East Germany and abroad. The ban was lifted and the novel published in West Germany in 1981.

Mann's novel ''Der Vulkan'' is one of the 20th century's most famous novels about German exiles during World War II.

Death

Mann died in Cannes from an overdose of sleeping pills on 21 May 1949, following further drug treatment. He likely committed suicide because of financial problems and social isolation. He was buried in Cannes at the Cimetière du Grand Jas.

Select bibliography

* ''Der fromme Tanz'', 1925
* ''Anja und Esther'', 1925
* ''Kindernovelle'', 1926 ublished in the U.S. as ''The 5th Child'', 1927* ''Revue zu Vieren'', 1927
* ''Alexander, Roman der Utopie'', 1929
* ''Auf der Suche nach einem Weg'', 1931
* ''Kind dieser Zeit'', 1932
* ''Treffpunkt im Unendlichen'', 1932
* ''Journey into Freedom'', 1934
* ''Symphonie Pathétique'', 1935
* ''Mephisto'', 1936
* ''Vergittertes Fenster'', 1937
* '' Escape to Life'', 1939 (with Erika Mann)
* ''Der Vulkan'', 1939
* ''The Turning Point'', 1942
* ''André Gide and the Crisis of Modern Thought'', 1943
* ''The Chaplain'', 1945

Film adaptations

* ''Mephisto'', directed by István Szabó (1981, based on the novel ''Mephisto'')
* ''Treffpunkt im Unendlichen'', directed by Heinrich Breloer and (1984, TV film, based on the novel ''Treffpunkt im Unendlichen'')
* '' Flight North'', directed by (1986, based on the novel ''Journey into Freedom'')
* '' The Volcano'', directed by Ottokar Runze (1999, based on the novel ''Der Vulkan'')

See also

* Dohm–Mann family tree
* Exilliteratur

References

Further reading

* Hauck, Gerald Günter. ''Reluctant Immigrants: Klaus and Erika Mann In American Exile, 1936-1945''. 1997.
* Huneke, Samuel Clowes.
The Reception of Homosexuality in Klaus Mann's Weimar Era Work
' ''Monatshefte für deutschsprachige Literatur und Kultur.'' Vol. 105, No. 1, Spring 2013. 86–100. doi: 10.1353/mon.2013.0027
* Keller, James Robert. ''The Role of Political and Sexual Identity in the Works of Klaus Mann''. New York: Peter Lang, 2001.
* Mann, Klaus.
Il cappellano
'', by Pier Giorgio Ardeni and Alberto Gualandi, Pendragon 2018
* Mauthner, Martin. ''German Writers in French Exile, 1933–1940'' London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2006
* Schicker, Juliane. 'Decision. A Review of Free Culture' – Eine Zeitschrift zwischen Literatur und Tagespolitik. München: Grin, 2008.
* Spotts, Frederic. ''Cursed Legacy: The Tragic Life of Klaus Mann'' New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.
* Harpole, Kimberley, and Waltraud Maierhofer. 'Women Performing the American 'Other' in Erika and Klaus Mann's ''Rundherum ''(1929).
''Sophie Journal'' .
' Vol.4, 2017. 1-32.

External links

*

The Works, Diaries and Letters are in the Munich Literatur-Archiv "Monancensia"

Tagebuch 1931–1949 – Titel – Mann Digital – Monacensia – Digital

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