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In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story
Thomas Mann’s two eldest children, Erika and Klaus, were unconventional, rebellious, and fiercely devoted to each other. Empowered by their close bond, they espoused vehemently anti-Nazi views in a Europe swept up in fascism and were openly, even defiantly, gay in an age of secrecy and repression. Although their father’s fame has unfairly overshadowed their legacy, Erika and Klaus were serious authors, performance artists before the medium existed, and political visionaries whose searing essays and lectures are still relevant today. And, as Andrea Weiss reveals in this dual biography, their story offers a fascinating view of the literary and intellectual life, political turmoil, and shifting sexual mores of their times.
In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain begins with an account of the make-believe world the Manns created together as children—an early sign of their talents as well as the intensity of their relationship. Weiss documents the lifelong artistic collaboration that followed, showing how, as the Nazis took power, Erika and Klaus infused their work with a shared sense of political commitment. Their views earned them exile, and after escaping Germany they eventually moved to the United States, where both served as members of the U.S. armed forces. Abroad, they enjoyed a wide circle of famous friends, including Andre Gide, Christopher Isherwood, Jean Cocteau, and W. H. Auden, whom Erika married in 1935. But the demands of life in exile, Klaus’s heroin addiction, and Erika’s new allegiance to their father strained their mutual devotion, and in 1949 Klaus committed suicide.
Beautiful never-before-seen photographs illustrate Weiss’s riveting tale of two brave nonconformists whose dramatic lives open up new perspectives on the history of the twentieth century.
In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain begins with an account of the make-believe world the Manns created together as children—an early sign of their talents as well as the intensity of their relationship. Weiss documents the lifelong artistic collaboration that followed, showing how, as the Nazis took power, Erika and Klaus infused their work with a shared sense of political commitment. Their views earned them exile, and after escaping Germany they eventually moved to the United States, where both served as members of the U.S. armed forces. Abroad, they enjoyed a wide circle of famous friends, including Andre Gide, Christopher Isherwood, Jean Cocteau, and W. H. Auden, whom Erika married in 1935. But the demands of life in exile, Klaus’s heroin addiction, and Erika’s new allegiance to their father strained their mutual devotion, and in 1949 Klaus committed suicide.
Beautiful never-before-seen photographs illustrate Weiss’s riveting tale of two brave nonconformists whose dramatic lives open up new perspectives on the history of the twentieth century.
302 pages, Hardcover
First published April 15, 2008
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381 people want to read
About the author
Andrea Weiss
21 books15 followersAndrea Weiss is an internationally acclaimed documentary filmmaker and nonfiction author. Her books include Paris Was A Woman (Harper Collins, 1995), Vampires And Violets (Penguin, 1993), and, most recently, In The Shadow Of The Magic Mountain: The Erika And Klaus Mann Story (University of Chicago Press, 2008). They have been translated into French, German, Korean, Swedish, Japanese, and Croatian.
Source:
andreaweiss.net/bio/
Source:
andreaweiss.net/bio/
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 2, 2021
A brilliant biography! It provides a very intimate description of the lives of both Erika and Klaus Mann, the two eldest children of Thomas Mann, but what I found so very interesting is that it also offers a revealing view on the great Magician himself.
The Mann family led a bohemian life and both Thomas and his wife Katia did not overly interfere in their children’s life. You can even state that Thomas never had any real interest in his children nor in their upbringing. The Great Magician led a separate life which was quite possible because their villa in Munich was huge. It is noted somewhere that the children desperately avoided being alone with him in a room. It was only Erika who had the courage to talk to him on occasion.
Already as young teenagers, Erika and Klaus were free to roam the world and act out their fantasies to their hearts’ content. Erika and Klaus were inseparable and both were enthralled with writing plays, composing songs and poems and acting on stage. Even at the young age of 15, Klaus had one of his theater plays performed on stage and he continued writing quite a lot of them before he was 20. Erika was into performing as an actor in the plays and singing the songs. While still a student at the Munich Luisengymnasium, she was engaged by a theater director to appear on the stage of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin for the first time. It is hard to imagine that their parents allowed them to move from Munich to Berlin and share accommodation there by themselves when they were only around 20 years old. This was Berlin at the most roaring of the twenties and Erika and Klaus just fitted in splendidly. They were great friends with a lot of famous and infamous people at the time. A great friend of Erika was Christopher Isherwood and she stayed friends with him throughout her life. Another amazing aspect of both the young Mann siblings was that they always felt completely at ease to exhibit their homosexuality. Reading about the Berlin artistic scene at the time, one is amazed to read how free of any inhibitions everyone felt. Klaus was a very good looking and sympathetic man and he was a great success. Erika likewise an impressive girl with a huge personality. It struck me to realize that, now that a century has lapsed, how very prudent and on guard life nowadays is compared with Berlin in the 1920’s.
Erika became a professional actor, touring around Germany. In 1925, she played in the première of her brother Klaus's play ‘Anja und Esther’. The play, about a group of four friends who were in love with each other, opened in October 1925 to considerable publicity. In 1924 the actor Gustaf Gründgens had offered to direct the production and play one of the lead male roles, alongside Klaus, with Erika and Pamela Wedekind as the female leads. During the year they worked on the play together, Klaus had an affair with Gustaf Gründgens and Erika with Pamela Wedekind. Curiously enough, Erika became engaged to Gründgens and she married him. The marriage was short-lived and they were soon living apart before divorcing in 1929.
Gustaf Gründgens would continue to play a very negative role throughout the rest of Klaus’ life, even though Klaus remained rather mild in his judgement of his former lover and brother-in-law. When reading Klaus’ novel, Mephisto, you know that the main character, the actor Hendrik Höfgen, who is portraying Mephisto, is based on Gustaf Gründgens. KIaus portrays Höfgen’s endless ambition and lust for power to succeed by concluding a pact with the devil, in this case in the person of Goering, Hitler and the nazis. As Klaus typifies so spot-on somewhere in the novel: ‘here enters Goering, his shining shoes wading through a pool of blood’. It was simply amazing that Klaus could already predict so clearly in 1936 where Hitler and his henchmen were heading. Gustaf Gründgens corrupted himself in the same manner and became great friends with Goering. Although the novel was published in 1936 by the Dutch publishing house Querido, it was strictly banned in Germany and that continued even after the war. Even after Gründgens’ death, his adopted son succeeded to have its publication prohibited in Germany until 1981. Having read ‘Mephisto’ quite some time ago, I decided I will reread it as I had no idea at the time that Gustaf Gründgens had been a lover of Klaus during the time that he was married to Erika. It should certainly give a different aspect to the novel which, by the way, is one of my favorite novels ever and which I wholeheartedly recommend.
In January 1933, Erika, Klaus and Erika’s girlfriend Therese Giehse founded a cabaret in Munich called Die Pfeffermühle, for which Erika wrote most of the material, much of which was anti-Fascist. The cabaret lasted two months before the Nazis forced it to close and Erika left Germany. She was the last member of the Mann family to leave Germany after the Nazi regime was elected.
The Magician behaved very indifferent towards Klaus from an early age on. He never was interested in Klaus’ theater plays, his political pamphlets and later neither in his novels. It is indeed alarming how he treated Klaus throughout his life and, reading the details, I felt genuinely sorry for Klaus. It is clear that the Magician found Klaus a disturbing individual and I would certainly like to read an analysis why that was the case. Was Klaus a person whose freedom the Magician envied and would have liked to have had as a young man? It is a fact that Thomas always hid his homosexual side. I have no idea, but I found it pretty disturbing to read about Thomas’ disinterest in Klaus. Then strangely enough, it is suggested by several close friends that the Magician clearly portrayed Klaus as Tadzio in his ‘Death in Venice’. Makes you certainly wonder. Extra painful for Klaus was that the Magician only skipped through every new novel of Klaus, reading a paragraph here and there and did not bother to give his opinion in any extensive way. This was very painful for Klaus, as he was already in the position throughout his life that people only viewed him as ‘the son of’ and he had the hardest time being judged on his own merits. In contrast, all other people who knew Klaus found him a very friendly and dependable person.
The Mann family lost their German citizenship in the late 1930’s and subsequently moved from Switzerland to the States at the start of the war and did not return till 1948. Both Klaus and Erika made themselves very useful during the war period. Especially Erika toured the U.S. as a lecturer on what was exactly occuring in Germany and in Europe. Klaus entered the U.S. army and was stationed in Naples after its liberation, editing a U.S. army newspaper which was distributed all over Europe. After the Normandy landings, Erika was a correspondent for the BBC, traveling and reporting on liberated Europe. Later on she attended the Nuremberg trials. There are numerous fascinating stories to tell about these years, but I do not want to go into detail. If you are a reader interested in the Mann family, you should read this terrific biography yourself, so I just like to avoid going into details. Rest assured there are many interesting tales to tell, so I can only recommend this biography wholeheartedly.
The Mann family led a bohemian life and both Thomas and his wife Katia did not overly interfere in their children’s life. You can even state that Thomas never had any real interest in his children nor in their upbringing. The Great Magician led a separate life which was quite possible because their villa in Munich was huge. It is noted somewhere that the children desperately avoided being alone with him in a room. It was only Erika who had the courage to talk to him on occasion.
Already as young teenagers, Erika and Klaus were free to roam the world and act out their fantasies to their hearts’ content. Erika and Klaus were inseparable and both were enthralled with writing plays, composing songs and poems and acting on stage. Even at the young age of 15, Klaus had one of his theater plays performed on stage and he continued writing quite a lot of them before he was 20. Erika was into performing as an actor in the plays and singing the songs. While still a student at the Munich Luisengymnasium, she was engaged by a theater director to appear on the stage of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin for the first time. It is hard to imagine that their parents allowed them to move from Munich to Berlin and share accommodation there by themselves when they were only around 20 years old. This was Berlin at the most roaring of the twenties and Erika and Klaus just fitted in splendidly. They were great friends with a lot of famous and infamous people at the time. A great friend of Erika was Christopher Isherwood and she stayed friends with him throughout her life. Another amazing aspect of both the young Mann siblings was that they always felt completely at ease to exhibit their homosexuality. Reading about the Berlin artistic scene at the time, one is amazed to read how free of any inhibitions everyone felt. Klaus was a very good looking and sympathetic man and he was a great success. Erika likewise an impressive girl with a huge personality. It struck me to realize that, now that a century has lapsed, how very prudent and on guard life nowadays is compared with Berlin in the 1920’s.
Erika became a professional actor, touring around Germany. In 1925, she played in the première of her brother Klaus's play ‘Anja und Esther’. The play, about a group of four friends who were in love with each other, opened in October 1925 to considerable publicity. In 1924 the actor Gustaf Gründgens had offered to direct the production and play one of the lead male roles, alongside Klaus, with Erika and Pamela Wedekind as the female leads. During the year they worked on the play together, Klaus had an affair with Gustaf Gründgens and Erika with Pamela Wedekind. Curiously enough, Erika became engaged to Gründgens and she married him. The marriage was short-lived and they were soon living apart before divorcing in 1929.
Gustaf Gründgens would continue to play a very negative role throughout the rest of Klaus’ life, even though Klaus remained rather mild in his judgement of his former lover and brother-in-law. When reading Klaus’ novel, Mephisto, you know that the main character, the actor Hendrik Höfgen, who is portraying Mephisto, is based on Gustaf Gründgens. KIaus portrays Höfgen’s endless ambition and lust for power to succeed by concluding a pact with the devil, in this case in the person of Goering, Hitler and the nazis. As Klaus typifies so spot-on somewhere in the novel: ‘here enters Goering, his shining shoes wading through a pool of blood’. It was simply amazing that Klaus could already predict so clearly in 1936 where Hitler and his henchmen were heading. Gustaf Gründgens corrupted himself in the same manner and became great friends with Goering. Although the novel was published in 1936 by the Dutch publishing house Querido, it was strictly banned in Germany and that continued even after the war. Even after Gründgens’ death, his adopted son succeeded to have its publication prohibited in Germany until 1981. Having read ‘Mephisto’ quite some time ago, I decided I will reread it as I had no idea at the time that Gustaf Gründgens had been a lover of Klaus during the time that he was married to Erika. It should certainly give a different aspect to the novel which, by the way, is one of my favorite novels ever and which I wholeheartedly recommend.
In January 1933, Erika, Klaus and Erika’s girlfriend Therese Giehse founded a cabaret in Munich called Die Pfeffermühle, for which Erika wrote most of the material, much of which was anti-Fascist. The cabaret lasted two months before the Nazis forced it to close and Erika left Germany. She was the last member of the Mann family to leave Germany after the Nazi regime was elected.
The Magician behaved very indifferent towards Klaus from an early age on. He never was interested in Klaus’ theater plays, his political pamphlets and later neither in his novels. It is indeed alarming how he treated Klaus throughout his life and, reading the details, I felt genuinely sorry for Klaus. It is clear that the Magician found Klaus a disturbing individual and I would certainly like to read an analysis why that was the case. Was Klaus a person whose freedom the Magician envied and would have liked to have had as a young man? It is a fact that Thomas always hid his homosexual side. I have no idea, but I found it pretty disturbing to read about Thomas’ disinterest in Klaus. Then strangely enough, it is suggested by several close friends that the Magician clearly portrayed Klaus as Tadzio in his ‘Death in Venice’. Makes you certainly wonder. Extra painful for Klaus was that the Magician only skipped through every new novel of Klaus, reading a paragraph here and there and did not bother to give his opinion in any extensive way. This was very painful for Klaus, as he was already in the position throughout his life that people only viewed him as ‘the son of’ and he had the hardest time being judged on his own merits. In contrast, all other people who knew Klaus found him a very friendly and dependable person.
The Mann family lost their German citizenship in the late 1930’s and subsequently moved from Switzerland to the States at the start of the war and did not return till 1948. Both Klaus and Erika made themselves very useful during the war period. Especially Erika toured the U.S. as a lecturer on what was exactly occuring in Germany and in Europe. Klaus entered the U.S. army and was stationed in Naples after its liberation, editing a U.S. army newspaper which was distributed all over Europe. After the Normandy landings, Erika was a correspondent for the BBC, traveling and reporting on liberated Europe. Later on she attended the Nuremberg trials. There are numerous fascinating stories to tell about these years, but I do not want to go into detail. If you are a reader interested in the Mann family, you should read this terrific biography yourself, so I just like to avoid going into details. Rest assured there are many interesting tales to tell, so I can only recommend this biography wholeheartedly.
May 2, 2019
Two fascinating lives in interesting times. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
September 18, 2009
This is quite a wonderful book, which, I believe, didn't get the full recognition and attention it deserved when it came out. Weiss writes with great insight, clarity, compassion, and intelligence about Klaus and Erika Mann, two of the great German writer Thomas Mann's children, and she delivers a knockout portrait not only of two exceptional people, but also of a fascinating generation of Germans: those whose lives were defined by exile because of their anti-nazi positions. The two siblings, very close in age, had an intense bond that some tried to see as incestuous, they shared a very magical childhood, and they maintained their bond through most of their adult lives. Yet each had a very distinctive personality, and each was a true gifted artist on his own. Klaus, the tormented, melancholic, gay, drug-addict son who was obsessed by writing and haunted by suicide all his life (he finally killed himself), is the most touching of the two - but Erika, full of vitality and extravagance, is an extraordinary woman, too. Weiss obviously did a lot of research, and she recreates with great skills the atmosphere of Weimar Germany, then of Germany falling into the hands of the Nazis, as well as the lives of the exiled Germans in the US and throughout Europe. This book is also a subtle portrait of Thomas Mann himself, who played an immense role in the lives of his children, and not always a positive one. Often heartbreaking, this delicate, romantic, vivid biography is filled with emotions. It brings back to our memory a literary Europe that doesn't exist anymore, and some of the great intellectuals, writers, and thinkers of the XXth century - such as, besides the Mann siblings, Auden, Isherwood, Heinrich Mann, and many others. A beautiful read.
August 6, 2013
I will try to write a review soon! This was really pretty special. (Might knock off half a star either for sometimes clumsy language, or how soon the book ends after Klaus's death, but that seems petty considering how much it moved me.)
November 30, 2010
The Mann family was pretty damn twisted. This definitely lends proof to the cliche that one must be miserable to be a genius. It's in incredibly riveting account of Erika, Thomas Mann's eldest child, and her brother Klaus, his much maligned and depressed son. It included plenty of details about the rest of the Mann family, including Papa Mann himself. Fascinating stuff.
December 3, 2018
Discovered this sister and brother by learning more about the poet W H Auden. Fascinating lives and I learned a lot about pre-war Germany and the early rise of Hitler.
January 3, 2014
If you are fascinated by the lives of Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann and his children - this is a book for you. But it would also be of interested to those wanting to learn more about the period of Germany shortly before WW I and between WW I and WW II - a depressing time for sure. This book is the story of the relationship of Erika and Klaus Mann, Thomas' oldest children - who seemed to have a magical childhood and adolescence being brilliant, beautiful, imaginative and (don't forget) rich. But the combination of the rise of the Nazis, Klaus' drug addiction, exile, estrangement between them and their father led to a tragic outcome for both of them. Though Klaus committed suicide after the War, his sister's life essentially ended then too. Don't know if the author has turned up any new information, but the book is well written and deeply informed.
for-biography-channel
May 5, 2008If I don't read it I at least want to look at it. I thought I wanted to read some of Mann's work.. but if he was ng to his kids that turns me off. There's a school named after him near near my cousins back east. We've discussed it before and I'm not sure if or where to start.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews