Klaus Mann

[This page by Karina von Lindeiner-Stráský]

Klaus Mann (1906-1949)

Klaus Heinrich Thomas Mann (born 1906 in Munich, died 1949 in Cannes), the son of Nobel prize winning writer Thomas Mann and nephew of famous novelist Heinrich Mann, was a novelist, essayist, and dramatist. He was considered to be a literary enfant terrible of the Weimar Republic. At the age of 19, he was already the focus of considerable critical public attention. Critics found fault with the limitedness of his topics, which revolved mostly around youth, (homo-)sexuality, the problems of an intellectual jeunesse dorée, and the generational conflicts of the young German post-war generation with their parents. In fact, he was seen as the public voice of his generation, and was considered to be the centre of a controversial literary movement sometimes called ‘Das Jüngste Deutschland’ (Youngest Germany) together with his sister Erika and their friend Annemarie Schwarzenbach. In the politically highly charged atmosphere of the mid-1920s, Mann was also accused of being politically naïve and an apolitical writer.

During the exile period of 1933 to 1945, Mann became one of the most outspoken and committed voices of German intellectuals against Hitler. He published two exile journals (Die Sammlung (published in Amsterdam 1934-35) and Decision. A Review of Free Culture (published in New York 1941-42), and due to this position as well as his multiple and wide-ranging personal contacts he was right at the centre of the German exile movement. In 1943, depressed and despondent over the persistence of the Nazi regime, he joined the US Army and worked as a journalist and creator of propaganda until the end of the war. Afterwards, he did not settle again anywhere. Most of his literary and cinematic projects failed, and he was outraged and deeply depressed to see the successful return to the public scene in post-war Germany of several former friends of his who had accommodated themselves successfully with the Nazi regime, most prominently Gustaf Gründgens (see Mephisto. Roman einer Karriere; Mephisto. Novel of a Career). In 1949, Mann committed suicide in Cannes. For most of his life, he had lived out his homosexuality openly, and he had been fighting with drug addiction since he was a young adult.

Most of Mann’s writings are strongly rooted in an autobiographical context and closely connected to his own life and to the lives of people around him. His oeuvre also reflects that the legacy that can be seen in his two middle names was both a gift and a burden for him.

Stylistically, his pre-exile writings reflect ‘die große Rat- und Hilflosigkeit, die Befangenheit, und Angst vor dem Leben in dem zarten, zitternden, traumhaft verwirrten Tonfall’; ‘the great cluelessness and helplessness, the awkwardness and fear of life with a delicate, trembling intonation, confused in a dreamlike manner’ [Source: Fredric Kroll and Klaus Täubert (eds.), 1906-1927 Unordnung und früher Ruhm, Klaus-Mann-Schriftenreihe, Band 2 (Wiesbaden: Blahak, 1977), pp.141-42].

His language is ‘durch unendlich viele eingeschobene Partikel, die den starren Kontur des einzelnen Wortes, das starre Gefüge des einzelnen Satzteiles und Satzes immer wieder zaghaft verwischen und auflösen, noch unbestimmter, noch zaghafter, noch träumerischer gemacht’; ‘made yet more indefinite, more tremulous, more dreamlike, by means of countless inserted particles, which keep tremulously blurring and dissolving the rigid structures of the sentences and their components’ [Source: Walter Heinsius, ‘Die jüngste Generation’, in Der Kreis. Zeitschrift für künstlerische Kultur, Jg. 3 Heft 8 (1926), p. 322].

In exile, Mann created the more renowned part of his oeuvre. He published three political novels: Flucht in den Norden; translated as Journey into Freedom (1934), Mephisto. Roman einer Karriere; Mephisto. Novel of a Career (1936) and Der Vulkan. Roman unter Emigranten; The Volcano. Novel among Emigrants (1939) which deal with different aspects of exile life and are to date in the centre of critical attention. But he also extended his writings on the topics of art and his interest in outsider characters with the biographical Tchaikovsky novel Symphonie Pathétique (1935) [Pathetic Symphony] and the brilliant novella Vergittertes Fenster (1937) [Barred Window], about the death of King Ludwig II of Bavaria in 1886.

Klaus Mann’s writings include:

Der fromme Tanz. Das Abenteuerbuch einer Jugend (novel, 1925) [The Pious Dance: The Adventure Story of a Young Man]

Anja und Esther (play, 1925)

Vor dem Leben (stories, 1925)

Kindernovelle. Erzählung (1926)

Revue zu Vieren (play, 1926)

Gegenüber von China (play, 1929)

Alexander. Roman der Utopie (1929) [Alexander. A Novel of Utopia]

Rundherum. Ein heiteres Reisebuch. (with his sister Erika Mann, 1929)

Abenteuer. Novellen (1929)

Geschwister (play, a German version of Jean Cocteau’s Les enfants terribles, 1930)

Treffpunkt im Unendlichen (novel, 1932)

Kind dieser Zeit (autobiography, 1932)

Athen (play, 1932)

Flucht in den Norden (1934) [Journey into Freedom]

Symphonie Pathétique (1935) [Pathetic Symphony]

Mephisto. Roman einer Karriere (1936) [Mephisto. Novel of a Career]

Vergittertes Fenster (1937) [Barred Window]

Der Vulkan. Roman unter Emigranten (1939) [The Volcano. Novel among Emigrants]

Escape to Life (with Erika Mann, 1939)

The Other Germany (with Erika Mann, 1940, online version for free download:

http://archive.org/details/othergermany012296mbp

The Turning Point: Thirty-Five Years in this Century (autobiography, 1942, in an extended German version: Der Wendepunkt, 1952)

André Gide and the Crisis of Modern Thought (1943)

Die Heimsuchung des europäischen Geistes, Essay (1948)

Der siebente Engel (play, 1946)

His diaries and letters have been published as well:

Martin Gregor-Dellin (ed.), Klaus Mann. Briefe und Antworten in zwei Bänden (München: Ellermann, 1975).

Joachim Heimannsberg, Peter Laemmle and Wilfried F. Schoeller (eds.), Klaus Mann. Tagebücher in sechs Bänden (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1990)

English Translations and Editions

Pathetic Symphony. A Tchaikovsky novel, trans. by Hermon Ould (London: Victor Gollancz, 1938)

Journey into Freedom, trans. by Rita Reil (London: Victor Gollancz, 1936)

The Pious Dance: The Adventure Story of a Young Man, trans. by Laurence Senelick (London: GMP, 1988)

The Turning Point: Thirty-five years in this century: The Autobiography of Klaus Mann (London: Wolff, 1984; London: Serpent’s Tail, 1987)

Siblings and The Children’s Story, trans. by Tania Alexander and Peter Eyre (London: Marion Boyars, 1992)

Mephisto, trans. by Robin Smyth (London: Penguin, 1995)

Alexander, trans. by David Carter (London: Hesperus, 2007)