In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain: the Erika and Klaus Mann Story PDF
Preview In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain: the Erika and Klaus Mann Story
andrea weiss is professor of fi lm/video in the media and communication arts department at the City College of New York. She is an Emmy Award–winning documentary fi lmmaker and the author of Paris Was a Woman: Portraits from the Left Bank (1995) and Vampires and Violets: Lesbians in the Cinema (1992). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2008 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2008 Printed in the United States of America 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 1 2 3 4 5 isbn-13: 978-0-226-88672-5 (cloth) isbn-10: 0-226-88672-7 (cloth) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Weiss, Andrea. In the shadow of the magic mountain: the Erika and Klaus Mann story / Andrea Weiss. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-226-88672-5 (cloth: alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-226-88672-7 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Mann, Erika, 1905–1969. 2. Mann, Klaus, 1906–1949. 3. Mann family. 4. Authors, German—20th century— Biography. 5. Women authors, German—20th century— Biography. 6. Artists—Germany—Biography. 7. Expatriate artists—Biography. I. Title. pt2625.a42z95 2008 838(cid:2).91209—dc22 [B] 2007021032 photo credits: All photos are from the Erika and Klaus Mann Archive, Literaturarchiv Monacensia, Munich, unless stated otherwise. (cid:2)(cid:3) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1992. C O N T E N T S Preface / vii 1 2 3 KJToiPnuhadretneh Lreetiytghi whce atSistty ehGmro o/up 1Dth Soolnweyen p/ / 9/ 7 7315 4 5 ETshcaep Teu tron Linigfe P /o 1i3n3t / 171 6 7 TRhaein Lya Nst iDghaty, /W 20in7dy Morrow / 243 8 Notes / 261 Index / 291 P R E F A C E erika and klaus mann once claimed to be twins, an outright lie which betrays an emotional truth. They shared the easy intimacy and fi erce loyalty of twins, empowering them to live lives that were uncon- ventional, adventurous, and in many ways exemplary. They were vehe- mently anti-Nazi in a Europe swept away by fashionable Fascism. They were openly, even defi antly, gay in an age of secrecy and repression. And although they both joined the American army, they were intellectual pacifi sts when the entire world was at war. These two rebellious, free-spirited children of the Nobel Prize– winning author Thomas Mann were creative artists in their own right. They were serious authors, performance artists (before the term was coined), and political visionaries whose searing essays and lectures still have relevance today. I consider them to be an extraordinary “couple,” even more fascinating together than either would have been alone. Born perhaps fi fty years too early, Erika and Klaus Mann were so modern in their outlook and style that they strike a familiar chord with us today. I can no longer recall the fi rst time I heard the names Erika and Klaus Mann. They have achieved a kind of cult status in Germany today: among the youth culture for their uncompromising anti-Nazi stance, and among the gay/lesbian community for their liberated views on sexuality. All of vii their books are now in print in Germany, including many that were un- printable during their lifetimes. Berlin, that German capital of contra- dictions, is a city I adore and often consider my second home. So I knew their names and something of their reputations for a long time, but it was with my close friend Wieland Speck, roughly a decade ago, that I fi rst entered their world. Wieland and I, both fi lmmakers, both guests of the Jerusalem Film Festival in the summer of 1997, sat on the veranda of the Jerusalem Cinematheque late one night and over a bottle of wine cooked up a scheme to collaborate on a fi lm about them. That seed of an idea eventually became Escape to Life: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story, a fi c- tion/documentary hybrid we co-directed, and my partner Greta Schiller produced, which was released theatrically in Europe in 2001 and broad- cast in many countries around the world. Wieland Speck’s long-term hospitality, the loan of his books for in- defi nite periods, his willingness to translate a confusing paragraph for me at any hour of the day or night—for these and more, I am grateful. While we developed the fi lm that grew up alongside of this book, Erika and Klaus Mann managed to creep into every breakfast conversation, every late-night musing on the meaning of life. At each stage of the project our collaboration pushed me to have new insights into and a better under- standing of the lives of Erika and Klaus Mann. My erstwhile writing workshop colleagues, Adam Levy and Lili Cole, read this manuscript in bits and pieces many times over in different ver- sions, and are due my deepest thanks for all their astute and helpful critiques. Along with them I must mention David Hajdu, master word- smith, who taught me so much about nonfi ction storytelling. Carolyn Dinshaw at New York University was more helpful than she’ll ever know, and NYU’s Bobst Library was the ideal place for me to disappear for many months while I mentally occupied a far-distant time and place. Speaking of Bobst Library, deep in the stacks on its eighth fl oor there is a row of bookcases roughly fi fteen feet long, fl oor to ceiling, devoted solely to books by and about Thomas, Heinrich, Erika, and Klaus Mann. This row, which seemed quite daunting to me when I fi rst began to read my way through it, is a tribute to the enduring literary legacy of the Mann family. In all the time I spent in Bobst Library, however, I never saw another person enter this particular row. I never was asked to re- turn one of the many books piled high in my carrel so another library user could look at it. The Mann family’s popular readership today, at one large urban university at least, doesn’t begin to compare with that same preface viii / family’s literary stature. I hope, for Erika and Klaus’s sake, that this book will begin to change that. But the library stacks yielded only a small slice of the story I wanted to learn. With Wieland I ambled through Berlin, revisiting where Erika and Klaus spent the wild years of the Roaring Twenties in Germany’s Weimar Republic. We explored Munich, where they were born and grew up, and we stood on the spot where the grand Mann family villa once graced the banks of the Isar River before it was destroyed by Allied bombs. We spent enough time in Munich to see the city through their eyes and learn to love it. We visited their large country house in Bad Tölz, which the family sold for war bonds during World War I, and which is now a nunnery, and we walked down the path to the pond where they learned to swim. We wan- dered along the shores of Lake Starnberg, where Erika and Klaus strolled in 1927 when they decided to make their fi rst crazy round-the-world trip. Our path took us past the castle of the Bavarian king Ludwig II, about whom Klaus wrote his sad, lovely tale “The Barred Window,” a personal favorite of mine. We fl ew to Zurich, to Hirschenplatz, where the Hotel Hirschen once showcased Erika’s anti-Nazi cabaret after she could no longer perform it in Germany. Back in New York City, Greta Schiller and I lunched at the Hotel Bedford on East Fortieth Street, where so many of their romantic dramas were enacted and where they were “at home” for the fi rst time since going into exile. From all these places, the ghosts of Erika and Klaus Mann called out to me, beckoned me further, teased me and taunted me before they would initiate me into their secret world. In Paris I visited “Tomski”—the esteemed, aging drama critic Thomas Quinn Curtiss—who was the great love of Klaus’s life. He had already begun to be confused and muddled in his mind, and I had to unravel his comments about Klaus to glean any meaning from them, but just to be in his presence and in his period-piece apartment on the Seine brought me closer to Klaus himself. I interviewed Elisabeth Mann Borgese, the younger sister of Erika and Klaus, who had only the kindest words for her brother and tried to temper her harsh words for her sister.* I met * My interview with Elisabeth Mann Borgese took place in a forest outside of The Hague, though her home was in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She had just arrived in The Hague to give a speech to Holland’s Queen Beatrix about the need for global protection of the oceans, a subject she had made her life’s work. Via e-mail, she had proposed our meeting in the Netherlands to save me a transatlantic fl ight. She was a very youthful eighty-three at the time. I was very sad to hear three years later that she had passed away. preface / ix
The list of books you might like
