Klaus Mann
Klaus Mann (1906-1949) was a German writer and the son of renowned novelist Thomas Mann. Born in Munich, he grew up during the tumultuous years following World War I, developing an early interest in theater influenced by his family. His literary debut came with the novel "Der fromme Tanz" (1926), which reflected his concerns for a disillusioned generation. With the rise of the Nazi regime, Mann fled Germany in 1933, later becoming an influential voice for exiled intellectuals through his literary journal, "Die Sammlung." His most notable work, "Mephisto" (1936), critiques those who aligned with the new regime, leading to significant controversy and delayed publication in Germany. After emigrating to the United States in 1938, he documented the experience of exile in works like "Der Vulkan" (1939) and his autobiography, "The Turning Point" (1942). Enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War II, Mann served in military intelligence but faced personal turmoil after the war, culminating in his tragic suicide in 1949. His writings explore themes of exile, identity, and the complex intersections of personal and political struggles.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Klaus Mann
Writer
- Born: November 18, 1906
- Birthplace: Munich, Germany
- Died: May 21, 1949
- Place of death: Cannes, France
Biography
Klaus Heinrich Thomas Mann was born in Munich on November 18, 1906, the second of six children born to novelist and Nobelist Thomas Mann, in whose formidable shadow the adult Klaus would struggle for his own identity as a writer. Growing up amid the political and social troubles of post-World War IGermany, Klaus was educated in distinguished private schools as befitting his father’s stature and developed an early interest in the stage, nurtured by his sister Erika. In 1924, when he began writing (perhaps inevitable given his progeny and his upbringing), Mann settled, along with Erika, into the bohemian theater world of Berlin and completed his first play. He drew (as he would his entire career) on materials from his own experience, specifically offering a satiric look at troubled adolescents in a progressive private school.
His first novel,Der fromme Tanz: Das Abenteuerbuch einer Jugend (1926), extended such concern to Mann’s entire generation, which he saw as culturally thin, unhappy, and adrift without strong national identity. Inevitably, Mann drew comparisons, often unfavorable, to his father, who himself reserved enthusiastic endorsement of his son’s efforts.
With the rise of Hitler, Mann fled Germany in 1933, ultimately publishing a literary journal, Die Sammlung, as a forum for the intelligentsia-in-exile. When the journal suspended publication for financial reasons in 1936, Mann had earned a reputation for championing freedom and individual rights. That courageous indignation defined Mann’s signature work, the roman à clef Mephisto: Roman einer Karrier (1936), in which Mann scathingly critiques those who cooperated with the new German regime (particularly Erika’s husband, who had become director of the Berlin State Theater in what Mann derided as appallingly obvious opportunism at the expense of any moral principle). The work provoked years of litigation and would not appear in Germany until 1980.
In 1938, Mann emigrated to the United States where he continued to write and lecture, documenting in spirited accounts the life of an exile—the rootlessness, the cultural dissociation, the spiritual vacuum, the uncertain future—most notably in his novel Der Vulkan: Roman unter Emigranten (1939) and his autobiography The Turning Point: Thirty-Five Years in This Century (1942). With the outbreak of World War II, the war against the very fascist governments Mann had long savaged, he enlisted after becoming an American citizen and served in military intelligence in the North African and Italian campaigns.
Following the war, Mann underwent a gradual mental deterioration: his writing struggled to find direction, his relationship with his father did not improve, he feared the implications of the emerging Cold War, and he wrestled with his homosexuality. He attempted suicide in July, 1948. He returned to Europe and, despite the effort of friends, took his own life with sleeping pills in Cannes, France, on May 21, 1949. Never able to find the comfort or stability of a home, Mann explored the dimensions of his own considerable dilemmas (familial, sexual, political, and cultural) and forged a body of autobiographical fiction that uses exile as a powerful metaphor for twentieth century intellectual angst and loneliness.