Status Updates From In the Shadow of the Magic ...

Erika’s parents were not all that keen to uproot themselves. They were seriously disillusioned with the United States, especially after Thomas Mann was denounced in Congress as “one of the world’s foremost apologists for Stalin and company.” This epithet was bestowed after the author made it known that he was against the rearmament of Germany (as was fellow émigré Albert Einstein) and against the Korean War,'

Klaus wrote to a friend:
Yes, and the atomic bomb . . . To tell you the truth, I have been feeling kind of glum and apprehensive, ever since I heard about that rather alarming invention. Quite seriously, I cannot help the feeling that they won’t stop fooling around with devastating gadgets before they’ll have blown up our whole little universe. Not that I think it would be a major loss if our earth went to pieces!

‘Die Sammlung’ and the fact that Klaus endorsed an anti-Nazi declaration protesting Germany’s annexing of the Saarland were used to find him guilty of high treason and eligible for “denaturalization.” On November 1, 1934, his name was included on Goebbel’s famous four lists which publicly stripped Germany’s intelligentsia of its citizenship (Heinrich Mann’s name had been on the first list). Klaus became stateless.

'In 1933, Thomas Mann wrote to Albert Einstein:
Basically I am much too good a German that the thought of a lasting exile wouldn’t weigh very heavily on me and the break with my country depresses and frightens me terribly. .  That I would be forced into taking on such a role must mean that something wrong and evil had to happen, and, in my strongest belief, this “German Revolution” is completely wrong and evil.'

He heard someone mentioned his friend Therese. “I rather like Frau Giehse” he heard Hitler announce. According to Klaus, Hitler spoke “with a weird sort of politeness, very much as if a madman tried to behave in a nice, civilized way to fool his guardians.” One accomplice then said she surely had Jewish blood. Hitler dismissed the charge. “After all, I know the difference between a German artist and a Semitic clown.”

'Erika naively assumed that the FBI was interested in tracking Nazis, when in actuality they were far more preoccupied with tracking suspected Communists, Erika included.' Oh yay, the 1950s.

Man, I KNEW going in Klaus was going to succeed at topping himself and Erika become this drudge for Daddy Dearest, and it was still upsetting.

Now that's what I call good writing!

And Klaus is dead. Man, I was in tears. I need a little break here.

'Klaus checked into a room in the "Pavillon Madrid" in Cannes, a four-story white stucco guesthouse with small balconies shaded by striped awnings. It would turn out to be the very last of his 1,200 hotel rooms.'

'The double misery of brother and sister did not manage to turn the tide that was pulling them apart. Erika had already latched on to her own life raft, and Klaus was left to drift on his own.'

And after Klaus makes a suicide attempt that gets reported around the world his father refuses to visit him in the hospital. Gahhh.