Moira’s Reviews > In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story > Status Update

'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.

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.

'It seems strange, perhaps, that the woman who won a trans-European race car championship and dared to perform an anti-Nazi cabaret right under Hitler's nose would eagerly take on a subservient role to Thomas Mann.' sigh. Oh, Erika.

Man, the various countries falling to the Nazis in the background is really fucking unsettling. There goes Hungary. There goes Austria.

Thomas Mann runs out of Swiss cigarettes in the middle of his first US lecture tour and thinks the American ones are 'unsmokable.'

'Klaus was particularly beguiled by young working-class (straight) men in New York City' OH KLAUS BABY NO.

'Patience, we have been told, comes from Heaven, and as long as it is coupled with militant activity I whole-heartedly agree!' - Erika