Hanneke’s Reviews > In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story > Status Update
Hanneke
is on page 307 of 315
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,'
— Nov 29, 2021 08:52AM
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Hanneke’s Previous Updates
Hanneke
is on page 255 of 315
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!
— Nov 19, 2021 03:39AM
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!
Hanneke
is on page 144 of 315
‘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.
— Oct 18, 2021 03:35AM
Hanneke
is on page 134 of 315
'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.'
— Oct 17, 2021 07:45AM
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.'
Hanneke
is on page 100 of 315
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.”
— Oct 16, 2021 07:51AM
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Nov 29, 2021 09:04AM
This is kind of a strange coda to Thomas Mann's life, Hanneke- moving to the U.S. in his twilight years and getting caught up in McCarthyism. Or maybe "unexpected" is more appropriate than "strange", because I think of him as such a European and WWI-era writer.
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He was such a European writer for sure, Mike. Well, of course, he moved to the States because Goebbels made the whole Mann family stateless already around 1938. Thomas Mann was quite handicapped because his English was not very good at all. Erika went with him on lecture tours as a translator. It is made clear though in the biography that he could answer questions from the audiences quite well, as people always asked the same questions so he had them rehearsed. By the way, Erika was denied American citizenship because she had once been to the Soviet Union and was considered too left wing in her political views.
Very interesting, Hanneke. Yeah, it is just a little hard for me to imagine Mann traipsing around the United States; it's almost like imagining Dostoevsky doing the same thing; it just doesn't compute. And yet it happened. Was that after WWII ended, that Erika was denied citizenship? I'm under the impression that it was only after the war that the real anticommunist zealotry started up in the States.
Mike, no, it was during the war that Erika was denied citizenship. Thomas and his wife were never bothered the way Erika and Klaus were. Thomas had a huge villa in Pacific Palisanders (spelling?) on the same street as Albert Einstein. Klaus also had the hardest time to get it and was scrutinized for about two years by the CIA and FBI before he finally got it because he joined the U.S. army. For Klaus it was very important since he had the Czechian citizenship after he lost the German one, Czechia being the only country which offered it to him. Erika had the British citizenship because she married the poet W. Auden, a friend of Christopher Isherwood, who was pleased to marry her, purely to help her, even though he was gay. Christopher Isherwood turned her marriage proposal down. She married Auden before the war and they remained married till she died, even if they hardly ever saw each other. Interesting, right!