Customer Reviews

In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Erika and Klaus Mann were the two oldest children of Thomas Mann. Erika was born in 1905 and died in 1969. Klaus was born in 1906 and committed suicide in 1949. They both were talented and dynamic but flawed people. (Yes, everyone is flawed, but with some their flaws so pale in comparison to their character and achievements that they are easily overlooked.) I don't say this because of the liberal political views of Erika and Klaus or their sexual preferences. Rather, both Erika and Klaus were overly self-indulgent, sometimes lapsing into dissipation, especially as regards their sexual promiscuity and their persistent drug use (in Klaus's case, drug addiction); and both clearly were children of privilege, who might have paid lip service to empathizing with the common man but never were able -- or inclined, to judge from this book -- to let go of their parents' purse-strings. Like many liberals of privilege, they remained elitists.

The title of the book has two possible implications: one, that Erika and Klaus never were able to fully live their own lives but instead were hamstrung in various ways by their famous father or by public perceptions of him; or two, that it is one of those injustices of fate that in the cultural history of the Twentieth Century, Erika Mann and Klaus Mann barely left a mark, while their father is generally thought to be one of the literary giants of the century. The book itself suggests that the first implication is at least partly true for Klaus Mann, who ardently desired, even existentially needed, to be a writer but never could disregard the inevitable unfavorable comparisons to his father. But that first implication does not really fit Erika. And the second possible implication, to my mind, fits neither. They are "interesting" but decidedly minor figures of the Twentieth Century; neither, even together, truly warrrants a book-length biography.

Nonetheless, I can recommend IN THE SHADOW OF THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, although not unreservedly so (hence the four stars, actually three-and-a-half rounded up). There are two principal reasons that elevate the book above arcana. First, it includes much of interest about others in the remarkable Mann family, including, most importantly, Thomas Mann, but also his older brother Heinrich and his wife (and mother of Erika and Klaus), Katia Pringsheim, the daughter of two secular Jews and a remarkable woman in her own right. Second, the contextual discssion of the periods of the Twentieth Century in which Erika and Klaus lived is often instructive, especially the portrayals of Weimar Germany and (later) post-War United States. Erika and Klaus, as well as Thomas and Katia, had fled Nazi-occupied Europe to this country and all were staunch supporters of the Allied war effort. Klaus even served in the U.S. Army and Erika conducted broadcasts in German of Allied news and messages. But after the war, they were unfairly enveloped in anti-communist and anti-intellectual (and perhaps anti-homosexual) hysteria and eventually the FBI and INS succeeded in making them feel so unwelcome that Erika and her parents (Klaus having committed suicide in the interim) returned to Europe. There was not a germ of truth to the suspicion of communist sympathies; instead, their crime was that they were "premature anti-Fascists" (people, especially non-Jews, who had publicly opposed the Nazis before the U.S. government officially opposed the Nazis -- such people were suspected by the FBI and McCarthyites as communists at heart). Yet another blot on the escutcheon of the FBI (and this country).

By and large, Andrea Weiss does a good job in teasing a story from myriad sources, and despite obvious temptations, she never slips into a gossipy tone. The writing, although solid, is not special; there are a few instances of melodrama; the organization at times could be tighter; and towards the end of the book there are signs of mild sloppiness (for example, "artillery" is used on page 209 when "aerial bombing" is meant, and on page 220 Bruno Walter is referred to as a great "composer" when "conductor" is much more appropriate).

This portrait of the two eldest Mann children (they had six) is thorough, well-paced, and sympathetic. Although the era they lived in has been endlessly documented, rightly so as a cautionary tale, Weiss shows its politics, both in Europe and in the U.S., through the lens of the Mann siblings' activism, giving the reader a fresh perspective. Erika and Klaus were both talented artists and passionate anti-Fascists. They were both peripatetic yet tied in arguably unhealthy ways to their parents, especially to their famous father. I learned a lot and came away with an ever greater appreciation of the personal toll this time in history took on people of conscious.