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

by Andrea Weiss

Book Overview

A biography of Thomas Mann's two eldest children that provides intriguing insight into both their lives and the political and cultural shifts at the same time.

Thomas Mann's two eldest children, Erika and Klaus, were unconventional, rebellious, and fiercely devoted to each other. Empowered by their close bond, they espoused vehemently anti-Nazi views in a Europe swept up in fascism and were openly, even defiantly, gay in an age of secrecy...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226836797
• ISBN13: 9780226836799
• Release Date: January 2025
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 310 Pages
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

fascinating literary history

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.

Making a Way in the World

Weiss, Andrea. "In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain", University of Chicago Press, 2008. Making a Way in the World Amos Lassen The story of Erika and Klaus Mann, the children of Thomas Mann, is one that books are written about and Andrea Weiss has written an intrinsically dramatic book about the two. Their lives combine homosexuality, political conflict and above all the fact that are the children of a father who overshadowed them--a man who is regarded as Germany's greatest author. Weiss looks at the children and the father and gives us a wonderful book. Klaus and Erika Mann were unconventional and rebellious and they were completely devoted to each other. They were anti-Nazi at a time when Europe was succumbing to Fascism. They were openly gay at a time of secrecy and repression--they were not just open but defiant. They were serious actors and performance artists before the medium ever had a name and they were political visionaries who wrote articles and lectured. What we get in Weiss's book is a look at the literary climate, the intellectual life, the political atmosphere and the sexual mores of the times of their lives. As children Klaus and Erika had a make believe world that they created and this was the beginning of their devotion to each other. When the Nazis came to power, they added political commitment to their artistic talents and because of this they were exiled. After leaving Germany, they came to the United States and went into the armed forces. When they went abroad they had a wide coterie of friends including Jean Cocteau, Christopher Isherwood, and Andre Gide. Erika actually married W.H. Auden. Klaus's life was not so fortunate Life in exile was not good for him and he developed a serious heroin addiction and he took his own life in 1949. Erika died twenty years later. The two were self-indulgent and they were both involved with drugs and sexually promiscuous. They remained elitists all of their lives. Klaus wanted to be a writer but had a rough time being unfavorably compared to his father. There is a great deal of information about the Mann family in the book and the political climate in which the Manns lived plays a major role in the book. I do not know that we really need to know so much about the younger Manns but as I read the book I could not help think what an amazing time in history was the time in which they lived.

The two oldest children of Thomas Mann attempt to make their way in the world

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 per