The Turning Point: Autobiography of Klaus Mann

by Klaus Mann

Shelley L. Frisch (Rutgers University, USA) (Introduction)

In this second installment of his autobiography (following Kind dieser Zeit), Klaus Mann describes his childhood in the family of Thomas Mann and his circle, his adolescence in the Weimar Republic, and his experiences as a young homosexual and early opponent of Nazism. He also describes how, after the Reichstag elections of September 1930, friends and family began to discuss the looming prospect of emigration and exile. When Stefan Zweig published an article claiming that democracy was ineffective, Klaus replied: "I want to have nothing, nothing at all to do with this perverse kind of `radicalism.'" After hearing one of his working-class lovers in a storm trooper's uniform say, "They are going to be the bosses and that's all there is to it," Klaus fled to Paris in March of 1933. He became one of one hundred thousand German refugees in France, losing his publisher, friends and associates, and readers in the process. He describes finding a German Jewish publisher in Amsterdam and the difficulties of starting a journal of emigre writing. In 1934, his German passport expired and he was forced to renew temporary travel documents every six months. The President of Czechoslovakia offered citizenship to the entire Mann family in 1936 but then Hitler invaded that country and Klaus emigrated to the United States. Despite statelessness, bouts of syphilis and drug abuse, neither his pace of travel nor publication slowed. His novel Der Vulkan is among the most famous books about German exiles during World War II but it sold only 300 copies. Klaus stopped reading and writing German in the U.S. "The writer must not cling with stubborn nostalgia to his mother tongue," he writes in The Turning Point. He must "find a new vocabulary, a new set of rhythms and devices, a new medium to articulate his sorrow and emotions, his protests and his prayers." This extraordinary memoir, an eyewitness account of the rise of Nazism by an out gay man, was Klaus Mann's first book written in English.

• ISBN13: 9780910129145
• Publish Date: 26 December 2013 (first published 1 September 1984)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Markus Wiener Publishing Inc
• Edition: illustrated Edition
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 398
• Language: English

Reviews

[brokentune]

"The baby carriage is the paradise lost. The only happy period in our life is that part of it we spent asleep. There is no happiness where there is memory. To remember things means to yearn for the past. Our nostalgia begins with out consciousness."

I nearly started this post pointing out again that Klaus Mann's literary output has always suffered from being overshadowed by the works of his father. But really, whilst this is true, I don't want to lead the discussion into a comparison of Klaus and Thomas because I personally have a much higher regard for Klaus' writing. He was a master satirist, a sensitive observer, and at the same time he had a passion for making a point.

The Turning Point is partly a memoir and partly a historical sketch describing both the Mann household and the political and social events that shaped the family and the first half of the 20th century. Klaus' wit shines through at the beginning of the book, but the latter parts are full of his disdain of German politics during the rise of Nazism, which eventually lead him to be utterly frustrated with German society which cast him out and which he could not return to. Even on his return to Germany from exile at the end of the war, he could no longer fit in - because people had changed. There was no going back.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the Mann family or the detail of political and cultural life in Germany during the 1920s and 30s. My recommendation does, however, come with a caveat: I did get the impression that Klaus was not the most reliable of narrators. It is not that I felt he was deliberately misleading, but in the first instance, he was a novelist and a dramatist, and I got the impression that at times poetic licence may have prevailed over research or analysis.

Still, it is a a fascinating read and we do get to find out why Thomas Mann was referred to as "the magician":

"He came to see us at bedtime - a rare event in itself! - and developed his proposed strategy. The decapitated guest, he suggested, wasn't really so frightful. He tried to get the better of us by sheer bluff. "Just don't look at him when he comes again!" he advised us. "Then he'll probably vanish. If he still annoys you ask him politely to beat it. Tell him that a children's bedroom is no place for a decent phantom to hang out and that he should be ashamed of himself. This may be enough to get rid of him, but if he still hesitates, you may warn him that your father is very irritable and just doesn't like to have ugly spooks in his house. At this point he'll disappear without making any more fuss. For it is a well-known fact in ghostly circles that I can make myself very unpleasant, indeed."
We followed his advice and the spook presently dissolved. It was an imposing proof of Father's almost superhuman insight and influence. From that time on we began to call him "Zauberer" - magician."