Erika Mann - Acting and Writing

Acting and Writing

In 1924, she began serious theater studies in Berlin and played in Berlin and Bremen. In 1925, she played in the premier of her brother Klaus's play Anja und Esther.

On July 24, 1926, she married German actor Gustaf Gründgens, but they divorced in 1929. In 1927, she and Klaus undertook a trip around the world, which they documented in their book Rundherum; Das Abenteuer einer Weltreise. The following year, she began to be active in journalism and in politics.

She was involved as an actor in the lesbian film Mädchen in Uniform (1931, Leontine Sagan) but left the production before its completion. In 1932 she published the first of many children's books. Shortly thereafter she became involved in several lesbian affairs in her private life. Her first noted affair was with actress Pamela Wedekind, whom she met in Berlin, and who was engaged to her brother Klaus. She later became involved with director Therese Giehse, and journalists Betty Cox and Annemarie Schwarzenbach, whom she served with as a war correspondent during World War II. As was later written, her relationships were both sexually passionate and intellectually stimulating.

In 1933, she, Klaus, and Therese Giehse had founded a cabaret in Munich called Die Pfeffermühle, for which Erika wrote most of the material, much of which was anti-Fascist. Erika was the last member of the Mann family to leave Germany after the Nazi regime was elected. She saved many of Thomas Mann's papers from their Munich home when she escaped to Zurich. In 1936, Die Pfeffermühle opened again in Zurich and became a rallying point for the exiles.

In 1935 she undertook a lavender marriage (marriage of convenience) to the homosexual English poet W. H. Auden, in order to obtain British citizenship. She and Auden never lived together, but remained friends and technically married until Erika's death.

In 1937, she crossed over to New York, where Die Pfeffermühle (as The Peppermill) opened its doors again. They lived (with Therese Giehse and her brother Klaus Mann and Miró) in a large group of artists in exile that included Kurt Weill, Ernst Toller and Sonja Sekula.

In 1938, she and Klaus reported on the Spanish Civil War, and her book School for Barbarians, about Nazi Germany's educational system, was published. The following year, they published Escape to Life, a book about famous German exiles. During the war, she was active as a journalist in England. After World War II, Mann was one of the few women who covered the Nuremberg Trials. Following the war, both Klaus and Erika came under an FBI investigation into their political views and rumored homosexuality. In 1949, becoming increasingly depressed and disillusioned over post-war torn Germany, Klaus Mann committed suicide. This event devastated Erika Mann.

In 1952, she moved back to Switzerland with her parents. She had begun to help her father with his writing and had become one of his closest confidantes. After the deaths of her father and her brother Klaus, she became responsible for their works. She died in Zürich.

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