bloomsburyist:

Here, let me tell you all about these long-dead, wildly codependent child prodigies/Weimar darlings who cause me acute emotional pain…. 

The two oldest siblings in the hyper-literate Mann family, Erika and Klaus were born a year apart, but behaved, from early childhood onwards, “twin-like in an almost provocative way” (Klaus’s words.)  Faced with an abusive father and a mother whose relationship with her own twin brother prompted rumors of incest, they instead created “an exclusive make-believe world in which they [shared] a secret language and role-played a variety of bizarre characters” (Andrea Weiss.)  Klaus again: “We did not need the outside world… What could it offer us?  In our own realm we found everything we could wish for.  We had our own laws and taboos, games and superstitions; our songs and slogans, our arbitrary animosities and predilections.  We were self-sufficient.”  Both were queer; both had enough pride to verge on the ‘smug’; both made it a point to remain outspoken against homophobic policies throughout their lives.

Klaus grew up to be a writer; Erika, a writer and actress.  In 1922, they moved to Berlin (“Sodom and Gomorrah in a Prussian tempo”), and rapidly established their reputation both as a formidably talented addition to the theater scene, and as the most charming set of pseudo-twin socialists to be seen for miles around.  Their love lives were jumbled to a near-slapstick degree— memorably, Klaus’s fiancée once cheated on Klaus with Erika, aided by the fact that Erika’s fiancé was elsewhere, busy cheating on Erika with Klaus.  And that doesn’t even begin to cover the Annemarie-Holds-a-Torch-and-it-Never-Goes-Out debacle of 1931.  

When the Nazis rose to power, Erika’s first response was to open an anti-fascist cabaret; her second was to flee with Klaus, joining the ranks of exiled intellectuals in New York City.  Both continued to publish prolifically throughout the ’40s; after the war, however, the Manns found themselves persecuted by the FBI, under suspicion of homosexuality and leftist leanings— an experience which, in combination with the destruction he had witnessed in Germany, left Klaus severely depressed.  In 1949, paranoid that he might be losing the affections of his sister to his father, he committed suicide; Erika, despite surviving him by twenty years, is said to have never recovered.  Before Klaus’s death, the two had grown apart— due primarily to Klaus’s ever-increasing drug use— and in her unfinished autobiography (which refuses to mention her childhood,) he plays a disarmingly minor role.  At one point, however, she tells us about a time when they were both very young, and had been taken out for a walk with their governess.  Seeing a girl playing alone in the park, she remembers being perplexed, and blurting out: “Where is your Eissi [nickname for Klaus]?  One has to have an Eissi!”  Until that moment, it had not occurred to her that a girl might lack a brother for a playmate.  Erika concludes this anecdote by saying that she still believes that one has to have an Eissi, which is why it has been so difficult for her to stay alive these two decades without him.

Today, Erika and Klaus Mann maintain a small but devoted cult following; all of their works are still in print.   

also one time Thomas Mann asked Christopher Isherwood if he’d marry Erika Mann to help her get out of Germany

he felt he couldn’t do it, so what did he do? 

he telegrammed WH Auden, who responded with a single word:

delighted!

they got married; Erika got out of Germany

if that isn’t one of the cutest and happiest stories you’ve ever heard then I don’t get you