Admission free
Actress and journalist, opponent of the Nazis who emigrated in 1933
Erika Mann, 1930er Jahre | Literaturarchiv der Monacensia, EM F 405
As the first-born child of writer Thomas Mann and his wife Katianée Pringsheim, Erika Mann grew up in a liberal and artistic household. She took an early interest in acting, and even before taking her secondary school leaving examinations at Munich’s Luisen-Gymnasium, she was recruited by Max Reinhardt for the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. This was followed by engagements in Bremen and Hamburg, where she performed in the world premiere of Anja und Esther written by her brother Klaus Mann, who was one year younger and remained very close to her throughout her life.
In 1926, she married the actor Gustaf Gründgens, divorcing him in 1929. A nine-month trip around the world with her brother in 1927 marked the start of her journalistic work for radio, the newspaper Münchner Neueste Nachrichten , and magazines such as the Berlin-based Tempo. This was also the start of her lifelong dedication to political issues. In 1932, her participation in an event organized by the pacifist International League for Peace and Freedom finally earned her the enmity of the National Socialists, who put an end to her theatrical career in the same year by exerting massive pressure on promoters and audiences.
Erika Mann and her partner Therese Giehse founded the literary-political cabaret Die Pfeffermühle in Munich on January 1, 1933, but she and her family went into exile when the National Socialists came to power. She revived Die Pfeffermühle in Zurich as an anti-Hitler exile cabaret, whereupon the National Socialists withdrew her citizenship in 1935. Erika Mann went to America in 1937, followed a year later by her parents and her brother Klaus Mann.
During and after the war she worked as a correspondent for various English and American newspapers, the BBC and the Office of War Information in New York. Collaboration with her father began with her making cuts to Thomas Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus. She went on to become one of her father’s closest confidants, particularly after their return to Switzerland in 1952, also acting as his legal and artistic executor after his death in 1955.
Keiser-Hayne, Helga: Erika Mann und ihr politisches Kabarett „Die Pfeffermühle“ 1933–1937. Texte, Bilder, Hintergründe, Reinbek 1995.
Weiss, Andrea: Flucht ins Leben. Die Erika und Klaus Mann-Story, Reinbek 2000.
Von der Lühe, Irmela: Erika Mann. Eine Lebensgeschichte, Reinbek 2009.
