In The Shadow of Magic Mountain

Great news! Re-issued by University of Chicago Press in 2025 in paperback!

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 and repression. Although their father’s fame has unfairly overshadowed their legacy, Erika and Klaus were serious authors, performance artists before the medium existed, and political visionaries whose searing essays and lectures are still relevant today. And, as revealed in this dual biography, their story offers a fascinating view of the literary and intellectual life, political turmoil, and shifting sexual mores of their times.      

In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain begins with an account of the make-believe world the Manns created together as children—an early sign of their talents as well as the intensity of their relationship. Weiss documents the lifelong artistic collaboration that followed, showing how, as the Nazis took power, Erika and Klaus infused their work with a shared sense of political commitment. Their views earned them exile, and after escaping Germany they eventually moved to the United States, where both served as members of the U.S. armed forces. Abroad, they enjoyed a wide circle of famous friends, including Andre Gide, Christopher Isherwood, Jean Cocteau, and W. H. Auden, whom Erika married in 1935. But the demands of life in exile, Klaus’s heroin addiction, and Erika’s new allegiance to their father strained their mutual devotion, and in 1949 Klaus committed suicide.

Beautiful never-before-seen photographs illustrate this riveting tale of two brave nonconformists whose dramatic lives open up new perspectives on the history of the twentieth century.

In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story
University of Chicago Press, 2008.  272 pages.

“Andrea Weiss proves here that complex life forms can thrive in the dark. In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain illuminates not only its primary subjects, Erika and Klaus Mann, but also the father who overshadowed them. A brilliant and important work of historical and literary portraiture.”
–David Hajdu, author of Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina

“Weiss has got hold of an intrinsically dramatic story, and she tells it well. The dual lives of Thomas Mann’s eldest children combine homosexuality, political conflict, and the unfathomable burden of being the offspring of Germany’s greatest living writer. The chief merit of Weiss’s lively rendering of this story is the way she links the fates of Mann’s progeny not only to one another but to many of the major figures of European culture. Hence her book also tells us a great deal about the lives of anti-fascist intellectuals and artists in the Nazi era.”
–Paul Robinson, author of Gay Lives: Homosexual Autobiography from John Addington Symonds to Paul Monette

“In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain [is] an extravagance of highbrow gossip, with such raisins in the cake as Andre Gide, Bertolt Brecht, Sybille Bedford, Jean Cocteau, Stefan Zweig, Muriel Rukeyser, Christopher Isherwood, Janet Flanner, James Baldwin and Carson McCullers.” 
–John Leonard, “New Books,” Harper’s Magazine     

“Andrea Weiss tells their story with enthusiasm, sympathy and insight.”  
–Allan Massie, “Children of a Genius,” The Spectator (U.K.)

“In her useful and sympathetic book about the Mann family, In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain, Andrea Weiss… charts the shifting nature of their relationship with considerable care.”
–Colm Tóibín, “I Could Sleep with All of Them: In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain by Andrea Weiss,” The London Review of Books

“Theirs is a fascinating tale. Outside the pages of the Manns’ own memoirs and essays, or of Klaus’s deeply personal fiction, it’s hard to imagine it more sympathetically told.
–Ian Brunskill, “In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain,” The Times (London)

“A fascinating glimpse into the two Manns’ eventful and celebrity-filled lives.  Andrea Weiss’s access to some of the most intimate writings lends real depth, and her vivid descriptions of many of the Manns’ works of fiction and nonfiction — daughter, son, and father — will send readers in search of some of these classics.” 

–Matha E. Stone, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide

Available in paperback, hardcover or ebook from:

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo5620937.html

Also available in German (Flucht ins Leben: Die Erika und Klaus Mann Story) and in Swedish (Flykt till livet – berättelsen om Erika och Klaus Mann)