Photo (Detail): picture alliance/akg
Klaus Mann
(born 18.11.1906 in Munich, died 21.05.1949 in Cannes, France), writer.
The son of Thomas Mann, he worked as a theatre critic for a Berlin newspaper for a few months after leaving school and then worked as a freelance writer. His first play Anja und Esther premiered in Munich in 1925. His first novel Der fromme Tanz appeared in 1926 and is considered one of the first homosexual novels in the German-speaking world. In 1933 he emigrated to the USA via various stations in Europe and took American citizenship. From exile he sharply criticised the NSDAP, among other things in magazine articles. His work, consisting of several plays, seven novels, numerous essays and reports as well as two autobiographies, was posthumously rediscovered after the Second World War and became more widely known. Today, Klaus Mann is one of the most important representatives of German-language exile literature after 1933.