Germany was not de-Nazified Klaus’s own Nazi nemeses were recycling themselves into postwar positions of power.

After the war, he was not deluded that the problem was over. Unlike some fellow artists who thought they could work with the more “open-minded” Nazis, Mann knew it was impossible to compromise with such evil. He watched the rise of fascism in Germany, as opportunists infiltrated key institutions and then seized power by appealing to the fears and frustrations of the masses. While comfortable with his sexuality, Mann found the political realities of his time appalling. What was depressing to him was his own inability to maintain any long-term romantic relationships. Rumors of incestuous overtures from his father or sister did not bother him particularly.

Mann was openly homosexual on rare occasions (when he was desperate to enlist in the US Armed Forces, for example) he had to deny engaging in “perverse acts,” which to him was not untrue. The Klaus Mann who emerges is a free-thinking, uncompromising aesthete struggling to create an unconventional sort of lifestyle for himself in the first half of the twentieth century…rather than the first half of the twenty-first century, which might have been a better fit. Biographer Spotts tells the story of Mann’s life in a straightforward, chronological fashion, drawing from Mann’s letters, diaries, manuscripts, and published works. His writings addressed a wide range of cultural and political affairs he is most famous for his 1926 novel, Der fromme Tanz, which explored themes of homosexuality for autobiographical works like The Turning Point and for scandalous roman à clefs, like Mephisto. Novelist, journalist, and playwright Klaus Mann ( 1906− 1949) left Germany with the rise of fascism in 1933 and wandered the émigré cities of Europe before landing in America, which eventually granted him citizenship.

Der fromme Tanz by Klaus Mann