Escape to Life. German culture in exile
Escape to Life. German Culture in Exile is a book written by Erika and Klaus Mann about the artistic, scientific and political representatives of German emigration during National Socialism .
It was a commissioned work by the US publishing house Houghton Mifflin Company from Boston , who wanted to publish a comprehensive and informative Who's Who in Exile . The authors themselves were in exile in America . Many of the portrayed musicians, writers, artists, scientists and medical professionals frequented the house of their father Thomas Mann . The volume, published in 1939 under the English original title Escape to Life , comprised 375 pages and contained short illustrated biographies, anecdotes and character analyzes of German and Austrian exiles such as Albert Einstein , Lion Feuchtwanger , Sigmund Freud , George Grosz , Ferdinand Kramer , Thomas Mann, Max Reinhardt , Arnold Schönberg , Ernst Toller , Bruno Walter and Stefan Zweig . The chapter on culture in the Third Reich , on the other hand, dealt with people who had come to terms with National Socialist Germany, such as Gustaf Gründgens . The book was a great success when it came out. The German-language edition with the subtitle German Culture in Exile appeared for the first time in 1991 with an afterword by the editor Heribert Hoven at edition Spangenberg in Munich. The original edition in English was formerly translated from German by Zurich-based lecturer Mary Hottinger-Mackie ; 95 percent of the formerly German texts have been preserved for the German edition, the rest has been re-translated.
- "Klaus Mann has been rediscovered by a young generation and is receiving attention as an extraordinary person, artist and homo politicus, who, as a mediator of a better Germany, was superior to most of his contemporaries." (From the foreword by Heribert Hoven / Eberhard Spangenberg zur German version of Escape to Life. German Culture in Exile ).
- The film Escape to Life - The Erika and Klaus Mann Story from 2000 is a documentary of the life of Erika and Klaus Mann by Andrea Weiss and Wieland Speck with Maren Kroymann and Cora Frost .
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- Erika Mann, Klaus Mann: Escape to Life , Houghton Mifflin Comp., Boston, 1939
- Erika Mann, Klaus Mann: Escape to Life. German culture in exile . Edited and with an afterword by Heribert Hoven., Ed. Spangenberg, Munich 1991 (first German-language edition), ISBN 3-89409-055-3
- Erika Mann, Klaus Mann: Escape to Life. German Culture in Exile (= Rororo 13992), edited and with an afterword by Heribert Hoven, Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1996, ISBN 3-499-13992-8 .
- Klaus Mann: The turning point. A life report (= Rororo 24409). Extended new edition. Edited with text variants and drafts in the appendix and with an afterword by Fredric Kroll . Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-499-24409-8 .