The Manns - Novel of a Century (part 1)

Elisabeth guides us through the story of her family, the Manns, arguably the most famous German literary family. This three-part 'novel of a century' is related through a kaleidoscopic blend of interviews with contemporaries, recollections and fictionalised reconstructions. 1923 to 1933: Living in Munich with his wife Katia and his six children, Thoman Mann enjoyed literary renown and financial comfort. While he steadfastly devoted himself to his activity as a writer, his two eldest children, Klaus and Erika, experimented with drugs and free love. Throwing themselves wholeheartedly into the Hamburg and Berliner Art scene, they were fodder for the gutter press: Klaus and Gustav Gründgens, Pamela Wedekind and Erika, who with whom? Erika and Gustav finally married. Klaus had affairs with young men, unlike his father, who derived a powerful motive for his work by stifling his desire for young men. Thomas Mann's elder brother Heinrich, who enjoyed Berlin nightlife and was partial to buxom woman, fell in love with the nightclub hostess Nelly Kröger and scandalised his family. The growing power of the Nazi Party altered the lives of everyone in the family. Emigration was inescapable.