1933 - 1941

Katia and Thomas Mann lived with their younger children first in southern France, then in Switzerland, until they moved to the United States of America in 1938 and from 1942 lived in California. Erika Mann (1905 - 1969; Sophie Rois) became known through the cabaret "Die Pfeffermühle", which she opened together with Therese Giehse (1898 - 1975; Katharina Thalbach) in Zurich. She hates the National Socialists and pesters her indecisive father until he publicly speaks out against the German government for the first time in early 1936. Klaus Mann (1906 - 1949; Sebastian Koch) acquired American citizenship in 1936. He made a name for himself as an author with an anti-fascist exile magazine and the roman à clef "Mephisto" (1936) about his former brother-in-law Gustaf Gründgens (1899 - 1963). He's addicted to heroin. His lover, the American Thomas Quinn Curtiss, persuades him to go to rehab, but when Klaus relapses, Curtiss leaves him. Heinrich Mann, who married Nelly in Nice in 1939, also came to America in 1940 and celebrated his 70th birthday there the following year. Since his books are ignored in the US, he remains financially dependent on his younger brother.