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In his first book to date, Dr. James Robert Keller takes on The Role of Political and Sexual Identity in the Works of Klaus Mann. Keller offers a thorough investigation of a number of Mann's fictional and non-fictional writings by placing "his sexual themes sufficiently into their political and historical context." From Mann's vast literary production, Keller focuses on a selection of his prose fiction, three autobiographies, as well as essays, drama, letters, and diaries. Keller's study is organized along thematic lines of Mann's thoughts rather than adhering to a timeline. The book's fresh perspective on sexual and political identity in broader terms is guaranteed by utilizing current theories on personal identity and specifically queer theories of sexual identity. Keller's interpretations of Mann's writings are supported by research of Erik Erikson, Erich Fromm, Sigmund Freud, Eve Sedgewick, and Judith Butler among others. Keller's organization of themes make his study highly comprehensible for anyone slightly familiar with (and interested in) Klaus Mann's literary production and the larger picture of questions of identity in the first half of the twentieth century. The many subdivisions throughout the five main chapters as well as Keller's prose add to the book's readability. Although scholarly in its approach, the limited number of endnotes lets the text flow more easily. The extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources is complemented by an index of names.
In the first chapter, Keller starts off by discussing
Klaus Mann's
third novel Treffpunkt im Unendlichen (1932) since it "occupies a key
position in his [Mann's] fiction because it exemplifies his move from
individual to social or political themes." This novel deals with two forms
of identity, namely national identity and generational identity discussed in
Keller's study. By emphasizing that "identity suggests belonging to a
larger group" but "on the other [hand] it also expresses what
distinguishes one from others, one's particularity" Keller pinpoints Mann's
dilemma in life. Although this is not a new view at this author's personal life
situation, Keller gives it a new treatment. He moves beyond Gerhard Härle's
important psychoanalytic study on Thomas and Klaus Mann's homosexuality
(Männerweiblichkeit: Zur Homosexualität bei Klaus und Thomas Mann, 1993) by
including "aspects of political identity in Klaus Mann's work" and
hence presenting Mann as the sexually and politically challenging writer that
he was.
In this first chapter, Keller also discusses Mann's essay "Homosexualität und Fascismus" (1934), which he identifies as "the only essay devoted exclusively to the questions of sexual and political identity." The re-criminalization of male homosexuality in the Soviet Union certainly caused personal concern for Mann as a gay man, yet it quickly moved far beyond that. He was mostly troubled with Gorky's comment on homosexuality and fascism, which he paraphrased as: 'Destroy homosexuality and fascism will disappear.' Although Mann was deeply concerned about this particular new law, Keller argues for a linkage of sexual and political identity in Mann's thinking: "He [Mann] perceived a crisis not only within Germany but also in the world's view of the new [Hitler] regime, and he was startled that the exile press was not confronting the regime directly and criticizing it for all of its human abuses."
In chapter two, Keller turns to Klaus Mann's fictional works, which are "characterized by realism of plot and setting, including a pronounced focus on autobiographical elements." The four fictional works in question here are Kindernovelle (1926) as a literary answer to Thomas Mann's novel Unordnung und frühes Leid (1925), "Der Vater lacht" and "Märchen." All three writings are viewed through their employment of laughter, which Keller interprets with Helmuth Plessner's 1970 study Laughing and Crying: A Study of the Limits of Human Behavior. He argues for laughter instead of language as an "indicator of characters' identities" and sees it as a "subterfuge of communicating their feelings towards a father figure." Keller sees Kindernovelle as being "actually about procreation, childbearing, and child rearing, but in other families, families in general, not the family ostensibly treated in it" because of "the enigmatic place of children in the story." Mann wrote this novel during times of an emerging "personal and sexual subjectivity," which shows also in his gradual geographical independence from his family.
The study's third chapter takes the father-son
relationship of
Thomas and Klaus further by considering the latter's "search for a mentor
and ideal to emulate." The French author André Gide became Klaus' mentor
and the subject of a biography: André Gide and the Crisis of Modern Thought
(1943). Keller objects to focusing on Gide's and Mann's homosexuality as the
reason for their affinity and instead stresses that "Mann's reasons for
concentrating on Gide were related to his own sexual identity and political
worldview, and Gide contrasted with the image of the father as presented in
Mann's fiction." Also discussed here are Mann's three
autobiographies Kind dieser Zeit (1932) and The Turning Point (1942), and Der
Wendepunkt (1949) that all deal with issues of "sexuality, homosexuality,
political matters, and questions of innovation and tradition in literature and
literary taste." Mann moved from being an enfant terrible toward
developing "a sense of his social-self identity," which for Mann
included finding a place in society and shedding the sad role of the outsider.
In addition, Mann would eventually edit two literary journals, Die Sammlung
(1933-35) and Decision (1940-41). While his task allowed Mann to
"establish further his political identity as a spokesperson and
representative German and European," Keller points out the affect it had
on Mann's sexual identity: it distracted him from love relationships and a
"lack in his sexual identity."
Chapters four and five are devoted to a large number of novels, plays, and short stories that amount to too many to be listed individually. To still provide a sense of the chapter, Keller may be quoted from the conclusion: "Some of the thematic patterns that structure Mann's writings were found to include his political partisanship, individual love versus social duty, a common replacement father figure in the family, partner swapping and free love, Mann's despair over politics, the artwork as progeny, supernatural births, and his obsession with death." Keller stresses that the "interdependence of political concerns and sexual identity were the forces that motivated Mann to write," which is evident in the association of love/sexual identity and politics/political identity. Mann's politics are described as anti-fascist and non-communist, and not a rebellion against the father. His fight against fascism was always motivated by the quest of how to defeat it and not by the question of why it is happening. In terms of Mann's sexual identity, Keller insists that "in fact [Mann] never really thought of his sexuality in terms of proscriptions and forbidden wishes." Finally, Dr. Keller takes Mann's explorations into relationship of sexual, political, and personal identities into the latter half of the twentieth century. This is an acknowledgement of Klaus Mann as a political and private person that the latter surely would have appreciated.