The Mann who knew everyone

Thomas Mann, despite strong homosexual emotions, had six children. The two eldest, Erika and Klaus, born in 1905 and 1906 respectively, were delinquent almost from the word go: shoplifting, prank phone calls, trickery on old ladies, special schools. They were also artistically precocious; the frantic pair took German Expressionist cabaret to Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, London, New York and Moscow. By the time Klaus reached 21, he and his sister had frolicked right round the globe. Klaus never stopped travelling, and this biography is a feverish sequence of arrivals and departures.

Erika was more the performer, Klaus more the writer. Both were openly gay. Klaus explored his homosexuality in his first book, published in 1925, and in many works thereafter. He found rough trade in every city he visited; 1932, for example, finds him frequenting Piccadilly Circus and the Turkish baths in Jermyn Street. But Paris became his spiritual home, where he smoked opium with Cocteau, terrified Julien Green, and worshipped Gide (to Gide’s annoyance).