Klaus Mann: The Turning Point / Der Wendepunkt (1942/1952)
Klaus Mann: The Turning Point / Der Wendepunkt (1942/1952)
Mein Ehrgeiz war, die Talente der Emigration beim europäischen Publikum einzuführen, gleichzeitig aber die Emigration mit den geistigen Strömungen in ihren Gastländern vertraut zu machen. Dazu kam, als essentielles Element meines redaktionellen Programms, das Politisch-Polemische. Die Sammlung war schöngeistig, dabei aber militant – eine Publikation von Niveau, aber nicht ohne Tendenz.
[My ambition was to introduce the émigré talents to the European public, but also to familiarise the émigrés with the intellectual currents in their host countries. Then there was the political-polemical aspect, an essential element of my editorial concept. Die Sammlung was aesthetically-minded, but also militant – a high-brow publication, but not without a slant. (ed. trans.)]
Klaus Mann, Der Wendepunkt, 1952
Klaus Mann’s autobiography Der Wendepunkt, which first appeared in English as The Turning Point in 1942, was first published in an expanded German version in 1952, two years after the author's death. The over-500-page book was Mann's second detailed autobiography after Kind dieser Zeit (1932). Roughly half of its content deals with his experiences in exile.
Similarly to his novel Der Vulkan (1939), in The Turning Point Klaus Mann presents a broad panorama of émigré experiences. The loss of the homeland is conveyed to the reader through arresting scenes such as spending one last night in the already relinquished family villa in Munich, touring the destroyed ruins as a member of the US Army in May 1945, or interrogating the imprisoned NS politician Hermann Göring a few days later. The most important turning point in his life was marked by Mann's decision no longer to satisfy himself with his role as “commentator, warner, propagandist and critic” but to volunteer as a soldier and go to war. At the end of the book, he writes that the historical process will continue and, even after the War, will be fraught with new crises and new turning points.
As a historical document, The Turning Point shows unequivocally the ant-Nazi stance of the author and his émigré companions. At one point he writes that he and other émigrés could never go back, because the disgust would kill them – the disgust at their own pitifulness and at the terrible happenings going on around them.
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