Mephisto – Novel of a Career is the sixth novel by German author Klaus Mann.
The novel adapts themes from the Faust legend to follow the life of actor Hendrik Höfgen, a thinly disguised portrait of German actor Gustaf Gründgens. The actor abandons his conscience to ingratiate himself with the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis), keep his job and improve his social positions.
Mephisto was first published in 1936 by an Exilliteratur firm based in Amsterdam, while the author was in self-imposed exile from the Hitler regime. It was published for the first time in Germany in the East Berlin Aufbau-Verlag in 1956.
An English translation, by Robin Smyth, was published in 1977.
The novel was adapted into an award-winning film of the same title, released in 1981.
Contents
Background
Klaus Mann fled to exile in March 1933 to avoid political persecution by Hitler's regime. In Amsterdam he worked for the exile magazine Die Sammlung, which attacked National Socialism. His friend and publisher Fritz Helmut Landshoff made him a "relatively generous offer", as Mann wrote to his mother on 21 July 1935. He was to receive a monthly wage to write a novel. Mann originally intended to write a utopian novel about Europe in 200 years. However, Mann discarded this idea stating that he could not write an apolitical novel at that point in history. The author Hermann Kesten suggested that he write a novel of a homosexual careerist in the Third Reich, with the director of the state theatre Gustaf Gründgens as a subject matter. Gründgens's homosexuality was widely known.
In 1924, Klaus Mann, his sister Erika, Gründgens, and Pamela Wedekind had all worked together on a stage production of Mann's Anja und Esther and had toured through Germany. Gründgens and Erika Mann got engaged while Klaus Mann similarly got engaged to Wedekind. The first two got married in 1926 but divorced in 1929 and Wedekind married writer Carl Sternheim a year later. Gründgens and Mann had both belonged in the early 1930s to a strongly left-wing theatre group that in January 1933 was touring Spain. When Hitler became German Chancellor on 30 January 1933, the group was in Madrid, and Mann urged Gründgens not to return to Germany. When Gründgens disregarded Mann's advice and not only returned to Germany, but embraced the Nazi regime (for purely opportunistic reasons), Mann never forgave his former friend Gründgens. Klaus Mann was exiled in 1934; Gründgens became a renowned theater and movie director in Nazi Germany. While Mann never called Gründgens an adversary, he admitted "moved antipathy". Although he attacked Gründgens in newspaper articles, Mann hesitated to use homosexuality as a theme in the novel as he himself was gay and decided to use "negroid masochism" as the main character's sexual preference. Klaus Mann's biographer Frederic Spotts points out that, under the Nazis' persecution of gay men, if the novel had indicated the actual nature of the actor's relationships, the boyfriend's character would have been recognized and the person endangered, which was against Klaus Mann's values and activism as a leading anti-fascist. (See Cursed Legacy: the tragic life of Klaus Mann, Yale UP, New Haven, 2016).
After the novel's publication in 1936, the newspaper Pariser Tageszeitung presented it as a roman à clef. Mann resented this characterization and argued that he had not written about a particular individual, but about a type of individual.
Synopsis
The novel portrays actor Hendrik Höfgen's rise from the Hamburger Künstlertheater (Hamburg Artists' Theater) in 1926 to nationwide fame in 1936. Initially, Höfgen flees to Paris on receiving news of the Nazis' rise to power because of his communist past (learning from a friend that he is on a blacklist). A former co-actress from Hamburg, Angelika Siebert, travels to Berlin to convince Lotte von Lindenthal, the girlfriend (and later wife) of a Luftwaffe general, to have him pardoned. On returning to Berlin he quickly manages to win over Lotte and her general, and with his support has a wonderful career.
On obtaining the role of Mephisto in Faust Part One he realizes that he actually made a pact with evil (i.e. Nazism) and lost his humane values (even denouncing his mistress as "Black Venus"). There are situations where Höfgen tries to help his friends or tell the prime minister about concentration camp hardships, but he is always concerned not to lose his Nazi patrons.
Plot
The Prussian Ministerpräsident (Prime Minister) celebrates his 43rd birthday in 1936 in the Berliner Opernhaus (Berlin Opera House). The party is so magnificent and extravagant that the foreign guests feel intimidated. As the propaganda minister enters the hall, his presence creates a stir. He is surrounded by an ice-cold atmosphere. Despite his disability he walks through the hall directly towards the director of the state theatre, Hendrik Höfgen. Although the Prime Minister hates Höfgen, he allows himself to be photographed conversing with him. To guarantee a good consequence of his appearance, the Ministerpräsident delays his arrival to the party. Later he enters with his wife, Lotte Lindenthal.
The story then reverts to the mid-1920s: Hendrik Höfgen, Otto Ulrichs and Hans Miklas belong to the Hamburger Künstlertheater (Artists' Theatre in Hamburg). Höfgen currently works there as an actor and director, and is friends with Otto Ulrichs, as they incessantly plan a "revolutionary theatre." The Hamburger Künstlertheater is the first rung on Höfgen's career ladder. He works there 16 hours a day and often suffers from fits of excitement and nerves. He demonstrates superiority over his colleagues. When the Berlin actress Dora Martin has a guest performance, he hides in her dressing room. Although he didn't see her performance, he congratulates her for it. Hans Miklas, a follower of the NSDAP, talks negatively of Martin because of her Jewish origin. In a harbour pub in Hamburg, he gets to know Juliette Martins. Her father is an engineer from Hamburg and her mother was African, giving Juliette her dark skin. She gives Höfgen dance lessons and becomes his mistress.
In the Hamburger Künstlertheater "Spring's Awakening" ("Frühlings Erwachen") is being rehearsed. Here Höfgen acts as a tyrant towards his colleagues. He adjourns the rehearsal in the afternoon because of his dance lesson. Juliette is the only person he allows to address him as Heinz – not even his family are allowed this. Höfgen is introduced to Barbara Bruckner (the daughter of Geheimrat Bruckner) by his colleague Nicoletta von Niebuhr. She encourages Höfgen to woo Barbara. To Barbara's surprise he does it, and they marry quickly. They spend their honeymoon in the Upper Bavarian lakes. Nicoletta joins them and is visited almost daily by the eccentric writer Theophil Marder. Two weeks after their return, Hendrik again meets with Juliette. Theophil Marder writes Nicoletta a telegram, saying that his feelings are hurt by his marriage; a wife must belong to her husband regardless of circumstances. Nicoletta von Niebuhr travels straight to him and gives up her job. She marries the man, 30 years her senior.
Lawsuit
After Gründgens' death, his adopted son Peter Gorski sued the Nymphenburger Verlagsbuchhandlung, then the publisher of Mephisto in West Germany, and obtained the prohibition of publication, confirmed by the appeal judges of the Federal Court of Justice in 1968.
On 24 February 1971 the constitutional complaint was rejected by an equally divided Federal Constitutional Court, which ruled that the freedom of art (Article 5 Section 3 of the Basic Law) must be balanced against late Gründgens' personal dignity (Article 1 Section 1). The case, in which two judges wrote dissenting opinions, is considered a milestone in Germany's juridical history.
The novel was however still available (and importable) from the East German Aufbau-Verlag. In 1981 Rowohlt republished it in West Germany. Since the 1968 verdict concerned only Nymphenburger and Gorski never took legal action against Rowohlt, its Mephisto is still available.
Adaptations
In 1981, Mephisto was adapted into a film directed by István Szabó, starring Klaus Maria Brandauer in the title role, produced by Manfred Durniok, with a screenplay by Péter Dobai and Szabó. The film received generally positive reviews and was the first Hungarian film to win an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.
French playwright Ariane Mnouchkine adapted the story for the stage and was performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican Theatre from 1985 to 1986. It was published in the 1994 anthology, Plays by Mediterranean Women. In an early leading role, Alan Rickman played Hendrik Höfgen.
In 2013, Helen Edmundson wrote a stage adaptation of Mephisto, which was produced at the Altonaer Theater in Hamburg.