Klaus Mann (November 18, 1906 – May 21, 1949) was a German writer.

Born in Munich, Mann was the son of German writer Thomas Mann and his wife Katia Pringsheim, whose parents were secular Jews. He began writing short stories in 1924 and the following year became drama critic for a Berlin newspaper. His first literary works were published in 1925.

Mann’s early life was troubled; his homosexuality often made him the target of bigotry, and he had a difficult relationship with his father, who had little respect for him. He left Germany in 1933 and moved to Amsterdam. He became a Czechoslovak citizen, having been stripped of German citizenship by the Nazi regime. In 1936, he moved to the United States, living in Princeton, New Jersey, and New York. He became a US citizen in 1943.

He worked for the American army during World War II.

His most famous novel was Mephisto, written in 1936 and first published in Amsterdam. It is a thinly-disguised portrait of his former brother-in-law, the actor Gustaf Gründgens. The literary scandal surrounding it made him posthumously famous in West Germany, as Gründgrens’ adopted son brought a legal case to have the novel banned after its first publication in West Germany in the early 1960s. After seven years of legal hearings, the West German Supreme Court banned it by a vote of three to three.

Mann’s novel Der Vulkan is one of the 20th century’s most famous novels about German exiles during WWII.

He died in Cannes of an overdose of sleeping pills. He was buried there in the Cimetière du Grand Jas.

Selected bibliography

• Der fromme Tanz, 1925
• Anja und Esther, 1925
• Revue zu Vieren, 1927
• Kind seiner Zeit, 1932
• Treffpunkt im Unendlichen, 1932
• Symphonie Pathétique, 1935
• Mephisto, 1936
• Der Vulkan, 1939
• The Turning Point, 1942
• André Gide and the Crisis of Modern Thought, 1943