SECOND READING: 33

Mephisto By Klaus Mann(1936)

A SLEAZILY attractive provincial actor who is desperate to become famous, charms, lies and schemes to make his way at all costs.

Hendrik Höfgen, possessed of a flair for fawning, shaky morality and a tendency towards crazed tantrums, has a tremendous capacity for re-invention. For a start, he has changed his name from Heinz to Hendrik, making sure that the D is never omitted. ". . . the name Heinz made him wince as if he had been struck. He allowed no one else, not even his mother, to call him by that name. . . Heinz was dead: Hendrik was on the road to greatness."

Mann's bohemian, vengeful satire races along as frenetic as its central character, the self-serving Hendrik. It was written in 1936, while Mann - the second child and first son of the great German writer Thomas Mann - then 30, was living in Amsterdam en route to America. Mephisto was banned in Germany until 1962. On publication it became the subject of the longest lawsuit in German publishing. It has two targets; the first is the real life actor on whom Höfgen is based. The second, equally fascinating object of Mann's derisive wit, is a Germany corrupted by Hitler.

This is the book of a natural writer. Even without the assistance of a famous 1929 Nobel Literature laureate father, clever, erratic Klaus Mann who began writing stories and articles at 18 and was a working theatre critic of a Berlin newspaper at 19, was destined to write.

The characterisation of Höfgen is forensic, every detail, every squirming impulse, every throbbing vein is plotted. He is based on the actor Gustaf Gründgens a one-time communist, whose career ultimately soared on securing the favour of field marshal Hermann Göring. The narrative capitalises on known fact and sustained anger. Göring's wife, herself an actress, succumbed to Gründgen's requests for help in deflecting the possible impact of his communist past.

Mann had a double grudge - not only had the real life actor married his favourite sister, Erika; he had at one time been Klaus's lover. The German court case which lasted seven years was brought by Gründgen's adopted son.

Regardless of the multiple biographical parallels, and that both the real life actor and his fictional counterpart triumph through their staggeringly sinister portrayals of the cunning Mephistopheles in Goethe's classic, Faust, Höfgen emerges as a three-dimensional personality whose moods change faster than clouds pass overhead.

Absorbed by his ambitions he barely notices what is going on beyond the claustrophobic theatre world he inhabits. He is, however, aware that as an obviously blonde Rhinelander, the son of still living Rhineland parents, no one will accuse him of being Jewish. He does have a significant problem though; his demanding, highly strung mistress Juliette is black.

Dominating the local theatre scene in Hamburg fails to satisfy Höfgen; he yearns for Berlin. While the actor frets about his future, Mann is busily shaping the personalities of the various men and women who form the theatre circle. Some of the women dream of romance with Höfgen, an idealist resents his hypocrisy and several rivalries fester.

Through an unlikely relationship with the quiet, maidenly Barbara, the daughter of a privy councillor, Höfgen enters a higher, more intellectual level of society. He quickly assesses the advantages: "Faced with relations like these, the shopkeepers of Cologne would have to stop their insolent innuendos about the alleged drop in status of the Höfgen family."

Germany is changing; Hitler comes to power and with him, fear. Mephisto reads as if it were an Otto Dix painting come to life; it is ironic, sharp, gleefully shameless and true to its period. Above all, Mann lays bare the ruthlessness of ambition and the unease lurking behind success built on whims. It inspired Itsván Szabó's 1981 Oscar-winning film and evokes an epoch dominated by grotesques. Klaus Mann committed suicide in 1949; his brilliant father often suspected he would.

...

This is a weekly series in which Eileen Battersby revisits titles from the literary canon