Thomas Mann versus Erika Mann: That is brutality

Thomas Mann returns to Germany, but in Paweł Pawlikowski’s new film he does not make the journey with his wife Katia. He travels with his daughter Erika, whose view of the celebrated writer carries as much weight as his own.

“Vaterland,” a short black-and-white drama, premiered in the Cannes competition and has now reached cinemas. Pawlikowski, the Polish Oscar-winning filmmaker behind “Ida,” does not simply preserve the monument of Thomas Mann as a great artist and mediator between divided worlds. He introduces a sharp fracture into that image.

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I know no zones. My visit concerns Germany itself, Germany as a whole, and no occupation zone.

Thomas Mann’s reputation rests partly on a picture he helped shape during his lifetime: a writer devoted to humanity, untouched by ideology and unwilling to be claimed by any state. The film recalls his 1949 visits to Frankfurt and Weimar for the 200th anniversary of Goethe’s birth. At both events, he delivered nearly identical speeches, including the declaration: “I know no zones. My visit concerns Germany itself, Germany as a whole, and no occupation zone.”

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castle of words

Sandra Hüller plays Erika with a mixture of forced restraint and eruptive emotion. She feels estranged from her father and sometimes hates him because he has withdrawn into an unreachable “castle of words,” sealed off from attempts by those closest to him to draw near.

When Thomas Mann learns during the journey that his son Klaus has died by suicide, he appears not to react to the death of a “drug addict tired of life.” Erika’s anger repeatedly breaks through his apparent emotional coldness. Yet the film suggests that the deeper heartlessness surrounds them: Frankfurt lies in ruins, while former Nazis feast at the Goethe banquet.

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drug addict tired of life