Erika Julia Hedwig Mann (9 November 1905 â€" 27 August 1969) was a
German actress and writer, daughter of the novelist Thomas Mann.Erika
lived a bohemian lifestyle in Berlin and became a critic of National
Socialism. After Hitler came to power in 1933, she moved to
Switzerland, and married the poet W. H. Auden, purely to obtain a
British passport and not become stateless when the Germans cancelled
her citizenship. She continued to attack Nazism, most notably with her
1938 book School for Barbarians, a critique of the Nazi education
system.During World War Two, Mann worked for the BBC and became a war
correspondent attached to the Allied forces after D-Day. She attended
the Nuremberg trials before moving to America to support her exiled
parents. Her criticisms of American foreign policy led to her being
considered for deportation. After her parents moved to Switzerland in
1952, she also settled there. She wrote a biography of her father and
died in Zurich in 1969.Erika Mann was born in Munich, the first-born
daughter of writer and later Nobel-prize winner Thomas Mann and his
wife, Katia (née Pringsheim), the daughter of an intellectual German
family of Jewish heritage. She was named after Katia Mann's brother
Erik, who died early, Thomas Mann's sister Julia Mann, and her
grandmother Hedwig Dohm. She was baptized Protestant, just as her
mother had been. Thomas Mann expressed in a letter to his brother
Heinrich Mann his disappointment about the birth of his first child:
German actress and writer, daughter of the novelist Thomas Mann.Erika
lived a bohemian lifestyle in Berlin and became a critic of National
Socialism. After Hitler came to power in 1933, she moved to
Switzerland, and married the poet W. H. Auden, purely to obtain a
British passport and not become stateless when the Germans cancelled
her citizenship. She continued to attack Nazism, most notably with her
1938 book School for Barbarians, a critique of the Nazi education
system.During World War Two, Mann worked for the BBC and became a war
correspondent attached to the Allied forces after D-Day. She attended
the Nuremberg trials before moving to America to support her exiled
parents. Her criticisms of American foreign policy led to her being
considered for deportation. After her parents moved to Switzerland in
1952, she also settled there. She wrote a biography of her father and
died in Zurich in 1969.Erika Mann was born in Munich, the first-born
daughter of writer and later Nobel-prize winner Thomas Mann and his
wife, Katia (née Pringsheim), the daughter of an intellectual German
family of Jewish heritage. She was named after Katia Mann's brother
Erik, who died early, Thomas Mann's sister Julia Mann, and her
grandmother Hedwig Dohm. She was baptized Protestant, just as her
mother had been. Thomas Mann expressed in a letter to his brother
Heinrich Mann his disappointment about the birth of his first child:
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