Erika Mann

Erika Julia Hedwig Mann (9 November 1905 – 27 August 1969) was a German actress and writer. She was the eldest daughter of the novelist Thomas Mann and his wife Katia. In 1924, Erika Mann moved to Berlin where she lived a bohemian lifestyle and became a critic of National Socialism. She acted in, and wrote for, an anti-Nazi cabaret in Berlin and, after Hitler came to power in 1933, Mann moved to Switzerland. In 1935 she married the poet W. H. Auden, purely to ensure she could obtain a British passport and not become stateless when the Nazi regime cancelled her German citizenship. She remained active in liberal causes and continued to attack Nazism in her writings, most notably with her 1938 book School for Barbarians which was a critique of the Nazi education system.During World War Two, Mann worked for the BBC, broadcasting in German from London, before becoming a war correspondent attached to the Allied forces advancing across Europe after D-Day. As a correspondent, she attended the Nuremberg trials before moving to America to support her parents who were living in exile there. From the States, Mann continued to write and lecture, often criticising political developments in Europe and American foreign policy. This led to her being investigated by the American authorities who considered deporting her. 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.