Thomas Mann: Royal Highness

November 2015

We are in the early 20th century. Klaus Heinrich is the second son to the ruling family of a fictional German duchy. This novel chronicles his life from birth to marriage.

Early on Klaus Heinrich learns of the demands made on him and his family due to their ‘exalted calling’; initially through observing his father and mother, the King and Queen, and later through the influence of his tutor and friend Raoul Ueberbein:

“No, no Klaus Heinrich,” he said; “full stop there! No confidences, if you please! Not but that I know that you have all sorts of things to tell me. … I need only watch you for half a day to see that, but you quite misunderstand me if you think I’m likely to encourage you to weep round my neck. In the first place, sooner or later you’d repent it. But in the second, the pleasures of a confidential intimacy are not for the like of you. You see, there is no harm in my chattering. What am I? An usher. Not a common or garden one, in opinion, but still no better that such. Just a categorical unit. But you? What are you? That’s harder to say. … Let’s say a conception, a kind of ideal. A frame. An emblematical existence, Klaus Heinrich, and at the same time a formal existence. But formality and intimacy – haven’t you yet learnt that the two are mutually exclusive? Absolutely exclusive. You have no right to intimate confidences, and if you attempted them you yourself would discover that they did not suit you, you would find them inadequate and insipid. I must remind you of your duty, Klaus Heinrich.

This idea that select people might have to forego personal happiness in answer to some higher calling is a recurring struggle present in Thomas Mann’s portrayal of the artist. Klaus Heinrich, his parents, his siblings, are all aware of their duty to embody ‘nobility’ for the sake of their subjects, to be a demonstration of what humanity strives for. They appreciate the value of this role they play and are condescendingly tolerant of those who have forsaken this duty (for example, Klaus Heinrich’s uncle Prince Lambert).

This novel is also strongly autobiographical and most interestingly the relation between Klaus Heinrich and Raoul Ueberbein is perhaps a reflection of a young Thomas Mann’s relationship to his conception of the Nietzschean ideal.

Overall a pedestrian book. Klaus Heinrich’s interactions with his siblings and Ueberein were engaging, but the rest of the book, the large majority of the book was not. Things like descriptions of the state of duchy’s public finances and official ceremonies; even Klaus Heinrich’s courtship of Imma Spoelmann was deadly. Certainly not what I had hoped for from my first Thomas Mann book.

Further reading: Nicholls, R.A., Nietzsche in the early work of Thomas Mann. 1955. (Google books link)