Thomas Mann | Touching Loyalty

She saw him right away. Thomas Mann, returning from a reading in February 1924, was, to her surprise, taking the same tram from Fürth to Nuremberg as she was. What a stroke of luck. She gathered all her courage, wormed her way up to him, and introduced herself. She had read "Buddenbrooks," "Royal Highness," and, with particular fascination, "Tonio Kröger," and she was a fan of him. She absolutely wanted to tell him that. A good 20 years later, in "Doctor Faustus," he would recall his encounter with the 29-year-old Ida Herz with a hint of mockery. Then she was Meta Nackedey, "a shabby, eternally blushing creature, instantly consumed by shame," who had fluttered in "a headlong flight through the crowded carriage" to address him, turning pale. She had even met Thomas Mann once before, in 1922 (which he couldn't remember), and resolved to seize the opportunity. Over the next few days, she compiled everything she could find about his readings and sent it to Munich. He thanked her for the "kind letter" and invited her to visit him during a stay in the city, "preferably at 2 p.m."

"I beg you, most esteemed Dr., to take up my duties, whatever it may be."

Ida Herz to Thomas Mann

This letter began one of Thomas Mann's most extensive, but also least well-known, correspondences. It only ended with his death in August 1955. Ida Herz repeatedly attempted to publish the correspondence thereafter, but encountered fierce resistance from the family. Katia Mann suggested a small selection. But that didn't work either. Finally, Herz resigned himself to giving up. And so the view presented by Thomas Mann's diaries remained. There, she mostly haunts the pages as an intrusive, annoying figure. Sometimes she is the "hysterical old maid," then again "the unfortunate Herz." The most frequent entry is: "At table, unfortunately, Herz." Biographers, who were well aware that for the admired Thomas Mann, she was far more than the dreaded dinner guest and that he valued her for good reasons, were happy to recount his aversions, thus creating a view that could hardly be more skewed, unfair, or unrealistic. Friedhelm Kröll, after thorough research, vigorously refuted this for the first time in his 2001 book "The Sorcerer's Archivist," a strong plea for this previously thoroughly misguided woman. It ended with a plea to finally publish the correspondence. His appeal was never heard. Only now, on the 150th anniversary of Thomas Mann's birth on June 6, has the collection of letters been published by S. Fischer, meticulously edited and with a fantastic commentary by Holger Pils. It contains all surviving letters in their entirety: 335 letters and postcards from Thomas, some from Katia Mann, and the 27 surviving letters from Ida Herz. Thomas Mann threw most of what she sent to the master in Switzerland and the USA, an estimated 400 letters, into the fire. He did the same with other mail. In this case, however, Holger Pils believes, he evidently wanted to determine for himself what posterity would learn about the "complicated relationship" if it were published.

For Ida Herz, a Nuremberg Jew born in 1894, this friendship was the miracle of her life, and everything she thought and did had to do with him, Thomas Mann. "You give my dull life so much inextinguishable, wonderful light through your friendship, through your work and your existence," she confessed. "I would like to be able to be something to you now!" she had written to him immediately after the Nazis came to power, when he was just experiencing the "complete upheaval" of his existence and suspected that after the lectures in Switzerland, he would never see his Munich home again. "I beg you, most esteemed Dr., to accept my services, whatever they may be. I want to do everything I can for you!"

By then, after many letters and several visits, they had long since become acquainted. In the summer of 1925, Ida Herz spent weeks organizing Thomas Mann's library and gradually got to know the family. Now, in the spring of 1933, the long hours on Poschingerstrasse were paying off. Katia Mann asked her to rescue the working materials for the Joseph novels because her son Golo could no longer venture into the house. It was, as Ida Herz later admitted, a dangerous undertaking. The villa, not yet confiscated by the Nazis, was, however, under surveillance by the Gestapo. Bravely and reliably, Herz, sometimes in the dark, packed writings and books into boxes and sent them to a cover address in Basel. Thanks to her foresight, nothing was lost. Mann, once again in possession of his rich collection on the subject of Joseph, could continue working on the novel with peace of mind. Ida Herz, meanwhile, was denounced, placed in pre-trial detention, and released after six weeks through an amnesty. She was soon denounced again and fled in mid-September 1935, first to Zurich and then to London, where she remained until her death in February 1984.

Even in the years that made a meeting impossible, she was brilliantly informed about the family's everyday life, and that is what makes this volume so significant: It fascinates with its intensive insights into the Mann family's world. He, Thomas, spoke in mostly long letters about the new house in California ("We will never have lived as beautifully as we do now in 'Misery'"), about writing lessons and writing crises, about the surprising success of "Joseph" in the USA, about illnesses and visitors, children, ventures and travels, plans and his political commitment against Nazi Germany. And of course, he continued to send newspaper reports, prints and books for the archive. She reciprocated with letters and "good things," many new publications and even Easter eggs. Aside from some resentment, there was still harmony. That changed when Thomas Mann returned to Europe after the war. Herz believed he had earned a right to closeness. He feared closeness. Even in the USA, he had described his wealthy patroness Agnes E. Meyer, the "wonderful woman" who almost fulfilled his every wish but also gently tried to guide him, as a hysterical and foolish person in his diary. Ida Herz fared no better whenever she came to Zurich. She felt privileged by her helpfulness and the many acts of friendship. He, irritated by the loss of distance, tried to be friendly. But he suffered. Once, in 1953, left alone with her, he lost all control, "jumped up and left the room, tormented and disturbed," read a little more, and took a pill to sleep. He knew that many things were converging in those moments: his work pressures, his dissatisfaction, perhaps the hairdryer, the house in Erlenbach on Lake Zurich, which he disliked, and the "constantly encountering floating fairy of a girl."

Herz was shocked when, at the end of 1978, she read what he had written about her in the second volume of his diary. For a while, she struggled to keep her composure, but her admiration for the author and his work remained. And she was able to console herself with the letter he had sent her in October 1954 for her 60th birthday. He wrote that "it should be said that we have both shared in each other's lives for so many years and decades now, each in the other's life, you with touching loyalty in my fate, my writings, and my pursuits, and I with great respect and sympathy in your fate and your life; for the way you conducted yourself after your expulsion from Germany, the way you held yourself, worked, and endured life, is so good and honorable that it truly deserves all respect, sympathy, and friendship."

Thomas Mann & Katia Mann: "Dear Miss Herz." Correspondence with Ida Herz 1924–1955. Edited by Holger Pils, S. Fischer, 799 pages, hardcover, €38.