BEKENNTNISSE DES HOCHSTAPLERS THOMAS MANN

In 1905, Thomas Mann made his first plans for a novel about an impostor. The first volume of “Confessions of Felix Krull” was not published until 1954. No literary figure has accompanied Thomas Mann for as long as Felix Krull. Both Krull and Thomas Mann are masters of deception. Thomas Mann was a literary superstar with an upper class façade. His world fame meant everything to him – but it cost him an enormous amount of energy to maintain this appearance.

Thomas Mann’s diaries reveal an insecure, often depressed man who suppressed his desires throughout his life: Thomas Mann was homosexual. Nevertheless, he chose a married life with six children.

The film follows in Felix Krull’s footsteps to Eltville, Frankfurt am Main, Paris and Lisbon – and uses archives, letters and diary entries to trace Thomas Mann’s own journey during the creative process. The work on the novel accompanied Thomas Mann through the Nazi regime, McCarthyism in the USA and the new Europe after the Second World War.

In this hybrid documentary, director André Schäfer and actor Sebastian Schneider blur the lines between Thomas Mann and his alter ego Felix Krull, telling the story of a titan of German literature from an entirely new perspective.