Mephisto

MEPHISTO

Based on the novel by Klaus Mann

Hendrik Höfgen is an actor who dreams of great success—and of Berlin. He wants to shine in the leading roles of dramatic literature on the major stages of the capital in the 1930s. As he doggedly pursues his career, the political situation grows increasingly tense. Eventually, the Nazis seize power, and Hendrik Höfgen—who is actually apolitical—becomes one of their cultural representatives. Former companions, seen as dissenters, increasingly fade from his view. The character of Mephistopheles in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s *Faust* is set to become his signature role. It is precisely this tempter toward evil who takes on a special and ambivalent significance in light of the National Socialists’ seizure of power.

Klaus Mann published his novel in exile in 1936, making him one of the first authors to grapple with the conditions within the “Third Reich.” He paints the portrait of a man who, for the sake of his personal artistic success, is willing to place himself uncritically in the service of an authoritarian regime. In the actor Hendrik Höfgen, he saw the embodiment of a “profoundly untruthful, unreal regime.”