Auden respected poetic tradition while looking to break the barriers of form and content. His originality also extended to private life, especially in the custom of marriage.
Unconventional relationships are dotted across literary history and Auden’s marriage to Erika Mann certainly belongs on the timeline. Writers have married for companionship and artistic communion, but Auden used the rite to help a woman escape from political dictatorship.
Auden Marries
Auden first met Erika Mann, the eldest daughter of Nobel Prize winning author Thomas Mann, through their mutual friend Christopher Isherwood in Amsterdam. Mann, who was two years older than Auden, had co-founded an anti-Nazi cabaret in Munich, acted, and was a frequently-published writer of children’s books.
Because of her open stance against fascism, Mann was declared an enemy of the Third Reich and faced possible arrest. She asked Isherwood, who was Auden’s lover for several years, to marry her in hope of obtaining a British passport.
Isherwood, who was adverse to marriage, refused her but suggested writing to Auden, the poet who was later to declare ‘There is no such thing as the State / And no one exists alone.’ Auden replied by telegram with one word: ‘Delighted.’
Mann traveled from the Netherlands to England for a marriage ceremony between two people who had never seen each other, for no reason but to save the bride’s life. They married on June 15, 1935, at the registry of Ledbury, Herefordshire, near the school where Auden worked as a teacher.
Auden and Mann’s Relationship
A few months after the wedding, Auden visited Thomas Mann, Erika’s father, at his home on Lake Zürich. Though Auden had no husbandly feelings for Erika, he expressed his desire to ‘take the relationship seriously.’
Mann, like Auden, was homosexual; she had married German actor Gustaf Gründgens in 1926, but divorced and entered a series of Lesbian affairs. Auden and Mann never consummated the marriage, never lived together, and only met on occasion.
Auden’s poetry collection Look, Stranger! (later called On This Island) was dedicated to Erika upon its publication in 1936. Erika, grateful for the help that Auden gave her, remained friends and stayed legally married until her death in 1969. Auden joked in subsequent years that he was the only member of his family not to have divorced.
Auden's Other Companions
While Auden had strong relationships with Isherwood and Chester Kallman, he also made emotional connections with women at various times. In 1946-7, he had an intimate period with Rhoda Jaffe; he also unsuccessfully proposed marriage to widower Thekla Clark in 1952 and to Hannah Arendt in 1970.
During the period of Nazi rule, Auden encouraged other homosexual men to marry European refugees with the aim of political asylum. Auden turned to E. M. Forster for help with his campaign. One marriage resulted between John Simpson, a friend of Forster, and Erika’s friend Therese Giehse, with whom she co-founded their cabaret Die Pfeffermühle (The Peppermill).
Auden was far from married in the conventional sense, but as a promoter of agape - the all-encompassing, unconditional love of mankind - his marriage to Erika seems entirely fitting. It was love of an unearthly kind that exceeded the norms of human relationships.
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