Fatherland

In summer 1949, Klaus Mann calls his sister Erika from an apartment in Cannes, where he shares his dissatisfaction with his writing and contemporary art as a whole. Erika invites him to join her and their father, Thomas Mann, a famed German writer, on a trip to Frankfurt, where Thomas will receive a Goethe Prize. Klaus declines Erika's invitation. Erika and Thomas arrive in West Germany to a press gallery session, with Erika serving as Thomas's translator. It is revealed that Thomas will receive a second Goethe Prize in Weimar. Journalists argue that Thomas will likely be persecuted upon his return to the United States, where he has been living for the past thirteen years, should he visit East Germany. Thomas replies that Goethe's work and German literature predates the country's separation, and that art does not recognize borders. At a reception following the ceremony, Thomas is met by the grandsons of Richard Wagner, who ask if he can help rehabilitate the composer's image, which he refuses. At the reception's bar, Erika encounters her ex-husband Gustaf Gründgens, a German actor…