Paul Thomas Mann (UK:/ˈmæn/MAN,US:/ˈmɑːn/MAHN;[1]German:[ˈtoːmasˈman]ⓘ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized versions of German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas ofJohann Wolfgang von Goethe,Friedrich Nietzsche, andArthur Schopenhauer.[citation needed]
House of theMann family in Lübeck ("Buddenbrookhaus"), where Thomas Mann grew up; now a family museum
Paul Thomas Mann was born to ahanseatic family inLübeck, the second son of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann (a senator and agrain merchant) and his wifeJúlia da Silva Bruhns, a Brazilian woman of German, Portuguese and Native Brazilian ancestry, who emigrated to Germany with her family when she was seven years old. His mother wasRoman Catholic but Mann was baptised into his father'sLutheran religion. Mann's father died in 1891, and after that his trading firm was liquidated. The family subsequently moved toMunich. Mann first studied science at a LübeckGymnasium (secondary school), then attended theLudwig Maximillians University of Munich as well as theTechnical University of Munich, where, in preparation for a journalism career, he studied history, economics, art history and literature.[2]
Mann lived in Munich from 1891 until 1933,[clarification needed] with the exception of a year spent inPalestrina, Italy, with his elder brother, the novelistHeinrich. Thomas worked at the South German Fire Insurance Company in 1894–95. His career as a writer began when he wrote for the magazineSimplicissimus. Mann's first short story, "Little Herr Friedemann" (Der Kleine Herr Friedemann), was published in 1898.
In 1905, Mann marriedKatia Pringsheim, who came from a wealthy, secular Jewish industrialist family. She later joined theLutheran church. The couple had six children:Erika (b. 1905),Klaus (b. 1906),Golo (b. 1909),Monika (b. 1910),Elisabeth (b. 1918) andMichael (b. 1919).[3]
Due to thePringsheim family's wealth, Katia Mann was able to purchase a summer property inBad Tölz in 1908, on which they built a country house the following year, which they kept until 1917.[4] In 1914 they also purchased a villa in Munich (at Poschinger Str in the borough ofBogenhausen, today 10 Thomas-Mann-Allee) where they lived until 1933.
In 1912, Katia was treated for tuberculosis for a few months in asanatorium inDavos, Switzerland, where Thomas Mann visited her for a few weeks. This inspired him to write his 1924 novelThe Magic Mountain. He was also appalled by the risk of international confrontation between Germany and France, following theAgadir Crisis in Morocco, and later by the outbreak of theFirst World War. The novel ends with the outbreak of this war, in which the hero perishes.
As a "German patriot", Mann had the proceeds from their summer house used in 1917 to subscribe to war bonds, which lost their face value after the war was lost. His father-in-law did the same, which caused a loss of a major part of the Pringsheim family's wealth. The disastrousinflation of 1923 and 1924 resulted in additional high losses. The sales success of his novelThe Magic Mountain, published in 1924, improved his financial situation again, as did the award of theNobel Prize in Literature in 1929. He used the prize money to build acottage in the fishing village ofNida, Lithuania on theCuronian Spit, where there was a German art colony and where he spent the summers of 1930–1932 working onJoseph and His Brothers. Today, the cottage is a cultural center dedicated to him, with a small memorial exhibition.
In February 1933, while having finished a book tour to Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris, Thomas Mann recovered inArosa (Switzerland) whenHitler took power and Mann heard from his eldest children, Klaus and Erika in Munich, that it would not be safe for him to return to Germany. His political views (seechapter below) had made him an enemy of the Nazis for years. He was doubtful at first, because, with a certain naïveté, he could not imagine the violence of the overthrow and the persecution of opponents of the regime, but the children insisted, and their advice later turned out to be accurate when it emerged that even their driver-caretaker had become aninformant and that Mann's immediate arrest would have been very likely.[5] The family (except these two children, who went to Amsterdam) emigrated toKüsnacht, nearZürich, Switzerland, after a stopover inSanary-sur-Mer, France. The son Golo managed, at great risk, to smuggle the already completed chapters of theJoseph novel and the (sensitive) diaries into Switzerland. TheBavarian Political Police searched Mann's house in Munich and confiscated the house, its inventory and the bank accounts. At the same time, anarrest warrant was issued. Mann was also no longer able to use his holiday home in Lithuania because it was only a few hundred yards from the German border and he seemed to be at risk there. When all members of the Poetry Section at thePrussian Academy of Arts were asked to make a declaration of loyalty to the National Socialist government, Mann declared his resignation on 17 March 1933.
The writer's freedom of movement was reduced when his German passport expired. The Manns traveled to the United States for the first two times in 1934 and 1935. There was great interest in the prominent writer; the authorities allowed him entry without a valid passport. He receivedCzechoslovak citizenship and a passport in 1936, even though he had never lived there. A few weeks later the German citizenship of Mann, his wife Katia, and their children Golo, Elisabeth and Michael were revoked, and the Nazi government expropriated the family home in Munich, whichReinhard Heydrich in particular insisted on. It had already been confiscated and forcibly rented out in 1933.[6] In December 1936, theUniversity of Bonn withdrew the honorary doctorate awarded to Mann in 1919; on 13 December 1946, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, it was reinstated.
In 1939, following theGerman occupation of Czechoslovakia, Mann emigrated to the United States, while his in-laws only managed, thanks to high-ranking connections, to leave Germany for Zurich in October 1939. The Manns moved toPrinceton, New Jersey, where they lived on 65 Stockton Street[7] and he began to teach atPrinceton University.[8] In 1941 he was designated consultant in German Literature, later Fellow in Germanic Literature, at theLibrary of Congress.[9] In 1942, the Mann family moved to1550 San Remo Drive in thePacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The Manns were prominent members of the German expatriate community of Los Angeles and frequently met other émigrés atthe house of Salka and Bertold Viertel in Santa Monica, and at theVilla Aurora, the home of fellow German exileLion Feuchtwanger.[10][11] Thomas Mann's always difficult relationship with his brotherHeinrich, who envied Thomas's success and wealth and also differed politically, hardly improved when the latter arrived in California, poor and sickly, in need of support.[12] On 23 June 1944, Thomas Mann was naturalized as a citizen of the United States. The Manns lived in Los Angeles until 1952.[13]
The outbreak of World War II, on 1 September 1939, prompted Mann to offer anti-Nazi speeches in German to the German people via theBBC. In October 1940, he began monthly broadcasts, recorded in the U.S. and flown to London, where theBBC German Service broadcast them to Germany on thelongwave band. In these eight-minute addresses, Mann condemned Hitler and his "paladins" as crude philistines completely out of touch with European culture. In one noted speech, he said: "The war is horrible, but it has the advantage of keeping Hitler from making speeches about culture."[14]
Mann was one of the few publicly active opponents of Nazism among German expatriates in the U.S.[15] In a BBC broadcast of 30 December 1945, after the defeat of Germany, Mann said he understood why those peoples that had suffered from the Nazi regime would embrace the idea ofGerman collective guilt. But he also thought that many enemies might now have second thoughts about "revenge". And he expressed regret that such judgement cannot be based on the individual:
Those, whose world became grey a long time ago when they realized what mountains of hate towered over Germany; those, who a long time ago imagined during sleepless nights how terrible would be the revenge on Germany for the inhuman deeds of the Nazis, cannot help but view with wretchedness all that is being done to Germans by the Russians, Poles, or Czechs as nothing other than a mechanical and inevitable reaction to the crimes that the people have committed as a nation, in which unfortunately individual justice, or the guilt or innocence of the individual, can play no part.[16]
The grave of Thomas, Katia, Erika, Monika, Michael, and Elisabeth Mann, inKilchberg, Switzerland. The gravestone is modeled on a Romanstele.Mann's funeral, 1955
With the start of theCold War, he was increasingly frustrated by risingMcCarthyism. As a "suspected communist", he was required to testify to theHouse Un-American Activities Committee, where he was termed "one of the world's foremost apologists for Stalin and company".[17] He was listed by HUAC as being "affiliated with various peace organizations or Communist fronts". Being in his own words a non-communist, rather than ananti-communist, Mann openly opposed the allegations: "As an American citizen of German birth, I finally testify that I am painfully familiar with certain political trends. Spiritual intolerance, political inquisitions, and declining legal security, and all this in the name of an alleged 'state of emergency'. ... That is how it started in Germany." As Mann joined protests against the jailing of theHollywood Ten and the firing of schoolteachers suspected of being Communists, he found "the media had been closed to him".[18] Finally, he was forced to quit his position as Consultant in Germanic Literature at theLibrary of Congress,[19] and in 1952, he returned to Europe, to live inKilchberg, near Zürich, Switzerland. Here he initially lived in a rented house and bought his last house there in 1954 (which later his widow and then their son Golo lived in until their deaths). He never again lived in Germany, though he regularly traveled there. His most important German visit was in 1949, at the 200th birthday ofJohann Wolfgang von Goethe, attending celebrations inFrankfurt am Main (thenWest Germany) andWeimar (thenEast Germany), as a statement that German culture extended beyond the new political borders.[20] He also visited Lübeck, where he saw his parents' house, which was partially destroyed by thebombing of Lübeck in World War II (and only later rebuilt). The city welcomed him warmly, but the patricianhanseatic families gave him a reserved welcome, since the publication ofBuddenbrooks they had resented him for daring to describe their caste with some mockery, as they at least felt about it.[citation needed]
Along withAlbert Einstein, Mann was one of the sponsors of thePeoples' World Convention (PWC), also known as Peoples' World Constituent Assembly (PWCA), which took place in 1950–51 at Palais Electoral,Geneva, Switzerland.[21][22]
Following his 80th birthday, Mann went on vacation toNoordwijk in the Netherlands. On 18 July 1955, he began to experience pain and unilateral swelling in his left leg. The condition ofthrombophlebitis was diagnosed by Dr. Mulders from Leiden and confirmed by Dr.Wilhelm Löffler. Mann was transported to a Zürich hospital, but soon developed a state ofshock. On 12 August 1955, he died.[23] Postmortem, his condition was found to have been misdiagnosed. The pathologic diagnosis, made by Christoph Hedinger, showed he had actually suffered a perforatediliac arteryaneurysm resulting in aretroperitonealhematoma, compression andthrombosis of the iliac vein. (At that time, lifesaving vascular surgery had not been developed.[23]) On 16 August 1955, Thomas Mann was buried in the Kilchberg village cemetery.[24]
Mann's work influenced many later authors, such asYukio Mishima. Joseph Campbell also stated in an interview with Bill Moyers that Mann was one of his mentors.[25] Many institutions are named in his honour, for instance theThomas Mann Gymnasium ofBudapest.
Mann in the early period of his writing careerBuddenbrooks (1909)
Blanche Knopf ofAlfred A. Knopf publishing house was introduced to Mann byH.L. Mencken while on a book-buying trip to Europe.[26] Knopf became Mann's American publisher, and Blanche hired scholarHelen Tracy Lowe-Porter to translate Mann's books in 1924.[27] Lowe-Porter subsequently translated Mann's complete works.[26] Blanche Knopf continued to look after Mann. AfterBuddenbrooks proved successful in its first year, the Knopfs sent him an unexpected bonus. Later in the 1930s, Blanche helped arrange for Mann and his family to emigrate to America.[26]
Mann was awarded theNobel Prize in Literature in 1929, after he had been nominated byAnders Österling, member of theSwedish Academy, principally in recognition of his popular achievements withBuddenbrooks (1901),The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg, 1924), and his numerous short stories.[28] (Due to the personal taste of an influential committee member, only Buddenbrooks was cited at any great length.)[29] Based on Mann's own family,Buddenbrooks relates the decline of a merchant family in Lübeck over the course of four generations.The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg, 1924) follows an engineering student who, planning to visit histubercular cousin at a Swisssanatorium for only three weeks, finds his departure from the sanatorium delayed. During that time, he confronts medicine and the way it looks at the body and encounters a variety of characters, who play out ideological conflicts and discontents of contemporary European civilization. The tetralogyJoseph and His Brothers is an epic novel written over a period of sixteen years and is one of the largest and most significant works in Mann's oeuvre. Later novels includedLotte in Weimar (1939), in which Mann returned to the world of Goethe's novelThe Sorrows of Young Werther (1774);Doctor Faustus (1947), the story of the fictitious composer Adrian Leverkühn and the corruption ofGerman culture in the years before and during World War II; andConfessions of Felix Krull (Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull, 1954), which was unfinished at Mann's death. These later works prompted two members of theSwedish Academy to nominate Mann for the Nobel Prize in Literature a second time, in 1948.[30]
The writerTheodor Fontane, who died in 1898, had a particular stylistic influence on Thomas Mann. Of course, Mann always admired and emulatedGoethe, the German "poet prince". The Danish authorHerman Bang, with whom he felt a kindred spirit, had a certain influence, especially on the novellas. The pessimistic philosopherArthur Schopenhauer provided philosophical inspiration for theBuddenbrooks' narrative of decline, especially with his two-volume workThe World as Will and Representation, which Mann studied closely while writing the novel. Russian narrators should also be mentioned, he admired theRussian Literature's ability for self-criticism, at least during the 19th century, inNikolai Gogol,Ivan Goncharov andIvan Turgenev. Mann believed that in order to make abourgeois revolution, the Russians had to forgetDostoevsky.[31] He particularly lovedLeo Tolstoy, whom he considered an anarchist and whom he lovingly and mockingly admired for his "courage to be boring."[citation needed]
Throughout Mann'sDostoevsky essay, he finds parallels between the Russian and the sufferings ofFriedrich Nietzsche. Speaking of Nietzsche, he says, "his personal feelings initiate him into those of the criminal ... in general all creative originality, all artist nature in the broadest sense of the word, does the same. It was the French painter and sculptorDegas who said that an artist must approach his work in the spirit of the criminal about to commit a crime."[32] Nietzsche's influence on Mann runs deep in his work, especially in Nietzsche's views on decay and the proposed fundamental connection between sickness and creativity. Mann believed that disease should not be regarded as wholly negative. In his essay on Dostoevsky, we find: "but after all and above all it depends on who is diseased, who mad, who epileptic or paralytic: an average dull-witted man, in whose illness any intellectual or cultural aspect is non-existent; or a Nietzsche or Dostoyevsky. In their case something comes out in illness that is more important and conducive to life and growth than any medical guaranteed health or sanity.... [I]n other words: certain conquests made by the soul and the mind are impossible without disease, madness, crime of the spirit."[33]
Many of Thomas Mann's works have the following similarities:
A "gravely-mischievous" style that is very popular with readers, with superficial solemnity and an underlying ironic humor, mostly benevolent, never drastic or bitter and only rarely degenerating into the macabre. Thomas Mann took this "mild irony" from his literary predecessor and role modelTheodor Fontane,[34] at first inBuddenbrooks where it is modified into local sedateness throughLow German sprinkles and quotations. He continued this style, with variations, throughout his life (the contemporary, much more avant-garde authorAlfred Döblin mocked that Mann had "elevated thepressed crease to a style principle").[35] InJoseph and His Brothers the tone takes on something fairytale-biblical, but here too the irony often shines through. InDoctor Faustus, Thomas Mann adopts a predominantly serious tone in view of the sinister theme, although the critical irony does not completely disappear there either, for which the description of the nationalist milieu in theWeimar Republic in particular provides ample reason.
The amusingly entertaining, mostly ironic descriptions of contemporaries as well as people of the past and their views and lifestyles based on his own observations or research, often very detailed, similar to his contemporaryMarcel Proust, are combined with various profound components: inBuddenbrooks with the motif of economic and spiritual decline of a family, inThe Magic Mountain with the philosophical disputes of the time before the First World War, inLotte in Weimar with the circumstances ofGoethe'sWeimar Classicism and the complicated effect between real and literary love, inJoseph and his brothers with biblical-mythical motifs and the question of origins as well as the eternal recurrence of the same "mythical" stories, inDoctor Faustus with the historical-political circumstances of the rise, success and fall of Nazism.
Attachment to home regions: Lübeck (Buddenbrooks, Tonio Kröger) and Munich (Gladius Dei, At the Prophet, Disorder and Early Suffering) are in the foreground of important works.
Thomas Mann with hisgramophone in his Munich house (1932)Classical music already plays a central role inBuddenbrooks andTristan (Mann lovedRichard Wagner's operas and, in his 1933 essayThe Suffering and Greatness of Richard Wagner, defended him against the Nazis' attempt to appropriate Wagner as a nationalist icon) andNeue Musik plays the main role inDoctor Faustus (about which Mann sought advice fromTheodor W. Adorno and gave his hero's music features ofArnold Schoenberg's compositional style).
Central to Thomas Mann's thoughts and work is the mutual relationship between art and life:Ambiguity as a system is also the title of an essay.
Conscientiousness: Thomas Mann always wrote his works after long and thorough research into the facts and the atmospheric circumstances.
Political commitment (see below: Political views): His – mostly indirect – commitment runs through many of his works, from theBuddenbrooks (covering the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary shifts of the entire 19th century) toMario and the Magician (mocking the atmosphere of 1920sItalian fascism) toDoctor Faustus. In contrast to his brother Heinrich and his children Erika and Klaus, Thomas Mann at first advocated a rather conservative stance, especially in theReflections of a Nonpolitical Man (1918), later and in his major works, however, a moderate, centrist and occasionally progressive attitude, while they were more "left-leaning".
Homoerotic allusions are also common and recur in many works (see below: Sexuality and literary work).
During World War I, Mann supported the conservatism ofKaiser Wilhelm II, attacked liberalism, and supported the war effort, calling theGreat War "a purification, a liberation, an enormous hope". In his 600-page-long workReflections of a Nonpolitical Man (1918), Mann presented his conservative, anti-modernist philosophy: spiritual tradition over material progress, German patriotism over egalitarian internationalism, and rooted culture over rootless civilisation.[36][37]
In "On the German Republic" (Von Deutscher Republik, 1922), Mann called upon German intellectuals to support the newWeimar Republic. The work was delivered at the Beethovensaal in Berlin on 13 October 1922, and published inDie neue Rundschau in November 1922. In the work, Mann developed his eccentric defence of the Republic based on extensive close readings ofNovalis andWalt Whitman. Also in 1921, he wrote an essayMind and Money in which he made a very open assessment of his family background: "In any case, I am personally indebted to the capitalist world order from the past, which is why it will never be appropriate for me to spit on it as it isà la mode these days." Thereafter, his political views gradually shifted towardliberal-left. He especially embraced democratic principles when the Weimar Republic was established.[38][39]
Mann initially gave his support to the left-liberalGerman Democratic Party before urging unity behind theSocial Democrats,[40][41] probably less for ideological reasons, but because he only trusted the political party of the workers to provide sufficient mass and resistance to the growingNazism. In 1930, he gave a public address in Berlin titledAn Appeal to Reason, in which he strongly denounced Nazism and encouraged resistance by the working class. This was followed by numerous essays and lectures in which he attacked theNazis. At the same time, he expressed increasing sympathy forsocialist ideas. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Mann and his wife were on holiday in Switzerland. Due to his strident denunciations of Nazi policies, his son Klaus advised him not to return. In contrast to those of his brother Heinrich and his son Klaus, Mann's books were not among those burnt publicly by Hitler's regime in May 1933, possibly since he had been the Nobel laureate in literature for 1929. In 1936, the Nazi government officially revoked his German citizenship.
During the war, Mann made a series of anti-Nazi radio-speeches, published asListen, Germany! in 1943. They were recorded on tape in the United States and then sent to the United Kingdom, where theBritish Broadcasting Corporation transmitted them, hoping to reach German listeners.
Mann expressed his belief in the collection of letters written in exile,Listen, Germany! (Deutsche Hörer!), that equatingSoviet communism with Nazi fascism on the basis that both aretotalitarian systems was either superficial or insincere in showing a preference forNazism.[42] He clarified this view during a German press interview in July 1949, declaring that he was not a communist but thatcommunism at least had some relation to ideals of humanity and of a better future. He said that the transition of thecommunist revolution into an autocratic regime was a tragedy while Nazism was only "devilishnihilism".[43][44]
Mann's diaries reveal his struggles with hisbisexuality andpaedophilia,[45] his attraction to men and young boys finding frequent reflection in his works, most prominently through the obsession of the elderly Aschenbach for the 14-year-old Polish boy Tadzio in the novellaDeath in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig, 1912).[46]Anthony Heilbut's biographyThomas Mann: Eros and Literature (1997) uncovered the centrality of Mann's sexuality to his oeuvre.Gilbert Adair's workThe Real Tadzio (2001) describes how, in 1911, Mann had stayed at theGrand Hôtel des Bains on theVenice Lido with his wife and brother, when he became enraptured by the angelic figure ofWładysław (Władzio) Moes, a 10-year-old Polish boy (the real Tadzio). While the story found acclaim, his wife would later recall that her own uncle was disgusted to hear of this attraction: “I still remember that my uncle, Privy Counsellor Friedberg, a famous professor of canon law in Leipzig, was outraged: ‘What a story! And a married man with a family!’”[47]
Thomas Mann in 1900 when he completedBuddenbrooks
In the autobiographical novellaTonio Kröger from 1901, the young hero has a crush on a handsome male classmate (modeled after real-life Lübeck classmate Armin Martens). In the novellaWith the prophet (1904) Mann mocks the believing disciples of a neo-Romantic "prophet" who preaches asceticism and has a strong resemblance to the real contemporary poetStefan George and hisGeorge-Kreis ("George-Circle"). In 1902, George had met the fourteen-year-old boyMaximilian Kronberger; He made an idol of him and after his early death in 1904 transfigured him into a kind ofAntinous-style "god".
Mann had also started planning a novel aboutFrederick the Great in 1905/1906, which ultimately did not come to fruition. Thesexuality of Frederick the Great would have played a significant role in this, its impact on his life, his political decisions and wars. In late 1914, at the start of World War I, Mann used the notes and excerpts already collected for this project to write his essayFrederick and the grand coalition in which he contrasted Frederick's soldierly, male drive and his literary, female connotations consisting of "decomposing" skepticism.[48] A similar "decomposing skepticism" had already estranged the barely concealed gay novel charactersTonio Kröger andHannoBuddenbrook (1901) from their traditional upper class family environments and hometown (which in both cases is Lübeck). TheConfessions of Felix Krull, written from 1910 onwards, describes a self-absorbed young dandyish imposter who, if not explicitly, fits into the gay typology, at one point considering, but ultimately refusing, the advances of a Scottish lord to accept him as hissugar daddy and in return be adopted and named as heir. The 1909 novelRoyal Highness, which describes a young unworldly and dreamy prince who forces himself into a marriage of convenience that ultimately becomes happy, was modeled after Mann's own romance and marriage to Katia Mann in February 1905.
InThe Magic Mountain, Hans Castorp, in love with Clawdia Chauchat, recalls his schooltime when, as a fourteen-year-old, he adored a classmate, Pribislav Hippe, whom he asked, with his heart pounding, if he could lend him his pencil, of which he keeps a few scraps like a relic. Borrowing and returning were interpreted as poetic masks for a sexual act. But it is not just a poetic symbol. In his diary entry from 15 September 1950, Mann remembers "Williram Timpe's scraps from his pencil", referring to a classmate from Lübeck.[49] The novellaMario and the Magician (1929) ends with a murder due to a male-male kiss.
Numerous homoerotic crushes are documented in his letters and diaries, both before and after his marriage. Mann's diary records hisincestuous attraction to his own 13-year-old son, "Eissi" –Klaus Mann: "Klaus to whom recently I feel very drawn" (22 June). In the background conversations about man-to-man eroticism take place; a long letter is written to Carl Maria Weber on this topic, while the diary reveals: "In love with Klaus during these days" (5 June). "Eissi, who enchants me right now" (11 July). "Delight over Eissi, who in his bath is terribly handsome. Find it very natural that I am in love with my son ... Eissi lay reading in bed with his brown torso naked, which disconcerted me" (25 July). "I heard noise in the boys' room and surprised Eissi completely naked in front of Golo's bed acting foolish. Strong impression of his premasculine, gleaming body. Disquiet" (17 October 1920).[50] His younger sonGolo, homosexual like Klaus, suffered lifelong from the lower esteem his father showed him, the less handsome and somewhat clumsy – but ultimately he inherited more of his father's literary talent than the older one.
Ludwig von Hofmann:The Spring (1913). The picture, purchased in 1914, hung in Mann's study until his death.[51]
Mann was a friend of the painter and violinistPaul Ehrenberg, for whom he had feelings as a young man (from 1899 to 1904, at least until around 1903 when there is evidence that those feelings had cooled). The attraction that he felt for Ehrenberg, which is corroborated by notebook entries, caused Mann difficulty and discomfort and may have been an obstacle to his marrying an English woman, Mary Smith, whom he met in 1901.[52] In 1927, while on summer vacation inKampen (Sylt), the 52-year-old Mann fell in love with 17-year-old Klaus Heuser, to whom he dedicated the introduction to his essay"Kleist's Amphitryon, a Reconquest" in the fall of the same year, which he read publicly in Munich in the presence of Heuser.Jupiter, who has transformed himself into the form of the generalAmphitryon, tries to seduce his wife Alcmene when the real Amphitryon returns home and Alcmene rejects the god. Mann understands Jupiter as the "lonely artistic spirit" who courts life, is rejected and, "a triumphant renouncer", learns to be content with his divinity.[53] In 1950, Mann met the 19-year-old waiter Franz Westermeier, confiding to his diary "Once again this, once again love".[54] He immediately processed the experience in his essay"Michelangelo in his poems" (1950) and was also inspired to writeThe Black Swan (1954). In 1975, when Mann's diaries were published, creating a national sensation in Germany, the retired Westermeier was tracked down in the United States: he was flattered to learn he had been the object of Mann's obsession, but also shocked at its depth.[55]
Mann's infatuations probably remained largelyplatonic. Katia Mann tolerated these love affairs, as did the children, because they knew that it did not go too far. He exchanged letters with Klaus Heuser for a while and met him again in 1935. He wrote about the Heuser experience in his diary on 6 May 1934: "In comparison, the early experiences with Armin Martens and Williram Timpe recede far into the childlike, and that with Klaus Heuser was a late happiness with the character of life-relevant fulfillment... That's probably how it is humanly, and because of this normality I can feel my life is more canonical than through marriage and children." In the entry from 20 February 1942, he spoke again about Klaus Heuser: "Well, yes − lived and loved. Black eyes that shed tears for me, beloved lips that I kissed − it was there, I had it too, I'll be able to tell myself when I die."[56] He was partly delighted, partly ashamed of the depth of his own emotions in these cases and mostly made them productive at some earlier or later date, but the experiences themselves were not yet literary. Only in retrospective, he converted them into literary production and sublimated his shame into the theory that "a writer experiences in order to express himself", that his life is just material. Mann even went so far as to accuse his brotherHeinrich of his "aestheticism being a gesture-rich, highly gifted impotence for life and love."[57] When Mann met the aging bachelor Heuser, who had worked in China for 18 years, for the last time in 1954, his daughter Erika scoffed: "Since he (Heuser) couldn't have the magician (= Thomas Mann's nickname with his children), he preferred to give it up completely."[58]
Although Mann had always denied his novels had autobiographical components, the unsealing of his diaries revealing how consumed his life had been with unrequited and sublimated passion resulted in a reappraisal of his work.[55][59] Thomas Mann had burned all of his diaries from before March 1933 in the garden of his home in Pacific Palisades in May 1945. Only the booklets from September 1918 to December 1921 were preserved because the author needed them for his work onDoctor Faustus. He later decided to have them − and his diaries from 1933 onwards – published 20 years after his death and predicted "surprise and cheerful astonishment". They were published byPeter von Mendelssohn andInge Jens in 10 volumes.
From the very beginning, Thomas' sonKlaus Mann openly dealt with his own homosexuality in his literary work and open lifestyle and referred critically to his father's "sublimation" in his diary. On the other hand, Thomas's daughterErika Mann and his sonGolo Mann came out only later in their lives. Thomas Mann reacted cautiously to Klaus's first novelThe Pious Dance, Adventure Book of a Youth (1926), which is openly set inBerlin's homosexual milieu. Although he embraced male-male eroticism, he disapproved of gay lifestyle. TheEulenburg affair, which broke out two years after Mann's marriage, had strengthened him in his renunciation of a gay life and he supported the journalistMaximilian Harden, who was friends with Katia Mann's family, in his denunciatory trial against the gayPrince of Eulenburg, a close friend of EmperorWilhelm II.[60] Thomas Mann was always concerned about his dignity, reputation and respectability; the "poet king"Goethe was his role model. His horror at a possible collapse of these attributes found expression in the character of Aschenbach inDeath in Venice. Cases like that of the industrialistFriedrich Alfred Krupp, who felt driven to suicide after a homosexual affair became public, were not uncommon and had a deterrent effect. But as time went on Mann became more open. He tolerated his son Klaus bringing his various lovers to lunch in Pacific Palisades, and was only appalled when these – navy sailors and the like – had never heard of him or his works, which, unfortunately, was mostly the case, leading to short, surly diary entries about their lack of culture. When the twenty-two-year-old novelistGore Vidal published his third novelThe City and the Pillar in 1948, a love-story between small-town American boys and a portrait of homosexual life in New York and Hollywood in the forties, a highly controversial book even among the publishers, not to mention the press, he sent a copy to Thomas Mann who responded politely, calling it a "noble work".[61]
When the physician and pioneer of gay liberationMagnus Hirschfeld sent another petition to theReichstag in 1922 to abolishSection 175 of the German Criminal Code, under which many homosexuals were imprisoned simply because of their inclinations, Thomas Mann also signed.[62] However, criminal liability among adults was only abolished through a change in the law on 25 June 1969 − fourteen years after Mann's death and just three days before theStonewall riots. This legal situation certainly had an impact throughout his life; the man whom the Nazis labeled a traitor never had any desire to be incarcerated for "criminal acts".
Several literary and other works make reference to Mann's bookThe Magic Mountain, including:
Frederic Tuten's 1993 novelTintin in the New World features many characters (such as Clavdia Chauchat, Mynheer Peeperkorn and others) fromThe Magic Mountain interacting withTintin in Peru.
Andrew Crumey's novelMobius Dick (2004) imagines an alternative universe where an author named Behring has written novels resembling Mann's. These include a version ofThe Magic Mountain withErwin Schrödinger in place of Castorp.
Haruki Murakami's novelNorwegian Wood (1987), in which the main character is criticized for readingThe Magic Mountain while visiting a friend in a sanatorium.
The paintingMagic Mountain (after Thomas Mann) byChristiaan Tonnis (1987). "The Magic Mountain" is also a chapter in Tonnis's 2006 bookKrankheit als Symbol ("Illness as a Symbol").[63]
The 1941 film49th Parallel, in which the character Philip Armstrong Scott unknowingly praises Mann's work to an escaped World War II NaziU-boat commander, who later responds by burning Scott's copy ofThe Magic Mountain.
InKen Kesey's novelSometimes a Great Notion (1964), character Indian Jenny purchases a Thomas Mann novel and tries to find out "just where was this mountain full of magic..." (p. 578).
Hayao Miyazaki's 2013 filmThe Wind Rises, in which an unnamed German man at a mountain resort invokes the novel as cover for furtively condemning the rapidly arming Hitler and Hirohito regimes. After he flees to escape the Japanese secret police, the protagonist, who fears his own mail is being read, refers to him as the novel's Mr. Castorp. The film is partly based on another Japanese novel, set likeThe Magic Mountain in a tuberculosis sanatorium.
Father John Misty's 2017 albumPure Comedy contains a song titled "So I'm Growing Old on Magic Mountain", in which a man, near death, reflects on the passing of time and the disappearance of his Dionysian youth in homage to the themes in Mann's novel.[64]
Viktor Frankl's bookMan's Search for Meaning relates the "time-experience" of Holocaust prisoners to TB patients inThe Magic Mountain: "How paradoxical was our time-experience! In this connection we are reminded of Thomas Mann'sThe Magic Mountain, which contains some very pointed psychological remarks. Mann studies the spiritual development of people who are in an analogous psychological position, i.e., tuberculosis patients in a sanatorium who also know no date for their release. They experience a similar existence—without a future and without a goal."
The movieA Cure For Wellness, directed byGore Verbinski, was inspired by and is somewhat a modernization, somewhat a parody, ofThe Magic Mountain.[65] In one scene, an orderly at the asylum can be seen readingDer Zauberberg.
The album cover forPeter Schickele's recording ofP.D.Q. Bach's "Bluegrass Cantata" shows an illustration of the 18th Century German bluegrass ensemble Tommy Mann and his Magic Mountain Boys.
The 2022 novelThe Empusium byOlga Tokarczuk reprises key plot elements from The Magic Mountain, including an alpine sanatorium for the treatment of tuberculosis, a time setting of 1913 which precedes World War I, a protagonist who is a young engineer and an isolated health resort as amicrocosm of society.
David Rakoff's essay "Shrimp", which appears in his 2010 collectionHalf Empty, makes a humorous comparison between Mann's Aschenbach andE. B. White's Stuart Little.
In the MTV animated seriesDaria,Daria Morgendorffer receives from Tom Sloane a first-edition English translation as a present ("One J at a Time", Season 5, Episode 8, 2001) and is ridiculed by her sister, Quinn, for having a boyfriend who only gives her "a used book".
In a 1994 essay,Umberto Eco suggests that the media discuss "Whether reading Thomas Mann gives one erections" as an alternative to "WhetherJoyce is boring".[68]
Hans Pleschinski's 2013 novelKönigsallee fictionalizes an actual visit by Thomas Mann to Klaus Heuser's parents in Düsseldorf in 1954. He lets Mann's former lover come along with his boy named Anwar, as well as Mann's children Erika and Golo. Everything gets complicated.[70]
Colm Tóibín's 2021 fictionalised biographyThe Magician is a portrait of Mann in the context of his family and political events.[71]
1943:Listen, Germany! (Deutsche Hörer!) – collection of radio broadcasts
1947:Essays of Three Decades, translated from the German by H. T. Lowe-Porter. [1st American ed.], New York, A. A. Knopf, 1947. Reprinted as Vintage book, K55, New York, Vintage Books, 1957. Includes "Schopenhauer"
1948: "Nietzsche's Philosophy in the Light of Recent History"
1950: "Michelangelo according to his poems" ("Michelangelo in seinen Dichtungen")[73]
1958:Last Essays. Includes "Nietzsche's Philosophy in the Light of Recent History"
1963:Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories (trans.H. T. Lowe-Porter). Includes: "Death in Venice"; "Tonio Kröger"; "Mario and the Magician"; "Disorder and Early Sorrow"; "A Man and His Dog"; "The Blood of the Walsungs"; "Tristan"; "Felix Krull".
1970:Tonio Kröger and Other Stories (trans. David Luke). Includes: "Little Herr Friedemann"; "The Joker"; "The Road to the Churchyard"; "Gladius Dei"; "Tristan"; "Tonio Kroger".
Republished in 1988 as "Death in Venice and Other Stories" with the addition of the eponymous story.
1997:Six Early Stories (trans. Peter Constantine). Includes: "A Vision: Prose Sketch"; "Fallen"; "The Will to Happiness"; "Death"; "Avenged: Study for a Novella"; "Anecdote".
1998:Death in Venice and Other Tales (trans. Joachim Neugroschel). Includes: "The Will for Happiness"; "Little Herr Friedemann"; "Tobias Mindernickel"; "Little Lizzy"; "Gladius Dei"; "Tristan"; "The Starvelings: A Study"; "Tonio Kröger"; "The Wunderkind"; "Harsh Hour"; "The Blood of the Walsungs"; "Death in Venice".
1999:Death in Venice and Other Stories (trans. Jefferson Chase). Includes: "Tobias Mindernickel"; "Tristan"; "Tonio Kröger"; "The Child Prodigy"; "Hour of Hardship"; "Death in Venice"; "Man and Dog".
2023:New Selected Stories (trans.Damion Searls). Includes: "Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow";[74] "A Day in the Life of Hanno Buddenbrook" (excerpt fromBuddenbrooks); "Louisey";[75] "Death in Venice"; "Confessions of a Con Artist, by Felix Krull—Part One: My Childhood".Review byColm Tóibín
The metadatabase TMI-Research[79] brings together archival materials and library holdings of the network "Thomas Mann International". The network was founded in 2017 by the five houses Buddenbrookhaus/Heinrich-und-Thomas-Mann-Zentrum (Lübeck), theMonacensia im Hildebrandhaus (Munich), the Thomas Mann Archive of the ETH Zurich (Zurich/Switzerland), theThomas Mann House (Los Angeles/USA) and the Thomo Manno kultūros centras/Thomas Mann Culture Centre (Nida/Lithuania). The houses stand for the main stations of Thomas Mann's life. The platform, which is hosted byETH Zurich, allows research in the collections of the network partners across all houses. The database is freely accessible and contains over 165,000 records on letters, original editions, photographs, monographs and essays on Thomas Mann and the Mann family. Further links take you to the respective source databases with contact options and further information.
^Lindsey, Geoff (1990). "Quantity and quality in British and American vowel systems". In Ramsaran, Susan (ed.).Studies in the Pronunciation of English: A Commemorative Volume in Honour of A.C. Gimson. Routledge. pp. 106–118.ISBN978-0-415-07180-2.
^Hermann Kurzke,Thomas Mann: Life as a Work of Art: A Biography, chapter XIV:Under ostracism and ban, Princeton University Press (2002).
^Hermann Kurzke,Thomas Mann: Life as a Work of Art: A Biography, chapter XIV:Under ostracism and ban, introduction: Chronicle 1933–1936, Princeton University Press (2002).
^65 Stockton Street, Princeton, New Jersey, on the website of the Mercer Hill Historic District Association
^Wilson, Scott.Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 29777). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.
^abcClaridge, Laura (2016).The lady with the Borzoi : Blanche Knopf, literary tastemaker extraordinaire (1st ed.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. pp. 70–71.ISBN978-0-374-11425-1.OCLC908176194.
^Horton, David (2013),Thomas Mann in English. A Study in Literary Translation, London, New Delhi, New York, Sydney: Bloomsbury.ISBN978-1-4411-6798-9
^"Nomination Database". nobelprize.org. April 2020.Archived from the original on 19 December 2016. Retrieved14 June 2017.
^Hermann Kurzke,Thomas Mann: Life as a Work of Art: A Biography, chapter IX:Orientation attempts, subchapterRevolution in Russia, Princeton University Press (2002).
^Mann, Thomas (1950). Warner Angell, Joseph (ed.).The Thomas Mann reader. New York: Knopf. p. 440.
^Mann, Thomas (1950). Warner Angell, Joseph (ed.).The Thomas Mann reader. New York: Knopf. p. 443.
^Mann, Thomas (1942).Deutsche Hörer! – 25 Radiosendungen nach Deutschland [German listeners! – 25 radio broadcasts to Germany] (in German). Stockholm: Bermann-Fischer.[page needed]
^Frederick and the grand coalition, an outline for the day and the hour. The essay was first published inDer Neue Merkur (January/February 1915), and Mann himself later included it in an anthology ('Old and New', 1953). See:Friedrich und die große Koalition, Ein Abriß für den Tag und die Stunde, Fischer Verlag
^Hermann Kurzke,Thomas Mann: Life as a Work of Art: A Biography, chapter II:Williram Timpe, Princeton University Press (2002).
^Hermann Kurzke,Thomas Mann: Life as a Work of Art: A Biography, chapter XIII:Homoeroticism in midlife, subchapter "Klaus Heuser and Amphitryon", Princeton University Press (2002).
^Hermann Kurzke,Thomas Mann: Life as a Work of Art: A Biography, chapter II:First love: Armin Martens (in:Tonio Kröger), Princeton University Press (2002).
^Thomas Mann's diary entry from 29 August 1954. In fact, Klaus Heuser is said to have had a lover named Anwar. See the 2013 novelKönigsallee by Hans Pleschinski underCultural references - other.
^Han, Angie (21 December 2016)."Interview: Gore Verbinski on Returning to Horror With 'A Cure for Wellness'".Archived from the original on 21 February 2017. Retrieved2 March 2017.Gore Verbinski: Well, there's this book by Thomas Mann calledThe Magic Mountain that we're both fans of, and that book deals with people in a sanitarium in the Alps, clutching on to their sickness like a badge before the outbreak of World War I. We wanted to explore this sense of denial and say, well, what if that was a genre?
Horton, David (2013).Thomas Mann in English: A Study in Literary Translation. London, New Delhi, New York, Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic.doi:10.5040/9781472544087.ISBN978-1-4411-6798-9.
Kurzke, Hermann (2002).Thomas Mann: Life as a Work of Art: A Biography. Princeton University Press.ISBN978-0-691-07069-8.
Thomas Mann Collection. Yale Collection of German Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
TMI Research byThomas Mann International: Cross-house research in the archive and library holdings of the network partners in Lübeck, Munich, Zurich and Los Angeles
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