Thomas Mann Biography and List of Works

German essayist and novelist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. Among Mann's most famous works is BUDDENBROOKS (1901), which was finished when he was 26. He began writing it during a one-year stay in Italy and completed it in about two and a half years. The book outraged the citizens of Lübeck who saw it as a thinly veiled account of local incidents and figures.

"Regarded as a whole, Mann's career is a striking example of the "repeated puberty" which Goethe thought characteristic of the genius, In technique as well as in thought, he experienced far more daringly than is generally realized. In Buddenbrooks he wrote one of the last of the great "old-fashioned" novels, a patient, thorough tracing of the fortunes of a family."
(from Thomas Mann by Henry Hatfield, 1962)

Thomas Mann was born in Lübeck. He was the son of a wealthy father, who had been elected twice as the burgomaster of Lübeck. His mother, Bruhn da Silva, came from a German-Portugese-Creole family.

Mann's father died in 1891 and his trading firm was dissolved. The family moved to Munich. Mann was educated at the Lübeck gymnasium and he also spent some time at the University of Munich. Mann then worked with the south German Fire Insurance Company (1894-95). His career as a writer started in the magazine Simplicissimus. Mann's first book, DER KLEINE HERR FRIEDMANN, was published in 1898.

During these years Mann became immersed in the writings of the philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche as well as in the music of composer Richard Wagner. In Buddenbrooks, Mann's early masterpiece, he used the technique of the leitmotif, which he adapted from Wagner. Mann had started the book in 1897 as a story about one member of the family, but during the writing process it grew into a saga of a wealthy family, which falls into decadence.

After publishing Buddenbrooks Mann concentrated on short novels or novellas. In 1902 he published the novella TONIO KRÖGER, a spiritual autobiography exploring art and discipline. In 1905 he married Katja Pringsheim, the daughter of a wealthy Munich family; they had a total six children over the ensuing years. During World War I Mann supported the Kaiser's policy and attacked liberalism.

"A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries."
(from The Magic Mountain, 1924)

After ten years of work Mann completed his second major work, DER ZAUBERBERG (The Magic Mountain, 1924), which won him the Nobel Prize. It depicted once more a fight between liberal and conservative values, and the battle between the enlightened civilized world and irrational beliefs. Hans Castorp, the protagonist, goes to the elegant tuberculosis sanatorium in Davos, to visit his cousin. Castorp is not really ill, but he stays for a period of seven years. Two men struggle for his soul, Settembrini, an Italian humanist, and Naptha, who speaks of blind and irrational faith. Naptha kills himself. Claudia Chauchat, whom Castorp loves, leaves, and Castorp yearns her deeply. She returns with her lover and Castorp departs the sanatorium to join the army at the outbreak of the war.

Mann's next major work was the trilogy JOSEPH UND SEINE BRÜDER (1933-42), about the conflict between personal freedom and political tyranny. The story was based on Genesis 12-50. The first volume recounts the early history of Jacob, and introduces Joseph, the central character. During the writing process, the political control of Germany was seized by the Nazis.

On Hitler's accession Mann moved to Switzerland, and settled finally in the United States in 1936, where he worked among others at the University of Princeton. In 1941 he moved to Santa Monica, California. Mann lived in the U.S. some ten years. His last great work was DOKTOR FAUSTUS, the story of composer Adrian Lewerkühn and the progressive destruction of German culture in the two World Wars. In 1947 Mann returned to Europe, living mostly in Switzerland, near Zürich, where he died on August 12, 1955. Mann's parody novel Confessions of Felix Krull was left unfinished.

For further reading: Thomas Mann by Henry Hatfield (1962); Thomas Mann: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. by Henry Hatfield (1964); Essays on Thomas Mann by G. Lucàcs (1965); Thomas Mann by J.P. Stern (1967); Thomas Mann by Ignace Feuerlicht (1968); Thomas Mann by H. Bürgin and H-O. Mayer (1969); Thomas Mann: The Devil's Advocate by T.E. Apter (1979); The Borthers Mann by N. Hamilton (1979); Thomas Mann by E. Heller (1979); Thomas Mann by M. Swales (1980); The Ironic German by Erich Heller (1981); Thomas Mann by Richard Winston (1981); Thomas Mann and His Family ny M. Reich-Ranicki (1989); Thomas Mann by M.P.A Travers (1992); Thomas Mann: A Life by Donald Prater (1995) - SEE ALSO: Elias Canetti, Abraham Polonsky, W.H. Auden who was married to Thomas Mann's daughter. Brother Heinrich Mann was a noted writer. - Klaus Mann, his son, published several novels, among them KINDERNOVELE (1926), FLUCHT IN DEN NORDEN, MEPHISTO, DER VULKAN (1939). His autobiography THE TURNING POINT (1942) appeared in Germany in 1952. Klaus Mann was born in Munich. He worked as a theatre critic, actor and journalist. In the 1930s he emigrated in the United States, becoming an U.S. citizen in 1943. From 1939 he wrote mostly in English. Klaus Mann died in Cannes. His restless life ended in suicide.

BUDDENBROOKS, (1901)