Thomas Mann

P R E S E N T A T I O N
Biography

Life
- German Novelist;

- Born (1875 - 1955) Lübeck, Germany, Bourgeois family;

- Father: Senator and a grain merchant;

- Mother: Roman Catholic, Man baptised father's Lutheran

religion;

- Studied history, economics, art and literature > Journalism career:

- Ludwig Maximillians University of Munich

- Technical University of Munich

- Married Katia Pringsheim, from wealthy, secular Jewish

industrialist family;

- 6 children together, also became writers;

 Biography

Career
- German Novelist, short story writer, social critic,
philanthropist, essayist;

- 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature;

- Writing career began: Magazine Simplicissimus

Published first short story, "Little Mr Friedemann" 1898;

- Novels are noted for their insight into the psychology of

the artist and the intellectual;

- Best known: literature written in exile, who opposed Hitler.

(Exilliteratur);

- Other authors were influenced (Heinrich Böll, Joseph

Heller and Orhan Pamuk);
Biography

War
- Hitler, World War II;

- Fled to Switzerland;
- Later the US;

- From US: Anti-Nazi speeches to German

people via BBC;

- Recorded in the U.S. and flown to

London, broadcast longwave band;
Thomas Mann in literature:
• I n f l u e n c e s f r o m Wa g n e r a n d S c h o p e n h a u e r ;
• Interpretations of his political and social ideas in his fictional books;
"The Magic Mountain"
• European Civilization
disintegrating in
a tuberculosis
sanatorium;

• Correlation between
Mann's fictional works
and political or social
beliefs;
Order of the Day: Political Essays and Speeches of two decades
Europe Beware

"What is decisive is that the young no longer know anything of 'culture' in its highest
and deepest sense, of personal exertion of individual responsibility and effort. Instead
they take their comfort in the 'collective' group."

Decay of European civilization

 Europe
Beware
"The collectivist habit of life is
only another instance of the
vulgarization of the great and
venerated European ideas by
the commercialism of the
masses ."

Collectivism and politics of the masses = Cultural decay of the European Civilization