Paul Thomas Mann (6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 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 modern versions of German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Arthur Schopenhauer.Jensen, Morten Høi (2025), pp. 19, 40, 52.
The Mann family was part of the Hanseatic class. He portrayed both his family and the influential class in his first novel, Buddenbrooks (1901). Other major novels include The Magic Mountain (1924), the tetralogy Joseph and His Brothers (1933–1943), and Doctor Faustus (1947). He also wrote short stories and novellas, including Death in Venice (1912).
His older brother was novelist Heinrich Mann. Three of Mann's six children – Erika Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann – also became significant German writers.
When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Mann fled to Switzerland. When World War II broke out in 1939, he moved to the United States, returning to Switzerland after the war in 1952. Mann is one of the best-known exponents of the so-called , German literature written in exile by those who opposed the Hitler regime.
Life
Paul Thomas Mann was born to a Hanseatic family in Lübeck, the second son of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann (a senator and a grain merchant) and his wife Júlia 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 was Roman Catholic but Mann was baptised into his father's Lutheran religion. Mann's father died in 1891, and after that his trading firm was liquidated. The family subsequently moved to Munich. Mann first studied science at a Lübeck (secondary school), then attended the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München as well as the Technische Hochschule München, where, in preparation for a journalism career, he studied history, economics, art history and literature.
Mann lived in Munich from 1891 until 1933, with the exception of a year spent in Palestrina, Italy, with his elder brother, the novelist Heinrich. Thomas worked at the South German Fire Insurance Company in 1894–95. His career as a writer began when he wrote for the magazine Simplicissimus. Mann's first short story, "Little Herr Friedemann" (), was published in 1898.
In 1905, Mann married Katia Pringsheim, who came from a wealthy, secular Jewish industrialist family. She later joined the Lutheran church. The couple had six children: Erika (b. 1905), Klaus (b. 1906), Golo (b. 1909), Monika (b. 1910), Elisabeth (b. 1918) and Michael (b. 1919). Translation by Leslie Willson of (München C. H. Bick'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1999).
Due to the Pringsheim family's wealth, Katia Mann was able to purchase a summer property in Bad Tölz in 1908, on which they built a country house the following year, which they kept until 1917.Mann country home in Bad Tölz on the website of the municipality of Bad Tölz In 1914 they also purchased a villa in Munich (at Poschinger Str in the borough of Bogenhausen, today 10 Thomas-Mann-Allee) where they lived until 1933.
Pre-war and Second World War period In 1912, Katia was treated for what was incorrectly diagnosed as tuberculosisJensen, Morten Høi (2025), p. 16. for a few months in a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, where Thomas Mann visited her for a few weeks. This inspired him to write his 1924 novel The Magic Mountain. He was also appalled by the risk of international confrontation between Germany and France, following the Agadir Crisis in Morocco, and later by the outbreak of the First World War. The novel ends with the outbreak of this war, in which the hero enlists, with his survival uncertain.
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 disastrous inflation of 1923 and 1924 resulted in additional high losses. The sales success of his novel The Magic Mountain, published in 1924, improved his financial situation again, as did the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. He used the prize money to build a cottage in the fishing village of Nida, Lithuania on the Curonian Spit, where there was a German art colony and where he spent the summers of 1930–1932 working on Joseph and His Brothers. Today, the cottage is a cultural center dedicated to him, with a small memorial exhibition.
In February 1933, having finished a book tour to Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris, Thomas Mann moved to Arosa (Switzerland) when Hitler 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 (see chapter below) had made him an enemy of the Nazis. 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 an informant and that Mann's immediate arrest would have been very likely. The family (except these two children, who went to Amsterdam) emigrated to Küsnacht, near Zürich, Switzerland, after a stopover in Sanary-sur-Mer, France. The son Golo managed, at great risk, to smuggle the already completed chapters of the Joseph novel and the (sensitive) diaries into Switzerland. The Bavarian Political Police searched Mann's house in Munich and confiscated the house, its inventory and the bank accounts. At the same time, an arrest 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 the Prussian 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 received Czechoslovak 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, which Reinhard Heydrich in particular insisted on. It had already been confiscated and forcibly rented out in 1933.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). In December 1936, the University 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 the German 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 to Princeton, New Jersey, where they lived on 65 Stockton Street65 Stockton Street, Princeton, New Jersey, on the website of the Mercer Hill Historic District Association and he began to teach at Princeton University. In 1941 he was designated consultant in German Literature, later Fellow in Germanic Literature, at the Library of Congress.Spiegel, Taru (1920). "Thomas Mann and the Library of Congress. " Library of Congress (18 December). In 1942, the Mann family moved to 1550 San Remo Drive in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The Manns were prominent members of the German expatriate community of Los Angeles and frequently met other émigrés at the house of Salka and Bertold Viertel in Santa Monica, and at the Villa Aurora, the home of fellow German exile Lion Feuchtwanger.Jewish Women's Archive: Salka Viertel | Jewish Women's Archive . Retrieved 19 November 2016. Thomas Mann's always difficult relationship with his brother Heinrich, 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.Hermann Kurzke, Thomas Mann: Life as a Work of Art: A Biography, chapter XVI: Hatred of Hitler, subchapter Heinrich, Princeton University Press (2002). On 23 June 1944, Thomas Mann was naturalized as a citizen of the United States. The Manns lived in Los Angeles until 1952.
Anti-Nazi broadcasts The outbreak of World War II, on 1 September 1939, prompted Mann to offer anti-Nazi speeches in German to the German people via the BBC. In October 1940, he began monthly broadcasts, recorded in the U.S. and flown to London, where the BBC German Service broadcast them to Germany on the longwave 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."Deutsche Hörer 25 (recte: 55) Radiosendungen nach Deutschland. Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1970.
Mann was one of the few publicly active opponents of Nazism among German expatriates in the U.S. 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 of German 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:
Houses that the Manns lived in + Children of Thomas Mann and Katia Pringsheim Name Birth Death Erika 9 November 1905 27 August 1969 Klaus 18 November 1906 21 May 1949 Golo 29 March 1909 7 April 1994 Monika 7 June 1910 17 March 1992 Elisabeth 24 April 1918 8 February 2002 Michael 21 April 1919 1 January 1977
Last years