ABSTRACT
Mann, Thomas (1875–1955) The outstanding German novelist of the twentieth century, Nobel Prize winner and an unequivocal opponent of National Socialism, Thomas Mann was born on 6 June 1875, the son of wealthy merchant family in the Hanseatic city of Lübeck. The decline of precisely such a family over three generations was the subject of his first great work, Buddenbrooks (1900, Engl. trs. 1924). After the family moved to Munich, Mann worked in an insurance office and studied at university before turning to journalism and freelance writing. Early novels and short stories like Tonio Kröger (1903), Tristan (1903) and Der Tod in Venedig (1913, Engl. trs. Death in Venice, 1925) revealed Mann's preoccupation with the relationship between bourgeois life and the modern artistic sensibility, his fascination with death, and the philosophical influence of Wagner and Schopenhauer. During World War I, Mann expressed chauvinistic feelings in a highly sophisticated manner, in his essays on Frederick the Great – admiring the Prussian king's harshness, self-sacrifice and sense of destiny – and in his presentation of the war as a struggle between German Kultur and western civilization. Subsequently he was attacked for betraying the cause of German nationalism because of his courageous defence of Weimar democracy in Von Deutscher Republik (1923) and other writings and speeches.
