Thomas Mann was born in Lübeck in 1875 and came from a merchant family. His path to literary celebrity began in 1901 with the publication of the novel "Buddenbrooks" , which in 1929 brought him the Nobel Prize . To date, 3.5 million copies have been sold by the plant. Another important novel by Mann, "The Magic Mountain" , appeared in 1924 and highlights society before the First World War and the individual experience of this time.
political change and exile
Over the years, Mann went through a profound political change. First, he showed support for the emperor during the last months of the First World War and declined democratic ideas, as he explained in his work "considerations of an apolitical" from 1918. These views initially made him popular with the German rights. But after the foundation of the Weimar Republic in 1919, his attitude changed radically. Triggered by the attack on the Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau in 1922, Mann began to position himself as a convinced democrat and to support their ideals. This change is a central theme in his novel "The Magic Mountain" , in which he originally wanted to represent a character as civilization literary, but then brought in his own view.
After an attack on him by a SA-MOB in Berlin, man was forced to go into exile in 1933. The family initially moved to Switzerland and finally moved to the USA in 1938. In Pacific Palisades he lived in a villa, where he completed many important works, including the "Joseph" tetralogy and "Doctor Faustus" .
a critic of National Socialism
man was an open opponent of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists. During his time in exile, he became one of the best -known voices of the exile Germans and used broadcasting speeches sent by the BBC to the German Reich to clarify the German population about the regime's atrocities. His commitment to National Socialism is emphasized by the editors of the "Praeceptor Germaniae - Thomas Mann and the political culture of German" , in which his career as a political actor and his learning processes are treated. Mann's transformation from the monarchist to the convinced Democrat is a central topic of this argument.
Although man had a great patriotic attitude, he decidedly rejected the National Socialists' ethnic ideology. After returning to Europe in 1952, he lived in Switzerland, where he died in Zurich on August 12, 1955. His will to German culture and his disputes with German guilt are still the subject of research and discussion, in particular against the background of his critical view of post -war Germany and the possible renacification in the shadow of the Cold War.
The villa in California in which men lived was largely spared from the fires. His desk is now exhibited in the Thomas man archive of the ETH Zurich , and the family is buried at the Kilchberger cemetery . Man remains a formative figure of German literature and a symbol of humanistic values that are also important today.
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