Mann, Thomas (1875–1955)

Thomas Mann was a highly regarded German novelist and social critic of the 20th century. He [Page 810]won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929, and his works were considered classics by the end of his life. His novels and essays combined philosophy, psychology, and political insights with his literary craft. His themes often centered on dualism: the coexisting physical and spiritual human natures, the life of action and the life of thought.

Mann's writings detail the complexity of reality and time. The Magic Mountain, his novel published in 1924, most clearly explores the inner time-consciousness of the main character, Hans Castorp, as he seeks knowledge and adjustment to life in a tuberculosis sanatorium. This novel is full of references to understanding time. Mann insists that time cannot be narrated and is not linear. Hans remarks about time being a turning point in a circle. The daily routines and seasons circle around the characters' lives.

Thomas Mann was born Paul Thomas Mann into a prosperous middle-class family in Lübeck, Germany, on June 6, 1875. He was baptized as a Lutheran. He was one of five children of a prominent merchant and city councilman. When his father died, the family moved to Munich, where he received his early education. He began the daily habit of writing in his personal diary when he was a schoolboy in the 1890s. In 1905, he married Katia Pringsheim, an educated woman and the only daughter of a professor in Munich. She devoted herself to him, his career, and their six children. He traveled on the lecture circuit and vacationed around Europe. They had a life of culture, order, and comfort. He had many famous acquaintances in the fields of literature, music, psychology, and politics of the time.

In 1933, while Mann and his wife were vacationing in Switzerland, they were advised not to return to the political turmoil of Germany. Adolf Hitler's actions forced Mann into a reluctant exile. Mann was very concerned about getting his private diaries back. On July 7, 1935, Mann received Harvard University's honorary doctor of letters degree with Albert Einstein. In 1938, Mann and most of his family settled in the United States, where he continued his writings in the German language. His children grew up to succeed in a variety of literary and scholarly endeavors. In 1944, he became a U.S. citizen. Mann moved back to Switzerland and died there on August 12, 1952.