Thomas Mann Popular Books

Thomas Mann Biography & Facts

Paul Thomas Mann (UK: MAN, US: MAHN; German pronunciation: [ˈtoːmas ˈman] ; 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 modernized versions of German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Arthur Schopenhauer. Mann was a member of the Hanseatic Mann family and portrayed his family and class in his first novel, Buddenbrooks. His older brother was the radical writer Heinrich Mann and 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, then returned to Switzerland in 1952. Mann is one of the best-known exponents of the so-called Exilliteratur, German literature written in exile by those who opposed the Hitler regime. Life Paul Thomas Mann was born to a bourgeois 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 Gymnasium (secondary school), then attended the Ludwig Maximillians University of Munich as well as the Technical University of Munich, 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 Mr Friedemann" (Der Kleine 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. Pre-war and Second World War period In 1912, he and his wife moved to a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, which was to inspire 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. In 1929, Mann had a cottage built in the fishing village of Nidden, Memel Territory (now 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 1933, while travelling in the South of France and living in Sanary-sur-Mer, Mann heard from his eldest children, Klaus and Erika in Munich, that it would not be safe for him to return to Germany. The family (except these two children) emigrated to Küsnacht, near Zürich, Switzerland, but received Czechoslovak citizenship and a passport in 1936. In 1939, following the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Mann emigrated to the United States. He moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where he lived on 65 Stockton Street and 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. 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 would frequently meet other emigres at the house of Salka and Bertold Viertel in Santa Monica, and at the Villa Aurora, the home of fellow German exile Lion Feuchtwanger. 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."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, Mann expressed understanding as to 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: Those, whose world became grey a long time ago when they realized what mountains of hate towered over Germany; those, who a long time ago imagined during sleepless nights how terrible would be the revenge on Germany for the inhuman deeds of the Nazis, cannot help but view with wretchedness all that is being done to Germans by the Russians, Poles, or Czechs as nothing other than a mechanical and inevitable reaction to the crimes that the people have committed as a nation, in which unfortunately individual justice, or the guilt or innocence of the individual, can play no part. Last years With the start of the Cold War, he was increasingly frustrated by rising McCarthyism. As a "suspected communist", he was required to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee, where he was termed "one of the world's foremost apologists for Stalin and company". He was listed by HUAC as being "affiliated with various peace organizations or Communist fronts". Being in his own words a non-communist, rather than an anti-communist, Mann openly opposed the allegations: "As an American citizen of German birth, I finally testify that I am painfully familiar with certain political trends. Spiritual intolerance, political inquisitions, and declining legal security, and all this in the name of an alleged 'state of emergency'. ... That is how it started in Germany." As Mann joined protests against the jailing of the Hollywood Ten and the firing of schoolteachers suspected of being Communists, he found "the me.... Discover the Thomas Mann popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Thomas Mann books.

Best Seller Thomas Mann Books of 2024

  • Our Mutual Friend synopsis, comments

    Our Mutual Friend

    Charles Dickens & Adrian Poole

    One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World''The great poet of the city. He was created by London' Peter AckroydOur Mutual Friend centres on an inheritance Old Harmon's pro...

  • The Magic Mountain synopsis, comments

    The Magic Mountain

    Thomas Mann

    NOBEL PRIZE WINNER  A monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension and intellectual ferment, The Magic Mountain is an enduring classic.With this dizzyingly rich nove...

  • The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus synopsis, comments

    The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus

    Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen & J. A. Underwood

    'Gaudy, wild, raw, amusing, rollicking and ragged, boiling with life, on intimate terms with death and evil but in the end, contrite and fully tired of a world wasting itself in b...

  • Thomas Mann synopsis, comments

    Thomas Mann

    Claude Herzfeld

    Manifeste dans Joseph, la figure mythique est aussi prégnante dans le roman de Thomas Mann : Les Confessions du chevalier d'industrie Félix Krull, roman picaresque hermésien, c'est...

  • The Sorrows of Young Werther synopsis, comments

    The Sorrows of Young Werther

    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

    You only find true love once.When Werther dances with the beautiful Lotte, it seems as though he is in paradise. It is a joy, however, that can only ever be shortlived. Engaged to ...

  • The Doctor Faustus Dossier synopsis, comments

    The Doctor Faustus Dossier

    E. Randol Schoenberg

    Arnold Schoenberg and Thomas Mann, two towering figures of twentiethcentury music and literature, both found refuge in the Germanexile community in Los Angeles during the Nazi era....

  • Thomas Mann synopsis, comments

    Thomas Mann

    Hanjo Kesting

    Klüger, origineller und eleganter ist selten über Thomas Mann geschrieben worden. Ein Buch zur Einführung ebenso wie zur Vertiefung. Schon zu Lebzeiten war er ein Monument, der le...

  • The classic of German literature. Stefan Zweig, Franz Kafka,Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Rainer Maria Rilke synopsis, comments

    The classic of German literature. Stefan Zweig, Franz Kafka,Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Rainer Maria Rilke

    Franz Kafka, Stefan Zweig, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse & Rainer Maria Rilke

    German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, ...

  • Thomas Mann synopsis, comments

    Thomas Mann

    Klaus Schröter

    Rowohlt EBook MonographieThomas Mann war der bedeutendste Epiker deutscher Sprache im 20. Jahrhundert. Mit seinen Schriften hat er das Kaiserreich Wilhelms II., die Weimarer Republ...

  • Romantic Fairy Tales synopsis, comments

    Romantic Fairy Tales

    Carol Tully

    The four works collected in this volume reveal the fascinating preoccupations of the German Romantic movement, which revelled in the inexplicable, the uncanny and the unknown and, ...

  • Thomas Mann synopsis, comments

    Thomas Mann

    Hermann Kurzke & Leslie Willson

    This vivid, sometimes tragic, and often humorous literary biography brings to life as never before the extraordinary talent and complex person who was Thomas Mann. Engrossing vigne...

  • A Guest at the Feast synopsis, comments

    A Guest at the Feast

    Colm Tóibín

    Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by LitHub and The Millions!From one of the most engaging and brilliant writers of our time comes a “not to be missed” (LitHub) collection of e...

  • Thomas Mann synopsis, comments

    Thomas Mann

    Herbert Lehnert & Eva Wessell

    This concise yet thorough critical biography throws new light on the work of German novelist, shortstory writer, essayist, and social critic Thomas Mann. It also offers a fresh loo...

  • Kairos synopsis, comments

    Kairos

    Jenny Erpenbeck

    »Eine ganz und gar epische Erzählerin – eine der kraftvollsten Stimmen der deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur.« NZZ am Sonntag über Jenny ErpenbeckDie neunzehnjährige Katharina ...

  • Thomas Mann synopsis, comments

    Thomas Mann

    Hanskarl Kölsch

    "Tief ist der Brunnen der Vergangenheit. Sollte man ihn nicht unergründlich nennen?" Es ist einer der berühmtesten ersten Sätze der deutschen Literatur. Goethe sagt in Dic...

  • Berlin 1936 synopsis, comments

    Berlin 1936

    Oliver Hilmes & Jefferson Chase

    A lively account of the 1936 Olympics told through the voices and stories of those who witnessed it, from an awardwinning historian and biographer“Memorable…Hilmes’s deceptively ja...

  • Death in Venice synopsis, comments

    Death in Venice

    Thomas Mann

    Eight complex stories illustrative of the author's belief that "a story must tell itself," highlighted by the high art style of the famous title novella.

  • The Gilded Chalet synopsis, comments

    The Gilded Chalet

    Padraig Rooney

    Part detective work, part treasure chest, full of history and scandal, The Gilded Chalet takes you on a grand tour of two centuries of great writing by both Swiss and foreign autho...

  • Dr. B. synopsis, comments

    Dr. B.

    Daniel Birnbaum & Deborah Bragan-Turner

    The former director of the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm makes his literary debut with this dramatic and riveting novel of book publishing, émigrés, spies, and diplomats in Wor...

  • Villa Air-Bel synopsis, comments

    Villa Air-Bel

    Rosemary Sullivan

    “Rosemary Sullivan goes beyond the confines of AirBel to tell a fuller story of France during the tense years from 1933 to 1941. . . . A moving tale of great sacrifice in tumultuou...

  • El Mago. La historia de Thomas Mann synopsis, comments

    El Mago. La historia de Thomas Mann

    Colm Tóibín

    Por el ganador de los premios IMPAC, Costa Book y Forster, un retrato íntimo del siglo XX a través de la vida de Thomas Mann NOVELA GANADORA DEL PREMIO RATHBONES FOLIO «No es una...

  • Secret Historian synopsis, comments

    Secret Historian

    Justin Spring

    2010 National Book Award Finalist for NonfictionDrawn from the secret, neverbeforeseen diaries, journals, and sexual records of the novelist, poet, and university professor Samuel ...

  • The Friend of the Desert synopsis, comments

    The Friend of the Desert

    Pablo d'Ors & David Shook

    Existential and curiously hypnotic, Pablo d'Ors evokes the sharp stylized prose of Bolaño, Bernhard, and DeLillo in this strange tale of one man's repeated forays into the desert, ...

  • Abundance synopsis, comments

    Abundance

    Ezra Klein

    From bestselling authors and journalistic titans, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance is a onceinageneration, paradigmshifting call to rethink big, entrenched problems that se...

  • Dolphin Drone synopsis, comments

    Dolphin Drone

    James Ottar Grundvig

    A taught, highconcept thriller that humanizes the men and women behind military espionage.James Grundvig’s Dolphin Drone takes us into the complex underworld of global terrorism wi...

  • Effi Briest synopsis, comments

    Effi Briest

    Theodor Fontane & Hugh Rorrison

    Unworldly young Effi Briest is married off to Baron von Innstetten, an austere and ambitious civil servant twice her age, who has little time for his new wife. Isolated and bored, ...

  • Darkness at Noon synopsis, comments

    Darkness at Noon

    Arthur Koestler

    The newly discovered lost text of Arthur Koestler’s modern masterpiece, Darkness at Noonthe haunting portrait of a revolutionary, imprisoned and tortured under totalitarian ruleis ...

  • KNUT HAMSUN Premium Collection synopsis, comments

    KNUT HAMSUN Premium Collection

    Knut Hamsun

    Knut Hamsun was a Norwegian writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. Hamsun's work spans more than 70 years and shows variation with regard to the subject,...

  • The Aspern Papers and Other Tales synopsis, comments

    The Aspern Papers and Other Tales

    Henry James & Michael Gorra

    A wonderful new collection of Henry James's short stories about the relationship between art and life, edited by Michael Gorra.This volume gathers seven of the very best of Henry J...

  • Thomas Mann synopsis, comments

    Thomas Mann

    Jean-Luc Gerrer

    Le nom de Thomas Mann évoque tout d’abord La mort à Venise, souvent à travers le film de Visconti, le premier roman Les Budenbrook, puis les grands romans de la maturité. Mis à par...

  • Thomas Mann synopsis, comments

    Thomas Mann

    Die Zeit

    Anlässlich des 60. Todestages von Thomas Mann gibt dieses EBook einen abwechlsungsreichen Überblick über einen der wohl wichtigsten deutschen Schriftsteller des 20. Jahrhunderts. Z...

  • Death in Venice and Other Stories synopsis, comments

    Death in Venice and Other Stories

    Thomas Mann

    The celebrated author, Gustave Aschenbach, burdened by his successes, comes to Venice for a holiday and encounters a vision of eros a vision for which he pays with his life. Death...

  • The Magician synopsis, comments

    The Magician

    Colm Tóibín

    A New York Times Notable Book, Critic’s Top Pick, and Top Ten Book of Historical FictionNamed a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, a...

  • Berlin synopsis, comments

    Berlin

    Barney White-Spunner

    The intoxicating history of an extraordinary city and her peoplefrom the medieval kings surrounding Berlin's founding to the world wars, tumult, and reunification of the twentieth ...