Heinrich Mann
Heinrich Mann (March 27, 1871 - March 12, 1950) wrote German novels with social themes whose attacks on the authoritarian and increasingly militaristic nature of post-Weimar German society led to his exile in 1933.
He was born in Lübeck and was the elder brother of Thomas Mann.
His essay on Zola and the novel Der Untertan earned him much respect during the Weimar Republic, since it satirized German society and explained how its political system had led to the First World War. Eventually, his book Professor Unrat was turned into the successful movie Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel).Carl Zuckmayer wrote the script, Josef von Sternberg was the director. Marlene Dietrich played her first major role in it (as Lola).
Together with Albert Einstein and other celebrities, Mann was a signatory to a letter to the International League of Human Rights condemning the murder of Croatian scholar Dr Milan Sufflay on February 18, 1931.
During the 1930s and later in American exile, his literary career went downhill, and eventually he died in Santa Monica, California, lonely and without much money, just months before he was to move to Soviet occupied Germany to become president of the Prussian Academy of Arts. He was later reburied in East Germany.
Bibliography
Incomplete
- Das Kaiserreich (The Empire)
- Der Untertan (The Small Town Tyrant)
- Professor Unrat
