Thomas Mann

For the political scientist and pundit, see Thomas E. Mann.

Thomas Mann (June 6, 1875 - August 12, 1955) was a German novelist and essayist, lauded principally for a series of highly symbolic and often ironic epic novels and mid-length stories, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and an underlying eroticism informed by Mann's own struggles with his sexuality.

Mann was born in Lübeck, his father a senator and grain merchant who died when his son was only 15. The family subsequently moved to Munich, where Mann lived from 1891 until 1933, with the exception of a year-long stay in Palestrina, Italy, with his older brother Heinrich, also a novelist.

In 1905, he married Katja Pringsheim, daughter of a prominent, secularised Jewish family of intellectuals. They had six children (Klaus, Erika, Golo, Monika, Elisabeth and Michael) who were highly intelligent and literary in their own right. He emigrated from Nazi Germany to Küsnacht near Zürich, Switzerland, in 1933, then in 1942 to Pacific Palisades, California, USA, returning to Europe in 1952.

He was never to live in Germany again, though he traveled there regularly and was widely celebrated. On his return to Europe, he lived in Kilchberg, near Zürich, where he died in 1955.

He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929, for his epic Buddenbrooks (1900), about the decline of a bourgeois family over several generations. Other major works include The Magic Mountain (originally Der Zauberberg, 1924), set in a highly symbolic sanatorium, Doktor Faustus (1947) and The Confessions of Felix Krull (originally Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull, 1954).

Mann's diaries, unsealed in 1975, speak movingly of his own struggles with his homosexuality, which found reflection in his works, especially through the obsession of the elderly Aschenbach for the young Polish boy, Tadzio, in his long short story, or novellen, Death in Venice (originally Der Tod in Venedig, 1912). Anthony Heilbut's biography, Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature (1997), was widely acclaimed for uncovering the centrality of Mann's sexuality to his oeuvre. Mann himself described his feelings for young violinist and painter Paul Ehrenberg as the "central experience of my heart".

--1898) = Der kleine Herr Friedemann

• Buddenbrooks (1901) = Buddenbrooks - Verfall einer Familie
• Tonio Kröger (1903)
• Royal Highness (1909) = Königliche Hoheit
• Death in Venice (1912) = Der Tod in Venedig
• Reflections of an Unpolitical Man (1918) = Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen
• The German Republic (1922) = Von deutscher Republik
• The Magic Mountain (1924) = Der Zauberberg
• Disorder and Early Sorrow (1926) = Unordnung und frühes Leid
• Mario and the Magician (1930) = Mario und der Zauberer
• Joseph and His Brothers (1933-43) = Joseph und seine Brüder
  • The Tales of Jacob (1933)
  • The Young Joseph (1934)
  • Joseph in Egypt (1936)
  • Joseph the Provider (1943)
• The Problem of Freedom (1937) = Das Problem der Freiheit
• Lotte in Weimar or The Beloved Returns (1939)
• The Transposed Heads (1940) = Die vertauschten Köpfe - Eine indische Legende
• Doctor Faustus (1947) = Doktor Faustus
• The Holy Sinner (1951) = Der Erwählte
• Confessions of Felix Krull Confidence Man, The Early Years (1922/1954) = Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull. Der Memoiren erster Teil (unfinished)