Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann was a German writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929 for his novels and essays that explored the complex relationship between art, culture, and society. He was one of the most influential and representative authors of the 20th century, known for his mastery of realism, psychological insight, and irony. Mann was born in Lübeck, Germany, into a wealthy merchant family. He was the second son of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann and Julia da Silva-Bruhns Mann, who had German, Portuguese, and Brazilian ancestry. He had an older brother, Heinrich, who also became a prominent writer and a political opponent of Nazism. Mann attended a gymnasium in Lübeck until he was 16, when he left school to pursue a career as a writer. He moved to Munich with his family in 1891 and published his first short stories in 1894. Mann's first novel, Buddenbrooks (1901), was a sweeping saga of the decline of a wealthy merchant family in Lübeck. It was based on his own family history and was widely acclaimed as a masterpiece of realism. His second novel, The Royal Highness (1909), was a satirical portrait of a German prince who falls in love with an American heiress. His third novel, Death in Venice (1912), was a novella about an aging writer who becomes obsessed with a beautiful young boy in Venice. It was inspired by Mann's own homoerotic feelings and his visit to Venice in 1911. Mann married Katia Pringsheim, the daughter of a Jewish mathematician and professor, in 1905. They had six children, three of whom became writers: Erika, Klaus, and Golo. Mann was a liberal democrat who supported the Weimar Republic and opposed the rise of Nazism. He left Germany in 1933 after Hitler came to power and his books were burned by the Nazis. He lived in Switzerland, France, and the United States, where he became a citizen in 1944. He returned to Switzerland in 1952 and died there in 1955. Mann's later novels include The Magic Mountain (1924), a philosophical exploration of the themes of illness, death, and time set in a Swiss sanatorium; Joseph and His Brothers (1933-1943), a four-volume retelling of the biblical story of Joseph; Lotte in Weimar (1939), a fictional account of Goethe's reunion with his first love; Doctor Faustus (1947), a modern version of the Faust legend that reflects on Germany's cultural and moral decline; and Confessions of Felix Krull (1954), an unfinished picaresque novel about a charming con artist. Mann also wrote numerous essays on literature, politics, philosophy, and religion. He was an advocate of humanism, democracy, and European unity. He was influenced by Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Freud, Goethe, Wagner, and Tolstoy. He received many honors and awards for his work, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929, the Goethe Prize in 1949, and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1955.