Thomas Mann (1875 – 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate.
I read The Magic Mountain (1924) when I was young — not much appreciating it at the time.
Philosophical prose inspired by his wife’s letters from a Sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, where she was being treated for respiratory disease.
His wife was one impressive person, Katia Mann. A secular Jew while Hitler was rising in power, she later converted to her husband’s Lutheranism.
She and Thomas had 6 children, all interesting characters. This was impressive, as well, because Thomas was a closeted Gay man.
Likely I wouldn’t have much interest in Thomas Mann but for my friend Brian taking a University elective course on him.
In 2025, I somehow downloaded an historical fiction account of his life ➙ The Magician by Colm Tóibín.
His life was even more dramatic than his novels.
His two elder children, Erika and Klaus, were flamboyantly unconventional – promiscuously bisexual, precociously talented as actors and writers, but too politically reckless and financially feckless to make careers for themselves. There were drugs. There were scandals. Eventually there was another, more devastating suicide – Klaus’s …
Erika Mann marries WH Auden, not for sex (they are both gay) but for a British passport …
He escapes (Hitler) first to Switzerland, moving on to the south of France, where he frequents the cafes where other German exiles gather – social democrats bickering with communists – and finally to the US. He watches the second world war from transatlantic safety …
His contemporary at Princeton, Einstein, adapted easily to American culture compared with Mann. Mann struggled.
Rick McCharles 