Who is Thomas Mann?
Thomas Mann was a German writer and Nobel Prize laureate of the 20th century. He penned many classics of world literature, including the novellas Death in Venice and Tristan and such novels as The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus. His lengthy, elegant sentences make him a somewhat difficult but rewarding read, and his psychological and political themes resonate with many readers. Thomas Mann was born in Lubeck, Germany, the setting for his first novel, Buddenbrooks, on 6 June 1875. His father was a senator and grain merchant from a Lubeck family, and his mother was a Creole woman born in Brazil. In 1891, Mann’s father died and the family moved to Munich. Mann attended the University of Munich, studying art history, economics, history, and literature in preparation for a career as a journalist. However, he was not cut out for formal education. Before beginning his career as a writer, Thomas Mann spent a year in Italy with his older brother Heinrich, also a writer, and spent another yea
When The Magic Mountain appeared in 1924, Thomas Mann wrote in his sons copy: To my respected colleague his promising father. Klaus was foolish enough to show it to a friend and it was quoted regularly in the press. Klaus, as he entered his twenties, was both a wunderkind and a joke. Thomas Mann, unlike his son, was an immensely complex figure, deeply conservative in his manners and ambiguous in his politics and, for many years, in his German nationalism. He could have been a senator and businessman like his father had it not been for something rich and almost hidden in his nature which set him apart. It was not merely a hidden sexuality, or something inherited from his slightly daft mother, but an imaginative energy and dark daring which, combined with an astonishing steely ambition and solidity, enabled him to produce Buddenbrooks when he was 25. Klaus was always easier to read. He was fluid and generous and flighty. He kept nothing in reserve, and this, despite his obvious literary
