Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann was born in Lübeck to a Hanseatic family. Mann’s father, Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann, was a senator and grain merchant. Mann had a privileged upbringing due to his family’s wealth and social standing. He attended the Technical University of Munich, intending to embark on a career in journalism upon graduation. He spent his early adulthood in Munich and worked for the South German Fire Insurance Company. Mann married Katia Pringsheim in 1905. The couple had six children together. Mann began his writing career publishing short stories. Buddenbrooks, his first novel, was published in 1901. His other notable works include the novella Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig); The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg); Doctor Faustus (Doktor Faustus) and the four-part novel Joseph and his Brothers (Joseph und seine Brüder). Mann and Katia happened to be out of the country when Hitler rose to power in 1933, and Mann’s children Erika and Klaus advised their parents against returning to Germany due to Katia’s Jewish heritage and the likelihood that Mann would be persecuted for his political views. Mann heeded their advice and emigrated with his family to Switzerland. His German citizenship was later revoked following his refusal to declare loyalty to the National Socialist government. He later relocated with his family to the United States, settling first in Princeton, New Jersey, where Mann taught at Princeton University. Mann was a vocal critic of the Nazi regime and recorded monthly anti-Nazi broadcasts for the BBC while living in the United States. Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929 and is among the best-known German writers to write in exile from Hitler’s Nazi Germany. He died in Zurich in 1955 at age 80.