Biography of Thomas Mann, interesting facts from life

The name "Mann" is widely known in literary circles. This family belongs to Henry - a novelist, playwright; Eric, Klaus and Golo are literary men; Finally, the owner of such awards as the Nobel and Antonio Feltrinelli, - Thomas.

Mann Thomas, whose brief biography impresses with its richness and contradiction, and will be the object of consideration.

Master of the epic novel

The German writer belongs to the glorified literary family. However, it is believed that Thomas Mann is the brightest and most famous of his representatives.

Biography of his testifies that up to the age of 16 he led a rather carefree life. He was born in a wealthy Ljubek family. However, after the death of the head of the family - Johann Heinrich Mann, the city senator - to his wife and numerous children in 1891, he had to live on interest from the sale of family firms and houses.

We can assume that Thomas Mann's biography changed dramatically after the tragic event.

Having sold a house in Lübeck, the family moves to a permanent place of residence in Munich, where Thomas starts working in an insurance company and sees his future in the journalistic field. The choice of the creative path is due to the bias of his brother Henry, who already at that time was a writer.

Thomas Mann: the way from birth to military service

However, we ran too far. It is necessary through life to show what kind of person Thomas Mann was. The main dates from his biography will help us in this idea.

June 6, 1875 in a well-to-do family Johann Mann, grain merchant and head of the shipping company, and Julia Mann, in nee Da Silva-Bruns, was born a son. Thomas Mann's mother was a musically gifted representative of the Creole-Brazilian Portuguese family. It was she who was engaged in the education of the future playwright and all his sisters and brothers.

In 1891 his father died. According to his will, the firm and the house were sold. The whole family moved to Munich, where Thomas graduated from the Higher Technical School.

The first experience of wandering took place in 1896. Thomas and his brother Henry went to Italy together. After the trip, Thomas Mann became editor of the journal Simplicissimus.

Three years later, in 1899, the biography of Thomas Mann was enriched by military service. The period of service formed and strengthened the worldview of the writer. He created a remarkable novel for his work "Buddenbroki".

Thomas Mann: the path from marriage to the First World

At the age of 30 there was a significant event that left its mark on the writer's whole life. The biography of Thomas Mann has now become the story of not one person, but a union of two.

In 1905 he secured himself by marriage with Katya Prinsheim. The daughter of the Munich professor became a true companion of the writer until the end of his days. From their union six children were born, three of them went in the footsteps of their father, becoming writers, writers.

Very soon after the playwright's marriage, the First World War began, which the writer at first took fervently, but soon realized the fallibility of political theories. Mann opposed public reform and pacifism. Political differences led to disagreements in the family circle: Thomas Mann became an ideological opponent of his elder brother. But, changing the point of view, Thomas realized the need for democratic change, then reconciled with Henry.

Search for your country and citizenship. Thomas Mann: Biography

On the German proving ground of fascist deeds, he did not find his refuge. And so the relocation took place in 1933 in Kysnacht - the Swiss town - together with the family. This step was planned by Thomas Mann himself.

Biography interesting facts about his citizenship with one or other of the states still holds. It turns out that after 1936 the writer was deprived of German citizenship, became a citizen of Czechoslovakia. However, soon, in 1938, Thomas Mann moved to the United States, where in 1944 he became a citizen of this state. It is known that, after leaving Germany at the very beginning of the fascist regime (in 1933), he no longer returned to the "Hitler" country.

From abroad, the writer introduced into the thinking of former German compatriots hostility to fascism, becoming the voice of anti-fascist radio programs.

Thomas Mann also propagated anti-fascist sentiments after the end of the war. The novel "Doctor Faustus", which was published in 1947, was a reflection of the author's personal opinion about the epoch of Nazism. Nazism is a phenomenon that has arisen not spontaneously and not accidentally, it is a natural and expected stage, to which German history went most of the time.

Thomas Mann (the biography was briefly described by us above) found its tranquility in the quiet Swiss town of Kilchherah. Here in 1952 he moved to his permanent residence. Here was written his last novel - "Adventures of the adventurer Felix Krul."

It is remarkable that from the first to the last creative note Thomas Mann was true to his "I". In "Adventures" describes the life of a man who paved his way to the top of the career ladder, using the unstable order of the bourgeois world.

Paul Thomas Mann, the second son of Johann and Julia Mann, died on August 12, 1955 in north-eastern Switzerland in the city of Zurich.

The beginning of the creative path: the novel "Buddenbroki"

The first publishing experience dates back to the years of schooling in the gymnasium: thanks to Thomas, the light saw a literary-artistic and not child-like philosophical magazine "Spring Thunder".

Travel to Italy in 1896 had a good impact on the writer's work. Stories written during the trip, he sent publishers to their homeland. S. Fisher suggested creating a collection of them. It was published in 1898 under the title "Little Mr. Friederman". Some of his stories were written during the editorial work in the satirical weekly Simplicissimus.

For a year of military service, the writer strengthened his opinion even more about the problems that worried him for a long time. After serving, in 1901 he published the novel Buddenbrook. The story of the death of one family. " It is believed that the work reflects the history of the parent family from the point of view that Thomas Mann himself saw it. Biography and creativity, fused together, marked the beginning of a beautiful novel that examines narrow family issues through the prism of the social order.

Family novel about the social order

The novel "Buddenbrooks. The story of the death of one family "touched upon universal and social issues affecting the ordinary family: material and spiritual life, the disintegration and the possibility of the degeneration of the bourgeois world. The problems of the creator's place in society and life were also raised: a doom to a lonely existence, combined with an incredible responsibility before the society that had thrown it.

In the novel, the writer denied the norms of the bourgeois world. An unpleasant culture for him, emerging in the twentieth century, he contrasted the burgher. The collapse of the once warm, settled burgher world for Mann meant the collapse of the whole culture.

Thomas Mann shows that four generations of the family from year to year lose not only their material well-being, but also their moral values.

There is an opinion that Buddenbrokam as a social type is opposed by the artist. This is true, but it is erroneous to think that Thomas Mann prefers the latter. Neither the burghers, nor the artist from Mann is not in high esteem.

Public recognition: Nobel Prize

The recognition came to Thomas Mann not immediately. It is known that in the year of publication only 100 copies of the family novel Buddenbroki were bought. But 30 years later, in 1929, it was thanks to him that the writer forever inscribed his name on the list of Nobel laureates.

Already during the lifetime of the work of Thomas Mann began to be called classical.

After awarding the award, the novel Buddenbrook was released in a million copies.

Since 1933, the biography of Thomas Mann has become a biography of a man, to whom young writers were equal. Mann went around the country and gave lectures, including excerpts from his own works.

Thomas Mann: biography, creativity - everything is fused together

The second successful creation of Thomas Mann was the work "Tonio Kräger", published in the collection "Tristan" (1903). In it the author again demonstrated the contradictions that worried him between the world of creativity and the bourgeois world.

We can say that life and work for Mann were inextricably linked. The novel "Buddenbrook" was not the only work in which the personal life and opinion of the writer were reflected.

This is also the play "Florence", published in 1907. Its heroes speak through the mouth of the writer, voicing his opinion of modern-day Thomas to the bourgeois world.

A similar view of society is inherent in most of his works, but the closest to the play is the novel "Royal Highness". Thomas Mann wrote that in it he "preaches humanity."

However, according to the author's own admission, the novel "The Magic Mountain" became a turning point. It reveals the ideological contradictions of the world in which Mann lived and worked.

A trustworthy family man and father, a fan of same-sex love

Thomas Mann, whose biography is full of contradictions in ideological predilections, is interesting not only for his creative heritage, but also for sexual preferences.

The main contradiction that has manifested itself on the love front is an external family idyll and a passion for same-sex love.

Announced after the death of the writer's diaries and correspondence presented Thomas Mann in a frightening light.

It followed that the famous writer, Nobel laureate, the father of six children, Paul Thomas Mann had a deep interest in the male representatives. And this interest was not limited to intellectual knowledge, which Mann Thomas already characterized during his lifetime.

A brief biography of the writer does not give the necessary information, and this has prompted researchers to a detailed study of his life.

Who did Thomas Mann like?

The first signs of a strange love for boys showed up at a young age. Fourteen-year-old Thomas had an unrequited feeling in his classmate Arnim Martin.

The second unrequited feeling arose two years later. Learning in England, Paul fell in love with the son of a physical education teacher.

The only novel that, according to researchers, was far from platonic, is the connection with the artist Paul Ehrenberg. Relations lasted for 5 years (from 1899 to 1904) and ceased after the writer entered into a legal marriage with Katya Prinsheim.

Despite his predilections, Thomas Mann was eager to have a family and children. However, even the strongest love for his wife did not prevent him from looking at men. From the diaries of the writer it is known that thoughts of the beauty of the male body did not leave him until the end of his days.

The last hobby was Franz Westermayer. 75-year-old Thomas Mann fell asleep and woke up with thoughts about the Bavarian waiter. But everything was limited only by dreams.

The screen version of the works of Thomas Mann

The works belonging to the pen of the writer began to be screened even during his lifetime. The number of screen versions from 1923 to 2008 is more than 30. And this is in view of the fact that Thomas Mann's biography on dates and creative heritage contains only one single work, adapted for staging on the stage or creating a film - the play "Florence". By the way, she was not filmed. But "Buddenbrooks" became one of the most popular in terms of film adaptation of works written by Thomas Mann.