Thomas Mann

Born: 1875 | Died: 1955

Writer and Novelist

Thomas Mann was born in Lübeck in northern Germany in 1875. Mann was a German novelist, social critic and essayist.

The son of a wealthy merchant family, it is said that Mann disliked school and did poorly there. After finishing school, it didn't take long for Mann however to publish his breakthrough success Buddenbrooks, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929.

Other influential books such as Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus followed. Mann was a very disciplined writer with a strict daily routine, according to which he had to write one printable page a day.

In 1933, Mann, his wife, and their six children emigrated to Switzerland, and later to the U.S., where Mann became a citizen in 1944 and was given an academic post at Princeton University. He also served as Consultant in Germanic Literature for the Library of Congress. The Second World War pushed him to become more active in politics. He became the outspoken voice of the "other Germany," using pamphlets and lectures to speak out against the Nazi regime.

After the war, Thomas Mann moved back to Switzerland, where he died in 1955. The Thomas Mann Archive, which houses his papers, is located in Zurich, and the Buddenbrookhaus, devoted to Thomas Mann and his brother, Heinrich, is located in Lübeck.

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