Thomas Mann's 150th anniversary: ​​a matter of state in Germany

The 150th anniversary of Thomas Mann's birth has sparked a whole series of events and publications about one of the most representative writers of 20th-century literature . At one of the central events of the celebrations , the keynote speaker will be German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, which shows that the anniversary is something of a matter of state.

The significance of Mann and his work goes beyond the literary. In a book published for the anniversary, * Time of the Magicians. Heinrich and Thomas Mann. 1871–1955 *, the president of the Thomas Mann Society , Hans Wisskirchen, recalls a quote by literary critic Marcel Reich Ranicki, according to whom the 20th century in Germany was personified by two figures: Adolf Hitler and his opposite, Thomas Mann.

Mann is the most prominent representative of the intellectuals in exile during the years of National Socialism and especially during the Second World War.

But his figure resists simplifications: his commitment to democracy followed an evolution that is reflected not only in his political writings—from his essays during the First World War, which can be considered reactionary or even anti-democratic, to his exile writings—but also in his strictly literary work.

His consecration came very early, with the publication of The Buddenbrooks , in 1901. He received the Nobel Prize in 1929 for that novel.

By this time, Mann had already published his second major novel, The Magic Mountain (1924), which received mixed reviews and has since become considered the centerpiece of his work.

Erika Mann maintained that her father began his journey with a distinctly German novel, Buddenbrooks , then went on to write a distinctly European work, The Magic Mountain , and then, in the tetralogy of Joseph and his Brothers, he explored the moral foundations of the West at a time when they were under pressure.

When the final volume of the tetralogy was published in 1943, Mann would say that he had managed to finish his project before the world managed to defeat Hitler.

Mann left Germany in 1933 to give a series of lectures, and while he was away, the Reichstag was burned, which the Nazi regime used to intensify its repression .

That marked the beginning of Mann's exile , the first years of which he spent in Switzerland and then, from 1938, in the USA.

In 1936, Mann openly took a stand against Nazism. Despite remaining silent during the first three years of his exile, after 1936, and especially after the outbreak of the war, he would become the leading voice against the Reich with a series of speeches broadcast by the BBC and which could be heard clandestinely in Germany.

The speeches contain calls for rebellion against Hitler , defenses of Allied bombing, and denunciations of Nazi crimes. In the end, Mann asserts that the mandate of the moment is repentance for a guilt that can never be fully expiated .

Mann never returned to live in Germany . "Is it possible," he asked in 1945 in an open letter to the writer Walter von Molo, who asked him to return to help heal the wounds, "to erase those twelve years and pretend they never happened?"

After the war, those who had remained in Germany wanted to turn the page on the chapter of National Socialism. Mann demanded a confrontation with that past and a questioning of the extent to which the entire disaster had not arisen from something rooted in German culture.

From then on, he rejected the idea of ​​two Germanys: one noble and good, and the other evil and wicked. Germany, he suggests, and anticipates what will become the theme of Doctor Faustus , had signed a pact with the devil. Doctor Faustus was published in 1947 and was not well received in Germany.

Critic Hans Egon Holthusen, a former member of the SS, accused Mann of feeling a pathological hatred of Germany. Critic Hans-Rudolf Vaget, in his essay on the German attitude toward Mann in the last ten years of his life, argues that at the time, the Germans were unprepared for such a confrontation.

In 1949 Mann returned to Germany, visiting and speaking in Frankfurt , in the former West Germany, and in Weimar, in the former GDR, on the occasion of the Goethe anniversary.

His visit to Weimar provided additional ammunition to his critics in the West. The beginning of the Cold War and the rise of McCarthyism led him to leave the US and settle in Switzerland , where he died on August 12, 1955.