Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. Famous for his highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, his works offer deep insights into the psychology of artists and intellectuals. Influenced by Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer, Mann's writing style often used modernized versions of German and Biblical stories. Mann emerged from a Hanseatic family and portrayed his family dynamics in his first novel, Buddenbrooks. Mann fled Germany when Adolf Hitler came to power, moving first to Switzerland, then to the United States, before finally returning to Switzerland in 1952. He became one of the best-known exponents of the so-called Exilliteratur, German literature written by those opposing the Hitler regime.

Paul Thomas Mann was born to a hanseatic family in Lübeck, Germany, on 6th June 1875. He had an extensive education, first studying science at a Lübeck Gymnasium, then history, economics, art history and literature at the Ludwig Maximillians University of Munich and the Technical University of Munich, in preparation for a journalism career. He began his writing career at the magazine Simplicissimus, and his first short story, "Little Mr Friedemann", was published in 1898. In 1905, Mann married Katia Pringsheim, who came from a wealthy, secular Jewish industrialist family, and they had six children.