German writer, the author of novels, plays and essays. Mann won the Nobel Prize for literature for “Buddenbrooks,” based on his family, in 1929. Throughout his career, Mann was respected by critics and popular with the reading public. He had the ability to turn personal biography into literature. His novel, “The Blood of the Walsungs” was based on the lives of his wife’s family. Mann was inspired to write by the encouragement of his elder brother, Heinrich, who became a successful novelist in his own right. Mann left Germany during the rise of Nazism and in 1938 moved to the U.S. becoming a naturalized citizen in 1944.
Thomas grew up in a wealthy merchant family in Lubeck, Germany. His father was a grain merchant and city senator. His mother was a pianist and a planter’s daughter from German-Brazilian parentage. As a boy, he loved to day dream and visit the sea. He hated school and failed twice. In 1891, his dad died and the family grain business was liquidated. At 16, his mom moved the family to Munich. It was that year when Thomas began to write his first collection of short stories.
As an army draftee, he contracted tendentious after a few drill parades and soon discovered the army was not a place for him. In 1901, his work “Buddenbrooks” was published. making him a popular author in Germany. With the excellent notices from his novel at the age of 26, Mann settled into writing career. During WW I, he wrote his manifesto on German patriotism, “Meditations of a Nonpolitical.” In 1924, his book, “Magic Mountain” was published. His works included “Joseph In Egypt,” 1938 and “Doctor Faustus” in 1947. His experience with WW I gave way to a stand on principle against Nazism during the rise of Hitler in the 1930s. In February 1933, Mann gave a speech about Wagner which upset Hitler and the Nazi Party. He continued a lecture tour of the Netherlands but found German newspapers highly critical of his political views. In October 1933, Mann made his home in Zurich, Switzerland, finding himself no longer welcome in Germany. He eventually settled in Los Angeles, when he was 70.
In 1905, Mann married Katia Pringsheim, the Jewish daughter of a mathematician, a family whose members were among the German Jewish elite. In 1907, Mann called himself a philo-Semite. His school friends, publishers, and people he preferred to keep company with were from the Jewish heritage. Mann was far from an orthodox Aryan, believing German Jews appreciated excellent writing and artistic pursuits. After two years of marriage, Mann began to resent being tied down to a wife and child. Mann and his wife eventually produced six children. They vacationed at exclusive spas and were attended by servants where ever they traveled. As a writer, Mann hated discipline.
Mann died of a rupture of an arteria caused by arteriosclerosis and thrombosis on 12 August 1955 in Zürich, Switzerland.
Link to Wikipedia biography