Born June 6, 1875, in Lübeck; died Aug. 12, 1955, in Zürich. German writer. Brother of H. Mann.

Mann was born into an old burgher family. His first novel, Buddenbrooks (vols. 1-2, 1901), a long narrative of the lives of four generations of a patrician Lübeck family, brought him fame. Although the subtitle of the novel, The Decline of a Family, may be understood in terms of certain general biological and metaphysical laws, it may also be interpreted socially as an allusion to the incompatibility between spiritually refined people and the rude, aggressive reality of Germany on the threshhold of the age of imperialism. In the broadest sense, Buddenbrooks describes the twilight of bourgeois society. The novel is pervaded by the feeling that the old ways of life are worn out. In Buddenbrooks Mann’s unique qualities as an artist emerged clearly: patience, a penchant for detailed descriptions, and a capacity to combine sharply analytical and ironic principles with emotional warmth. The influence of 19th-century German realists and of Scandinavian and French writers, as well as the considerable impact of Russian writers, especially L. N. Tolstoy, is evident in the novel.

Among Mann’s best works are the novellas Tristan (1903) and Tonio Kröger (1903), which present a psychologically profound description of the relationship between artists and the bourgeois world. Irony is interwoven with inspired lyricism in these works. Published in 1924, the novel The Magic Mountain portrays the intellectual life of bourgeois society on the eve of World War 1. The action takes place in a high-mountain sanatorium in Switzerland, where the young engineer Hans Castorp spends seven years. In his contact with the inhabitants of the sanatorium, who embody various aspects of contemporary bourgeois consciousness, Hans Castorp passes through a number of stages of internal development and comes close to attaining a deepened humanistic understanding of the world. In this sense, The Magic Mountain continues the tradition of German didactic novels, but it is also one of the most important philosophical novels of the 20th century. The slow-moving narrative is permeated with internal tension. The structure of each sentence reflects the very process of understanding reality—the search for the most precise, most exhaustive word. The novel has a “symphonic” quality: an original rhythm of presenting and changing themes and returning to a multitude of motifs already introduced. The Magic Mountain won world recognition. In 1929, Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize.

During the second half of the 1920’s, Mann was active as a critic and essayist. He overcame the conservative views he had expressed in Observations of an Unpolitical Man (1918) and fought against the growing danger of Hitlerism in articles such as “An Appeal to Reason” (1930). The novella Mario and the Magician (1930) and the historical tetralogy on a Biblical theme, Joseph and His Brothers (1933-43; Russian translation, vols. 1-2, 1968), were pervaded by antifascist ideas. Mann humanized the myth and showed its concrete social and historical sources, thus expressing his opposition to fascism’s characteristic attempts to glorify myth and intuitive irrationalism in general at the expense of rational human thought. By shifting to a broad canvas of historical and modern reality and by introducing universal, representative heroes Mann was able to give fuller and more direct expression to the essential problems of the age.

In 1933, after the Nazis came to power, Mann emigrated to Switzerland. He moved to the USA in 1938. His affirmation of the humanistic heritage of German literature in the face of fascist barbarism is evident in the novel Lotte in Weimar (1939), a work about Goethe that was the fruit of the many years spent contemplating the poet’s career. The novel gives a profound interpretation of the relation between art and reality, between a brilliant artist and his milieu.

In 1943, Mann began work on the novel Doctor Faustus (1947), which was to be the most important of his later works. It is about the spiritual sources of the backwardness and reaction that led to the rise of German fascism. In broader terms, it deals with the deep crisis of the capitalist world and its culture. The strong influence of Dostoevsky can be felt in the novel.

Mann spent his last years in Zürich. During the Schiller anniversary celebrations in 1955 he delivered speeches in the German Democratic Republic and in the Federal Republic of Germany. His 80th birthday in June 1955 was celebrated throughout the world.

Mann’s artistic legacy remains at the center of world literature. His novels are 20th-century classics, for he found a way to broaden the genre and to give it new social and philosophical content. Although he used the traditional novelistic forms, Mann deepened and transformed them. He created narratives that could be interpreted on many levels and he gave them a special harmonic quality. He synthesized the writer’s speech and that of historical personages, the past and the present, different strata of reality, and different forms of understanding reality. Finally, he synthesized concrete portrayal and philosophically profound problem-solving. Mann was widely known in Russia from 1910, when the publication of the first collection of his works in Russian was begun.