Thomas Mann.

Thomas Mann was born on June 6, 1875 in Lübeck, Germany to Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann and Júlia da Silva Bruhns. His family moved to Munich in 1893, where he later attended the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität and the Technical University of Munich. His father, a senator and merchant, instilled in him a sense of bourgeois tradition, while his mother’s Portuguese heritage through her mother Maria Senhorinha da Silva added a cosmopolitan dimension. He also studied at the Katharineum in Lübeck.

Buddenbrooks, published in 1901, was Thomas Mann’s breakthrough novel and brought him immediate fame. He followed with Death in Venice 1912 and The Magic Mountain 1924. In 1929, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. After the Nazi takeover, the anti-fascist writer emigrated to Switzerland, then to Princeton and Pacific Palisades, where he completed his tetralogy Joseph and His Brothers in 1942. He became a US citizen in 1944 but returned to Europe in 1952.

Thomas Mann married Katia Pringsheim in 1904. They had six children: Erika, Klaus, Golo, Monika, Elisabeth, and Michael. Through his children’s marriages, he became the father-in-law of poet W.H. Auden and actor Gustaf Gründgens. The family held Czechoslovakian citizenship from 1936 to 1944 before Mann became a US citizen. During World War I, he became estranged from his brother Heinrich due to Heinrich’s anti-war stance.

In 1929, Thomas Mann won the Nobel Prize in Literature. His novels continue to be read and studied globally. He received numerous honorary doctorates from universities such as Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge. Nazi authorities burned his books, demonstrating the regime’s fear of his ideas. He is most remembered for his masterpieces Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice, and The Magic Mountain.