Heinrich Mann

Heinrich Mann was a German writer and the elder brother of Thomas Mann.

He was born into a traditional merchant family. His father, Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann, was elected senator of Lübeck for finance and economic affairs in 1877. Four more children were born into the family after Heinrich: Thomas, Julia, Carla, and Viktor.

In 1884, Heinrich traveled to Saint Petersburg.

In 1889, he graduated from gymnasium and moved to Dresden, where he worked for some time in bookselling. He then moved to Berlin, worked at a publishing house, and studied at the Frederick William University of Berlin. From 1893 onward, he made repeated trips to Munich, where the family had moved after the death of his father, the senator.

In 1914, he married the Prague actress Maria Kanová (1886–1947), with whom he lived in Munich. His daughter Leonie Mann (1916–1986) was Heinrich Mann’s only child.

During the Weimar Republic, from 1926 he was an academician in the literature section of the Prussian Academy of Arts, and in 1931 he became chairman of the section.

After Hitler came to power in 1933, he was stripped of German citizenship. He emigrated first to Prague and then to France. He lived in Paris and Nice, then moved via Spain and Portugal to the United States. From 1940, Heinrich lived in Los Angeles, California. The writer died on March 11, 1950, in another Californian city, Santa Monica. On the eve of his death, he intended to move to East Berlin to head the German Academy of Arts, of which he had been elected the first president in absentia. His ashes were transferred to the GDR.