Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann was a German writer, essayist, master of the epic novel, and Nobel Prize laureate in Literature (1929), brother of Heinrich Mann, father of Klaus Mann, Golo Mann, and Erika Mann.

Thomas, the most famous representative of his family, which was rich in notable writers, was born on 6 June 1875 into the family of the well-to-do Lübeck merchant Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann, who served as a city senator. Thomas’s mother, Julia Mann, née da Silva-Bruhns, came from a family with Brazilian roots. The Mann family was quite large. Thomas had two brothers and two sisters: his elder brother Heinrich (1871–1950), his younger brother Viktor (1890–1949), and two sisters, Julia (1877–1927) and Carla (1881–1910). The Mann family was prosperous, and Thomas’s childhood was carefree and almost cloudless.

In 1891 Thomas’s father died of cancer. According to his will, the family firm and the Mann house in Lübeck were sold. The children and their mother had to live on interest from the sum obtained. The family moved to Munich, where Thomas lived (with brief interruptions) until 1933. In the mid-1890s Thomas and Heinrich left for Italy for a time. However, even in Lübeck Thomas had already begun to establish himself in literature as the creator and author of the literary-philosophical magazine Spring Storm, and later wrote articles for the magazine Twentieth Century, published by his brother Heinrich. After returning from Italy, Thomas worked for a short time (1898–1899) as editor of the popular German satirical magazine Simplicissimus, completed a year of military service, and published his first novellas.

However, Thomas Mann became famous with the publication of his first novel, Buddenbrooks, in 1901. In this novel, based on the history of his own family, Thomas depicts the history of the decline and degeneration of a Lübeck merchant dynasty