Thomas Mann – 20th-century German novelist, author of Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1929. His works combined family saga, philosophy, and critique of bourgeois society. During WWII he opposed Nazism and lived in exile.
📚 His debut novel Buddenbrooks (1901) brought him fame and became a German classic. 🏆 He was awarded the Nobel Prize largely for this novel. 🌍 After Hitler’s rise, he emigrated first to Switzerland, then to the USA. 🎙️ During WWII he gave radio broadcasts urging Germans to resist Nazism. 📖 The Magic Mountain (1924) is considered one of the century’s great intellectual novels. 👨👩👦 His children, Erika and Klaus Mann, also became writers. 🖋️ His novella Death in Venice explored art, passion, and decay. 🎓 He received honorary doctorates from many European and American universities. 😲 Curious: in the US he had to defend himself against accusations of “secret communist sympathies.” 😂 Funny: joked that he wrote slowly because he had to “live in his characters’ world several times before describing it.”