Thomas Mann
Profession:Writer
Country of Origin: Germany
Country of Asylum: Switzerland
Country of Transit: United States
Date of birth: 6 June 1875
Died: 12 August 1955
Though it was his classic novel "Buddenbrooks" (published when he was just 25) that made him rich and famous and his 1924 work "The Magic Mountain" which won him the Nobel Prize, Thomas Mann's other works include classics such as "Death in Venice" (1913) and "Doktor Faustus" (1947). But beside his literary credits, Mann stands out as one of the most vocal German critics of Nazism.
The writer was born in the Baltic port city of Lübeck, the second son of a local merchant and senator in the city government. Mann's mother was the daughter of a German planter who had migrated to Brazil and married a woman of Portuguese-Creole origin.
As a boy, Mann hated school but developed a love for music and writing. At 17, he edited his school's periodical, Frühlingssturm (Spring Storm), where he made his debut in prose and poetry published under the pseudonym of Paul Thomas.
He worked briefly as a clerk in an insurance company in Munich. The success of his first short story made him quit his job to take up writing full time.
Mann developed an interest in Schopenhauer and other German philosophers of his time. His reputation spread well beyond Germany, winning him awards across Europe. However, he soon became unpopular with Hitler's sympathisers, who called him a fraud.
While he was on a European tour in 1933 with his Jewish wife, the Nazis won the elections. Mann received a warning from his sister not to return to Germany. He spent the summer in southern France, and later settled in Küsnacht, Switzerland, until 1938.
While in exile, Mann issued a series of critical statements against the Nazis, and before the end of the year, his German citizenship was revoked. The University of Bonn also withdrew his honorary doctorate. He replied with a steaming and prophetic letter that was read throughout the world: "If the Nazis held sway," he warned, "the German people would become an 'instrument of war' ... driven by a blind and fanatical ignorance. Woe to the people which ... seeks its way out through the abomination of war, hatred of God and man! Such a people will be lost. It will be so vanquished that it will never rise again."
In 1937, Mann founded a literary magazine, Third Humanism, which was published in Munich.
He later settled in the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1944. While in California, between 1943 and 1946, he wrote his most sophisticated work: "Doktor Faustus, The Life of a German Composer as Told by a Friend". Based on a folk tale, it depicts Germany's sinister adventure into political insanity during the Nazi reign of terror.
During the era of McCarthyism, Mann became ill at ease with the pressures to conform and what he perceived as American suspicion of intellectuals. He returned to Switzerland in 1952 and was granted Swiss citizenship in 1953. From Switzerland, he visited his country several times, the last time being when he gave an address on the 150th anniversary of the German classicist, Schiller.
Mann died on August 12, 1955 in Zurich, Switzerland.