Paul Thomas Mann ([paʊ̯l toːmas man]; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Mann was a member of the Hanseatic Mann family and portrayed his family and class in the novel Buddenbrooks. His older brother was the radical writer Heinrich Mann and three of his six children, Erika Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann, also became important German writers. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mann fled to Switzerland. When World War II broke out in 1939, he immigrated to the United States, returning to Switzerland in 1952. Thomas Mann is one of the best-known exponents of the so-called Exilliteratur.
Klaus Mann, Erika Mann, Golo Mann, Elisabeth Mann-Borgese, Michael Mann, Monika Mann
Siblings
Heinrich Mann, Viktor Mann, Carla Mann, Julia Mann
Star Sign
Gemini
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Quote
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Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous--to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.
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Fact
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His books were among those burned by the Nazi regime.
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Conferred an honorary doctor's degree by the University of Bonn in 1919 (deprived in 1937, and restored in 1946).
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From 1936 to 1944 Mann and his family were citizens of Czechoslovakia.
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Son of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann (1840-1891) and Júlia da Silva Bruhns (1851-1923).
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Grandfather of Fridolin Mann, born 1940, and Anthony Mann, born 1942 (Michael's sons), Angelica, born 1940, and Domenica, born 1944 (Elizabeth's daughters).
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His maternal grandmother was Portuguese: Maria Senhorinha da Silva (1829-1856).
$19 Million
