The Thomas Mann Group discussion

This thread is to post supplementary readings and links to information about Thomas Mann.

Does anyone have recommendations of good biographies of Thomas Mann? I just ordered a copy of Thomas Mann: Life as a Work of Art: A Biography, but I'm looking for others for comparison.

Thomas Mann und die Seinen (Thomas Mann And His Family) by Marcel Reich-Ranicki is excellent (have only read the German version).

Die Manns: Ein Jahrhundertroman by Heinrich Breloer is also good, but I don't think it has been translated (and is also based on the miniseries of the same title).

Thanks Gundula -- I have been wanting to read MRR -- looks like this is a good time to do so.

Mann's autobiographical sketch is posted on the Nobel Prize site: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prize...

Kris wrote: "Mann's autobiographical sketch is posted on the Nobel Prize site: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prize..."

This is perfect. Thank you Kris.

I created a listopia list on Thomas Mann and the Mann family a while ago, which includes several biographies: http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/35...

Thomas Mann by Ronald Hayman comes very highly recommended, in addition to the bios already mentioned by Kris and Gundula.

Also, from the horse's mouth:
Über mich selbst: Autobiographische Schriften
On Myself and Other Princeton Lectures: An Annotated Edition by James N. Bade Based on Mann's Lecture Typescripts (a German translation of this is contained in the above collection Über mich selbst)
Letters of Heinrich and Thomas Mann 1900-49
The Hesse/Mann Letters
Correspondence 1943-1955 (Mann-Adorno -- particularly instructive on Doctor Faustus and their respective views on post-WWII Germany)
Apropos Doktor Faustus: Briefwechsel Arnold Schönberg -- Thomas Mann 1930-1951 (ditto)
Bashan and I (an endearing tribute to his dog ... and his early days in Munich)

The views of some others close to Mann:
Unwritten Memories (Katia Mann's memoirs, based on interviews that her & Thomas Mann's children did with her some years after her husband's death)
Mein Vater, der Zauberer (by TM's daughter Erika Mann -- alas, only available in German, as far as I can see)
Der Zauberer: Drei Briefe über Thomas Manns "Doktor Faustus" an einen Freund in der Schweiz (by his friend and editor Peter De Mendelssohn -- not a very long read and unfortunately only available in German also, but highly recommended for its insights, not only regarding Doctor Faustus)

And on the place (more for the visuals and as a first introduction):
Thomas Manns Lübeck

Thank you Themis-Athena,

I will post some of these in the Group's Bookshelf.

Gundula wrote: "Die Manns: Ein Jahrhundertroman by Heinrich Breloer is also good, but I don't think it has been translated (and is also based on the miniseries of the same title)."

There's a supplementary volume by Breloer: Unterwegs zur Familie Mann: Begegnungen, Gespräche, Interviews ... alas, also only available in German.

Further information on Thomas Mann and the Mann family can also be found on the website of the Lübeck Buddenbrook House, a museum dedicated to the Manns family's (especially Thomas Mann's) literary heritage and the novel Buddenbrooks in particular -- in the actual building where the novel is set, and which was the Mann family's home from 1843 onwards. Some of the website's pages, including the page dedicated to the novel Buddenbrooks, include English translations of their respective contents.

Themis-Athena, thank you so much for these valuable posts. Kall, it's great to see the bookshelves grow. :)

I've read close to zero supplementary material on Mann, but reading a book on Arnold Schoenberg's American career (1933 to his death) led me to this title Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism which sadly my library doesn't have. But the whole Doktor Faustus/Schoenberg thing is fascinating. Mann and Schoenberg were both in the L.A. exile community, but they weren't close friends; Mann basically surreptitiously milked Schoenberg for information about his twelve-tone system to use in the novel, and Schoenberg didn't have a clue until the book was published and Mann gave him a copy. He was surprised and displeased to discover he had been turned into a syphilitic character. But when all was said and done, Schoenberg was more unhappy with Theodor Adorno (whom Mann had also squeezed for information) than with Mann.

Anyway that's kind of off topic. If someone ever does a Doktor Faustus group read, I'll have to repost it.

Another biography that I would recommend is Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature by Anthony Heilbut.

James wrote: "Another biography that I would recommend is Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature by Anthony Heilbut."

Thank you. I will add it in the library. I want to read at least one, but will explore later which one.

Lobstergirl wrote: " If someone ever does a Doktor Faustus group read, I'll have to repost it."

If someone ever does a Doctor Faustus group read, count me in as well ...! ;)

The Adorno-Mann correspondence also touches on the Mann-Schönberg thing if I recall correctly; I'll have to reread it to see what they say about it. Also will have to look up Mann's diary entries, I think ...

Lobstergirl wrote: "I've read close to zero supplementary material on Mann, but reading a book on Arnold Schoenberg's American career (1933 to his death) led me to this title Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Cultur..."

Lobstergirl, several of us in this group also want to read MM and Doktor Faustus but we thought that it was best to start with this one.

The group Brain Pain was doing a Faust-theme read which included Thomas Mann's version.

What you say about the Mann-Schoenberg interchange is very interesting. Thank you.

Kalliope wrote: "Lobstergirl wrote: "I've read close to zero supplementary material on Mann, but reading a book on Arnold Schoenberg's American career (1933 to his death) led me to this title Weimar on the Pacific:..."

Please add me to the group interested in MM and Doktor Faustus.

James wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "Lobstergirl wrote: "I've read close to zero supplementary material on Mann, but reading a book on Arnold Schoenberg's American career (1933 to his death) led me to this title Weima..."

Ok, James. We will keep you in mind, but I hope you stay in this one too.

I've discovered Heilbut's biography lurking on my shelves, so I intend to start that as it's at hand

Paul wrote: "I've discovered Heilbut's biography lurking on my shelves, so I intend to start that as it's at hand"

Great find. Let us know what you think.

For those interested in historical fiction on Heinrich and Thomas Mann, this book looks promising, Brothers in Exile: A Novel of the Lives and Loves of Thomas and Heinrich Mann (I have a copy, but have not gotten around to reading it).

I got the Hayman and the Heilbut from the library today.

Re Michael Degen: I watched the 1979 Buddenbrooks TV series, and became interested in the actor Michael Degen, who plays the creepy Gruenlich. Not at all creepy himself the actor Degen, who's from a Jewish background, wrote an autobiography of his childhood in Berlin during World War II hiding out with his mother from the Nazis and then ducking the allied bombs. He and his mother surreptitiously listened to Thomas Mann's BBC radio broadcasts into Germany. And at one point his mother had a tutor for him (in hiding, while bombs are falling), and Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks was one of the books he read. Later he wrote a fictionalized but rather accurate account of the life of Thomas Mann's youngest son the problematical Michael (Familienbande)...who had a disability of some kind, but was a great musician..an aggressive version of Hanno...Mann did not deal with him well...the BB came out in him with his own son...although his relationship with his daughter Erika was excellent, and he loved Michael's children....fascinating family stuff...

Unfortunately Mann was not the best father. He treated two children preferentially (Erika and Elisabeth), and was quite open about it. He seemed quite close to Klaus at times, in person and in letters, but Klaus was probably a distant third to Erika and Elisabeth, and the other three children didn't feel cherished or admired, or even paid attention to, at all.

Elena wrote: "Re Michael Degen: I watched the 1979 Buddenbrooks TV series, and became interested in the actor Michael Degen, who plays the creepy Gruenlich. Not at all creepy himself the actor Degen, who's from ..."

I am watching this series, a couple of steps behind the reading. I am enjoying it a great deal. It is a lot better than I expected. I did not know about Michael Degen. Thank you for this piece of information. I will look it up.

Elena wrote: "Re Michael Degen: I watched the 1979 Buddenbrooks TV series, and became interested in the actor Michael Degen, who plays the creepy Gruenlich. Not at all creepy himself the actor Degen, who's from ..."

Elena, thank you again for these two references. I have added them to my TBR.

Here are the links (I had to add one of them).

Familienbande

Nicht Alle Waren Morder

There is also a Film and DVD of this last one.

So, of the four bios (I think), the Hayman, the Reich-Ranicki, the Kurzke, and the Hailbut.... any advice?.

Has anybody read at least two of these?

I only have the fictionalized one by Breloer, and will probably start with that one... but would like to follow it with another non-fictionalized.

Kalliope wrote: "So, of the four bios (I think), the Hayman, the Reich-Ranicki, the Kurzke, and the Hailbut.... any advice?.

Has anybody read at least two of these?"

I've read both the Hayman (1995) and the Heilbut (1996). The Hayman is more of a straightforward bio. Good, I thought. The Heilbut also gives you the biography but also concentrates more on Mann as an erotic writer and erotic human. Both of them make use of his (I guess newly released?) diaries which revealed a lot of his repressed homosexuality that the world didn't necessarily know about.

I kind of preferred Hayman, but maybe that's just because I read it first so everything I relearned again in the Heilbut didn't seem new and interesting.

If you're interested in photos, read both, as they have some overlap but also different ones.

This struck me as hilarious. (Quoted in Heilbut.)

"On April 29, 1920...while thinking of Der Ring des Nibelungen, [Mann] experienced "a wave of rage at Heinrich and his wanton political blabber against Wagner. Feelings of hatred." "

This is going very far afield....but it's so gossipy I can't resist.

"[Klaus Mann] had the family curse of appearing too serious to be good company. Anglo-American homosexuals found him stuffy. On July 21, 1940, in New York he phoned Glenway Wescott, hoping to spirit "poor, dear old Gide" out of France. Wescott found him a "tragic twerp." ....[W.H. Auden] had married Erika [a lesbian] with a passport....Auden's contempt for his wife's family is evident in the anecdote, perhaps apocryphal, that he would take pickups to the Mann home in Pacific Palisades and make love to them in Thomas Mann's bed." (p. 444)

Excellent article by Colm Toibin on Thomas Mann and his family. From the London Review of Books.


http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n21/colm-toi...

Kalliope wrote: "Excellent article by Colm Toibin on Thomas Mann and his family. From the London Review of Books.


http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n21/colm-toi..."Thanks for posting, amazing story, amazing family...

Kalliope wrote: "Excellent article by Colm Toibin on Thomas Mann and his family. From the London Review of Books.


http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n21/colm-toi..."

Fantastic article. Thanks for sharing.

Themis-Athena wrote: "I created a listopia list on Thomas Mann and the Mann family a while ago, which includes several biographies: http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/35...

Thomas Mann by Ronald H..."

Fantastic!

Elena wrote: "Re Michael Degen: I watched the 1979 Buddenbrooks TV series, and became interested in the actor Michael Degen, who plays the creepy Gruenlich. Not at all creepy himself the actor Degen, who's from ..."

Aww, that's a great story.

Lobstergirl wrote: "This is going very far afield....but it's so gossipy I can't resist.

"[Klaus Mann] had the family curse of appearing too serious to be good company. Anglo-American homosexuals found him stuffy. ..."

Th......WOW

Useless literary trivia: Erica (Mann) Jong was named after Erika Mann! I could write whole Jeopardy show of this.

I would also be interested in the Doktor Faustus read (already have the book, waiting on Klaus' Mephisto, which he wrote first).

Also, In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain was quite good.

A friend gave me, as a sort of joke, the late Dr. Lederer's book on Thomas Mann with the great title "Disorder and Early Love," over 1,000 pages. But it's in English and I'm reading every page, it goes quickly. He's a medical doctor and a psychiatrist so there is a great understanding of TM's youthful longings and how that gets sublimated into the works. Goodreads would not approve of all the spoilers in the plot summaries. The most useful part is collating the letters and early stories with the works to find how the biographical materials are reshaped and incorporated into the fictional texts. His translations are rather good I think, and he has a feel for Mann's creative use of German compound nouns...so I'm enjoying his thorough book...but for all the careful analysis though I think Lederer misses the reason for TM's magic. If TM hadn't sublimated homoerotic impulses, he would have sublimated something else...TM's language has its own logic...

I'm missing out on the joke, Elena. But it seems like an interesting read and a great gift to receive ;)

The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann is not too long, but a good general intro. Will be using it for reference before starting on my Thomas Mann projects (reading the Joseph Trilogy, The Holy Sinner and Lotte in Weimar).

How did I miss this? Ill order it up. And for those interested in the extraordinary Mann family Spiegel (November 10,2015)has a short but endearing interview with Mann's grandson, Frido Mann now 75. Frido says he reads the biographies but doesn't recognize his grandfather in them. He remembers Thomas Mann as a caring and loving grandfather.

Gundula wrote: "The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann is not too long, but a good general intro. Will be using it for reference before starting on my Thomas Mann projects (reading the Joseph Trilogy..."

I have it and have read a few chapters. I would like to read the Joseph saga but may not be able to do it this year.

Kalliope wrote: "Gundula wrote: "The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann is not too long, but a good general intro. Will be using it for reference before starting on my Thomas Mann projects (reading th..."

Maybe if we could do another group read sometime?

Gundula wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "Gundula wrote: "The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann is not too long, but a good general intro. Will be using it for reference before starting on my Thomas Mann pro..."

I think those are perfect books for a group read.. but this year I am engaged already in one long group read..

Kalliope wrote: "Gundula wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "Gundula wrote: "The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann is not too long, but a good general intro. Will be using it for reference before starting on my..."

I was not necessarily thinking of this year either, and we should also not do these in a month but have an ongoing thread as there are something like four books if one were to include the one about Jacob.

OK.. let's keep them in mind.. I certainly want to read them... I was planning to concentrate on the Bible next year - the text itself and a choice of other related texts like this one by Mann.

Kalliope wrote: "OK.. let's keep them in mind.. I certainly want to read them... I was planning to concentrate on the Bible next year - the text itself and a choice of other related texts like this one by Mann."

I think that is a good idea. I have not read the Bible thoroughly since we had to read the Old Testament as literature in grade seven English and the New Testament as literature in grade eight English (King James version at that, lol).

For backgrond on the Joseph novels I am thinking of reading Robert Alter's translation of the Bible....I haven't looked at it yet, but it comes highly recommended....

Elena wrote: "For backgrond on the Joseph novels I am thinking of reading Robert Alter's translation of the Bible....I haven't looked at it yet, but it comes highly recommended...."

Can you perhaps provide a hyperlink to the title?

Gundula wrote: "Elena wrote: "For backgrond on the Joseph novels I am thinking of reading Robert Alter's translation of the Bible....I haven't looked at it yet, but it comes highly recommended...."

Can you perhap..." Let me do some checking. I'm allergic to most writing about the Bible,--with the exception of TM and Joseph Campbell and now perhaps Alter. I think Alter published his Genesis translation in the late 1990s at 300+ pages and the entire five books of Moses in 2004 at 1000 + pages, so I'll check to be sure that the later book incorporates everything from the earlier one. The reviews look promising: "Robert Alter's translation with commentary of The Five Books of Moses can be fairly described as a godsend." Seamus Heaney, Books of the Year, The Times Literary Supplement "In this remarkable translation... a monument of scholarship... Alter brings a kind of sensitivity to bear on moment after moment of his translation..." James Wood, London Review of Books "The commentary is at least as important as the translation, and the two together make up a unique contribution both to biblical studies and to the understanding and appreciation of a text that is central to Western culture."