Magic Mountains - Marking the 150th anniversary of Thomas Mann’s birth

Only some of the 440,000 people who fled Germany and Austria to escape the Nazis returned after 1945. They are...

Only some of the 440,000 people who fled Germany and Austria to escape the Nazis returned after 1945. They are not always welcome.This book is about returning to countries that often stubbornly refuse to come to terms with their recent history. It is about Willy Brandt, Thomas Mann, Robert Stolz, Bruno Kreisky, Alma Mahler-Werfel, Bertolt Brecht and many others.It is the third part of Herbert Lackner's contemporary history trilogy.

He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929 and was forced into exile in 1933 as one of the...

He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929 and was forced into exile in 1933 as one of the most vocal opponents of National Socialism. Thomas Mann's relationship with Germany remained complicated. He emigrated to the USA in 1938 and did not set foot on German soil again until 1949, when he was invited to take part in the Goethe Year in East and West Germany. His trip to Germany was the first major cultural event to attract international attention after the fall of Nazism. For a long time, Thomas Mann hesitated whether he should come at all. He travelled with his wife Katia from Frankfurt am Main via Nuremberg and Munich to Weimar, giving speeches in both parts of Germany, which made his visit to Germany politically explosive. He was both celebrated and criticised.Based on Thomas Mann's diaries, letters, travelogues and the memories of his Swiss driver, this graphic novel tells the story of Mann's ten-day return, a politically highly charged chapter in the life of Thomas Mann and his family. The graphic novel also sheds light on key moments in the writer's life, using flashbacks to look back on historically important periods and providing a multifaceted insight into Thomas Mann's world of thought.

Thomas Mann was a writer of great sensitivity, with lurking abysses, deeply rooted in German culture. He fearlessly exposed himself...

Thomas Mann was a writer of great sensitivity, with lurking abysses, deeply rooted in German culture. He fearlessly exposed himself to the catastrophes of his time, even if it was a long way from the ‘power-protected inwardness’ of the German Empire, which he glorified, to the fight against National Socialist Germany, which he waged tirelessly. In his trenchant analysis of Thomas Mann's literary work and in biographical approaches, Hanjo Kesting creates an overall picture of the great writer.

The theme of a 'German culture' runs through Thomas Mann's entire oeuvre and occupies a key position in it. Nevertheless,...

The theme of a 'German culture' runs through Thomas Mann's entire oeuvre and occupies a key position in it. Nevertheless, a comprehensive systematic study has been lacking until now.Philipp Gut has now provided one. In his brilliant study, he analyses Thomas Mann's idea of German culture from his early works to his final texts. He juxtaposes the concept of culture with the counter-concepts of 'barbarism' and 'civilisation' and traces the changes that Mann's thinking underwent on this subject. In addition to the explicitly political texts, the literary texts are at the centre of the study. Philipp Gut thus succeeds in providing a new perspective on the political Thomas Mann, who reflected on the problems of German culture in the first half of the 20th century in all its ambivalence.

Thomas Mann sits in his study, thinking and writing, consciously and deliberately removed from the distracting daily events around him....

Thomas Mann sits in his study, thinking and writing, consciously and deliberately removed from the distracting daily events around him. This is how the great author is portrayed in many books. But an important facet is missing, says Kai Sina: Thomas Mann was also a political activist who passionately argued that it's everyone's responsibility not only to suffer politics, but to make it their own. It is in our hands,' he called out to the opponents of the democratic state in 1922, 'in the hands of each and every one of us. Thomas Mann's multi-faceted political commitment is reflected in the debate on Zionism as if in a magnifying glass. As early as the 1920s, he was a member of a pro-Zionist support organisation. After the Second World War, he campaigned vigorously for the establishment of a Jewish state that would provide a safe home for the survivors of the Shoah - the horror and extent of which Thomas Mann was one of the first intellectuals to make public. In Kai Sina's masterfully written portrait, this too little-known Thomas Mann comes before our eyes in an impressive, vivid and humane way.

No other novel captures the upheavals of the twentieth century as well as Thomas Mann's 'Magic Mountain', which was published...

No other novel captures the upheavals of the twentieth century as well as Thomas Mann's 'Magic Mountain', which was published 100 years ago and which, from its apogee, unfolds a panorama of the European world, its people and the accelerated pace of time, with all its innovations and inventions, rampant nationalism, anti-Semitism, the contrast between East and West, the 'thunderclap' of the First World War and the early 1920s. The novel's themes are our own: the snow that no longer falls as it did then; the twilight of the sexes; man's confused sexuality; Thomas Mann's Jewish characters: seven chapters, each a magical mountain in itself, on a work of the century.

In the spring of 1942, exciting things are happening in El Peso, California. There is a war going on, but...

In the spring of 1942, exciting things are happening in El Peso, California. There is a war going on, but fortunately it is far away in Europe. Instead, there is the 'New World', a children's state organised and run by Rombout, Björn, Tschutschu, Nelson, Ivan, Betsy, Madeleine, Chris and their friends. The children feel safe here. But this feeling is deceptive. For the mysterious Mr X is about to bring terror into their midst. When the children track him down, a dramatic race against time begins. A thrilling, highly political novel of exile for young readers and those young at heart - written in the middle of the Second World War as an appeal for support for Hitler's opponents worldwide.

Franziska zu Reventlow and Frank Wedekind, Hedwig Pringsheim and Thomas Mann, Lou Andreas Salomé and Rainer Maria Rilke, Marianne von...

Franziska zu Reventlow and Frank Wedekind, Hedwig Pringsheim and Thomas Mann, Lou Andreas Salomé and Rainer Maria Rilke, Marianne von Werefkin and Wassily Kandinsky - all of them courageously and energetically set off around 1900 for the most modern German city of the time, in order to live a freer, more emancipated life and to win the future. Their inspiring stories show us that so much began then that continues to have an impact today.

They were the children of genius: Erika, Klaus, Golo, Monika, Elisabeth and Michael Mann. For a long time they stood...

They were the children of genius: Erika, Klaus, Golo, Monika, Elisabeth and Michael Mann. For a long time they stood in the shadow of their famous father, Thomas Mann. This book tells the extraordinary story of the highly talented, sometimes eccentric siblings who formed a close network throughout their lives, sticking together, working together, but also living in competition with each other and falling out. At the same time, it provides an insight into the radical upheavals of the 20th century, in which the members of the Mann family became both icons and myths of German culture.