A little more than one week ago, precisely on 6th of June, the German writer Thoma Mann would complete 150 year-old. Ten years ago I had already done a tribute to him, as you can read on this link https://thepeopleteacher.blogspot.com/2015/06/140th-birthday-of-thomas-mann.html. He was a very active activist for democracy in times of totalitarian regimes in Europe. In fact, he dedicated all his time and cultural production to fight the evils of the dictatorships. This post is a summary of two articles. The first was published at https://au.news.yahoo.com/magic-mountain-sweeping-critique-totalitarian-190839041.html?guccounter=1guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANez9UOORvejsHfhGjyhMPDVNGF3xMjY6Cu1LLr8SpLUAaXnaQ0q8BKS0fXibodoQNCArpIQ4KILCTVNvriwSbFf0txczeyACTbnUC0pzu9xvp-yLeBFuqCihP12NsJIiz-BA8KdPW2lQJxFJbFl2_-Qp5N9FSHWOTkVpnE_oOwt. The second was published at https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/255/oa_monograph/chapter/3010023
Last November, Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann's Magical Mountain completed 100. One of the 20th century's towering literary achievements, it is a sweeping critique of the dangerous totalitarian political forces that shaped, and almost destroyed, Europe in Mann's lifetime. The novel also reflects Mann's own dramatic public and political evolution. Initially politically reserved, he became an ardent patriot at the outbreak of World War I, only to become disillusioned by the rise of political extremism in postwar Germany. This shift set Mann on a collision course with the Nazis and ultimately led to him fleeing Germany in 1933. There are worrying parallels bewteen 1924, when Mann's magnum opus was published, and 2024, when we're seeing a worldwide resurgence of these same impulses. There is the rise of the far-right in France, Austria and Germany. And then, American president-elect Trump's apparent admiration for authoritarian mode of governance. These forces loom ominously over our own era, threatening the democratic ideals Mann ultimately embraced. On August, 2014, German troops flooded into neutral Belgium, bringing the Britain into the war and shattering the cultural ideals and intellectual suppositions of pre-war Europe. Mann became an intransigent and inflammatory defender of the German cause, writing articles and giving speeches that made him a favorite on the volkish nationalist right. However, everything had changed by 1922. Appalled by the waves of extremist political violence coursing through Germany, Mann was forced to reappraise his beliefs. That year, in an unprecedented move, he wrote and delivered his speech, "On the German Republic. In it, he publicly embraced the principles of its Weimar Republic, distancing himself from the types of authoritarian nationalism. This development, left an indelible mark on "The Magic Mountain". The book had been transformed from a satirical novel into a sweeping Bildungsroman, focused on moral education and psychological development. It was also an allegory of European civilisation teetering on the abyss, a "world festival of death", as Mann puts it in the novel's final sentence. Specifically, the phrase is a reference to World War I. A century after the novel first appeared, its nuanced discussions of ideological conflict, the danger of extremism and the fragility of civilisation remain, depressingly, as pertinent as ever. After he took up permanent residency in the U.S. in September of 1938, Mann, acquired a new role in the eyes of his audience. For hundreds of thousands of readers who purchased his books, flocked to his lectures, or followed his endeavors by means of the frequently breathless news coverage, Mann became an embodiment of German culture as well as a personal antagonist to the Nazi regime. Through his words and actions, he seemed to personify a cultural tradition now in danger of being irreversibly corrupted or even eradicated by fascism. Writers have served as a thorn in the side of the powerful almost since the beginning of recorded history. He became famous in America not because of his criticism of Hitler nor even because he found powerful words to attack governmental injustice, as his 19th century predecessors Heinrich Heine and Emile Zola had done. His fame instead rested on the quietly dignified aura of culture and tradition with which he surrounded himself and that seemed to emanate from every page that he wrote. The story of Mann's life seems tailor-made to support such an impression. The son of a merchant and senator from the north German town of Lubeck, he had learned from an early age what it means to assume a representative function. It was precisely this studiously cultivated air of dignity that made him a potent actor in an age of totalitarian domination. These two factors that characterize Mann's case, the battle of cultural autonomy against totalitarian dependence and the struggle between international and national sources of literary esteem, continue to have a clear relevance into the present day. Mann in exile had been extremely active and well understood his importance in fostering international solidarity. Mann spelled out a worldview when he asserted, "The task of affirming that there remains alive a tradition of German culture outside of the sphere of dictatorship doe not belong to us. It is the task of the world to proclaim this, of that world which can't forget the sympathy and gratitude with which it time and again welcomed the questing and creative spirit." By casting Mann into exile and banning his books, the Nazis could advance the claim that German culture and tradition were entirely on their side. This process of systematic exclusion bring us to the effect that translation had on Mann's self-understanding during 1930s and 1940s. During the period from 1938 to 1945, Mann's importance as an interpreter of the current situation in Europe easily outpaced his role as the author of prestigious fiction. Over the course of these years, it was issued 5 new volumes of speeches and essays to balance 5 works of fiction. The essays and speeches sold better. The lecture transcript "The Coming Victory of Democracy," for instance, sold more copies than "Joseph in Egypt, the most acclaimed work that Mann published during his American exile.
