Alphabet Authors ~ M is for Mann

I found this idea on Simon's blog @ Stuck in a Book. He picks an author for each letter of the alphabet, sharing which of their books he's read, which I ones he owns, how he came across them etc. I might not do it exactly as he does but I will try to get to all the letters of the alphabet over time.

There are several great authors whose name start with M: Naguib Mahfouz, Pascal Mercier, or Toni Morrison spring to mind but in the end, it had to be one of my favourite German authors ever: Thomas Mann. And here are the books I read by him, there are still more to come which I will add whenever I have read it.

- "Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family" (GE: Buddenbrooks) - 1901 

- "Tristan" (GE: Tristan) - 1901

- "Tonio Kröger" (GE: Tonio Kröger) - 1903

- "Death in Venice" (GE: Der Tod in Venedig) - 1912
- "A Man and His Dog" (GE: Herr und Hund. Ein Idyll) - 1918 
- "The Magic Mountain" (GE: Der Zauberberg) - 1924
- "Joseph and his Brothers" (GE: Josef und seine Brüder) - 1933/34
- "Doctor Faustus" (GE: Doktor Faustus) - 1943-47
- "Confessions of Felix Krull" (GE: Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull) - 1954

Buddenbrooks also happens to be one of my favourite books. Ever.

Facts about Thomas Mann:
Born    Paul Thomas Mann 6 June 1875 in Lübeck
Died    12 August 1955 (aged 80) in Zürich, Switzerland 
During the Nazi regime, the Mann family had to go into exile. Thomas first fled to Switzerland, than to the USA.

He received several honorary doctorates from all over the world.

There is a 30 Pfennig postages stamp which was issued in his memory on the first anniversay of this death.

There are also memorial plaques in Lübeck, Weimar and Nida (Lithuania) and many artists have made paintings or statues from him.

Also have a look at my report about our visit to the Buddenbrook house in Lübeck.

Thomas Mann received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929 "principally for his great novel, 'Buddenbrooks', which has won steadily increased recognition as one of the classic works of contemporary literature".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

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This is part of an ongoing series where I will write about a different author for each letter of the alphabet. You can see them all here.

Mann, Thomas "A Man and his Dog"

Mann, Thomas "A Man and his Dog" (aka Bashan and I) (German: Herr und Hund. Ein Idyll) - 1918

Anyone who knows me is aware of the fact that I love Thomas Mann. And that I'm not a fan of short stories. So, here is a short story by one of my favourite authors. 95 pages. In German! Which means it has probably fewer in English. (I could only find editions with extra writings, so I have no idea how many pages are left of the actual story.

Bashan is called "Bauschan" in the German original. Not a name I have ever come across anywhere. I am not an animal person, have never owned a single one and if I would want one, I'd rather have a cat than a dog, so I probably would not have touched this story if it hadn't been for the author.

The subtitle in German is "an idyll". Is it really that idyllic? Well, at least Thomas Mann manages to describe it like that. Long walks with his dog, beautiful landscape descriptions, a great tale of how a man and his dog grow together, the psychology of his dog. And of the owner. It's a feel good "story". Nothing much happens but you can follow them through their everyday life and imagine you are their on their walks.

The book was written and published in 1918, just when people had to get over WWI, maybe not a bad time to come up with a novella like this.

As for the cover pictures, I prefer the German one, it reminds me of Monet and other impressionists. Well, it's by Henry Moret, a French impressionist painter. I hadn't heard of him so could google more of his works and they are beautiful. Lots of seascapes which I always like.

This was our international online book club read in February 2021.

Some thoughts:

• It was again a completely different book than what we have read before, and the style of writing also totally different.
• Many thought the language was too long and difficult, with too much detail. Like a monologue you listen to, where you want to ask about what else is going on in life outside the picture, but you are unable to.
• Some really enjoyed some parts of the descriptions of scenery but felt very sad for the dog in much of the story.
• The contrast how we love and care for dogs nowadays compared to how Bashan was cared for back in those days felt enormous.
• The book made me curious about how it compares to Mann's other works, and what else was going on in life at the time.

I can understand these points. My favourite book by Thomas Mann is still is "Buddenbrooks" (Buddenbrooks).

I read this in the original German edition.

From the back cover:

"Bashan and I is the moving story of Thomas Mann's relationship with his spirited German short-haired pointer. From their first encounter at a local farm, Mann reveals how he slowly grows to love this energetic, loyal, and intelligent animal. Taking daily walks in the nearby parkland, Mann begins to understand and appreciate Bashan as a living being, witnessing his native delight in chasing rabbits, deer, and squirrels along with his careful investigations of stones, fallen branches, and clumps of wet leaves. As their bond deepens, Mann is led to contemplate Bashan's inner life, and marvels at the ease with which his dog trusts him, completely putting his life into his master's hands.

Over time, the two develop a deep mutual understanding, but for Mann, there is always a sense of loss at never being able to enter the private world of his dear friend, and he slowly becomes conscious of the eternal divide between mankind and the rest of nature. Nonetheless, the unique relationship quietly moves to the forefront of Mann's life, and when master and companion are briefly separated, Mann is taken aback by the depth of his loneliness without his dog. It is this deep affection for another living creature that helps the writer to reach a newfound understanding of the nature of love, in all its complexity.

First published in 1919 and translated into English in 1923, Bashan and I was heralded for its simple telling of how a dog became a priceless companion, an animal who brought meaning to the author's life."

Thomas Mann received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929 "principally for his great novel, 'Buddenbrooks', which has won steadily increased recognition as one of the classic works of contemporary literature".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Mann, Thomas "Death in Venice"

Mann, Thomas "Death in Venice" (German: Der Tod in Venedig) - 1912

I have read two of Thomas Mann's major works, "Buddenbrooks" and "The Magic Mountain", and they were just fantastic. This is a smaller story, a novella. You cannot compare it to the larger novels but you can certainly find Thomas Mann in the story.

This book is about a dream and the hope of its fulfillment. It is a story of defeat but also of love. It is as actual as it was a hundred years ago when it was written. Maybe one of the most actual books written on the subject of homosexuality.

Thomas Mann manages to describe the obsession of an elderly man to a young boy without either of them ever talking to the other. But the author finds the right words. An excellent (but not an easy) read.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"Celebrated novella of a middle-aged German writer's tormented passion for a Polish youth met on holiday in Venice, and its tragic consequences. Powerful evocation of the mysterious forces of death and disintegration in the midst of existence, and the isolation of the artist in 20th-century life. This edition provides an excellent new translation and extensive commentary on many facets of the story.

Published on the eve of World War I, a decade after Buddenbrooks had established Thomas Mann as a literary celebrity, Death in Venice tells the story of Gustav von Aschenbach, a successful but aging writer who follows his wanderlust to Venice in search of spiritual fulfillment that instead leads to his erotic doom.

In the decaying city, besieged by an unnamed epidemic, he becomes obsessed with an exquisite Polish boy, Tadzio. 'It is the story of the voluptuousness of doom,' Mann wrote. 'But the problem I had especially in mind was that of the artist's dignity.'"

Thomas Mann received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929 "principally for his great novel, 'Buddenbrooks', which has won steadily increased recognition as one of the classic works of contemporary literature".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Mann, Thomas "The Magic Mountain"

Mann, Thomas "The Magic Mountain" (German: Der Zauberberg) - 1924

"Buddenbrooks" is one of my favourite books ever. Thomas Mann is a very famous German Nobel Laureate and he has written a lot of books worth reading. Why I haven't read more novels by this fantastic author is beyond me. But this was a first step.

"The Magic Mountain". Even the title sounds enchanting. Who wouldn't want to step into it, even if it means you have to go through 1,100 pages to get to the end? I think this book deserves five stars just for the brilliant title which is as magical in the original as well as the translated title.

"The Magic Mountain" is a lot more philosophical as the "Buddenbrooks", it doesn't really give you more hope, though. The novel is classified as a "Bildungsroman", a work of formation and education. It might as well been an irony of it.

Thomas Mann lived during a very difficult time, He was born in 1875, so he was quite aware of the situation in Europe before the first world war and he also lived through the second one.

This novel is a great idea of putting all of Europe into a Swiss sanatorium, letting them find a solution out of the situation the continent is in. But they can't, can they? A bunch of lung sick people of all sorts of education, most of them quite rich, all of them busy with their own problem of dealing with their illness, trying to get better and get back into the "normal" world.

The authors words are both wise and beautiful, ironic and philosophical, historical and astoundingly contemporary.

Hans Castorp is a young man with money who seems to have a goal in life which is overthrown in one minute when he visits a cousin who has to stay in a Swiss sanatorium. As we imagine a stay in any sanatorium, it starts very slow, just like you might feel when you yourself have to be admitted to such a place. But it gets better, a lot better, I promise. It's amazing how someone at the beginning of the 20th century had so much insight into today's world. Probably because history doesn't change much.

The plot of the story is easily explained, there isn't a whole lot. But that doesn't make it uninteresting. On the contrary, the book is based on a whole lot of ideas. You won't read this book quickly but you will also not forget it quickly. It will stay with you for the rest of your life.

This is a fantastic book. Give it a chance.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"With this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Thomas Mann rose to the front ranks of the great modern novelists, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. 'The Magic Mountain' takes place in an exclusive tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps–a community devoted to sickness that serves as a fictional microcosm for Europe in the days before the First World War. To this hermetic and otherworldly realm comes Hans Castorp, an 'ordinary young man' who arrives for a short visit and ends up staying for seven years, during which he succumbs both to the lure of eros and to the intoxication of ideas. 'The Magic Mountain' is a monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension and intellectual ferment, a book that pulses with life in the midst of death."

Diana from Thoughts on Papyrus posted a fantastic review with a lot of insight here.

Thomas Mann received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929 "principally for his great novel, 'Buddenbrooks', which has won steadily increased recognition as one of the classic works of contemporary literature".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

I was lucky to be able to visit the Buddenbrook House in Lübeck, you can read about my experience here.

Visiting the Buddenbrook House

During our last holidays, we visited the beautiful town of Lübeck, situated in the North of Germany, at the Baltic Sea. During the Cold War, this was the last town in North-Western Germany. Today, luckily, you wouldn't even be able to tell. You also can't tell that more than 1,000 houses were totally or partly destroyed in 1942 through Allied bombings. Today, it is full of old houses, huge churches, a pretty little river flowing through the town, and the home town to three Nobel prize winners. Willy Brandt was born here, our former chancellor who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1971 for his efforts to reconcile West Germany and the Eastern countries, East Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union. Günter Grass, author, graphic artist, sculptor and Nobel Prize winner for Literature (in 1999), originally from Gdańsk (then Danzig) lives here now.

And then there is the family Mann. Heinrich Mann, the elder brother, and Thomas Mann, the Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 1929. Both very famous in their own right and known for a vast amount of novels, plays, short stories, essays and their social criticism, and both had to go into exile during the Nazi regime. The Mann family was a renowned merchant family, their father a Senator of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck. The brothers grew up in a large and wealthy family and drew the ideas for their subjects from their everyday life.

"Buddenbrooks" (GE: Buddenbrooks) is one of my favourite novels ever. We read it in the book club and I wrote a review about it here. You can visit the house of the family Mann, it has been transformed into a museum as the "Buddenbrook House".

In 1842, Johann Siegmund Mann jun. (Thomas' and Heinrich's grandfather) bought the house in the Mengstraße and today it is known as the house of the family Buddenbrook. A beautiful white house with a Baroque façade and a Rococo gable, in the middle of the town, just next to the largest church St. Marien. The two lowest stories have been transformed into a museum with information on the family Mann and the house itself, on the third floor, you can see two rooms that have been restored to look like the rooms in the book when the family is leaving the house. There are several little items strewn throughout the rooms with the respective passages from the novel to show what they mean.

I would have loved to have the whole house restored to see how the Buddenbrooks (or Manns) really lived, but on the whole, this was a very pleasant visit and I can only recommend to anyone who is interested in literature to read the book and visit the house if you are in the area.

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Mann, Thomas "Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family"

Mann, Thomas "Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family" (German: Buddenbrooks) - 1901

I have read "Buddenbrooks" a couple of times and think this is one of the best books of German literature. It is usually described as Thomas Mann's masterpiece. The author is definitely one of Germany's most famous and best writers. The novel, an epic story, dates from 1901 and describes the life in a wealthy merchant family over several decades from the 1800s until the beginning of the twentieth century. The story is based on the author's own family who lived in Lübeck, the town where this novel takes place. It belonged to the Hanseatic League which "was an alliance of trading guilds that established and maintained a trade monopoly over the Baltic Sea, to a certain extent the North Sea, and most of Northern Europe for a time in the Late Middle Ages and the early modern period, between the 13th and 17th centuries" (an early European Union, if you wish). Quite an interesting part of the history of that part of Northern Europe.

A wonderful novel, rich expressions, perfect detailed writing, also about some important history that isn't described very often. If you enjoy history and would like to learn more about Germany at the beginning of the last century, this is the book for you. But even if you are not interested in history, this is also a great family saga, one that will never leave you again. A family that was so rich and important and had so much influence on the politics and economy of a whole town and region and who can't to cope with the changes into modern life. Read it. You won't regret it.

In our new international book club, we were asked to suggest our favourite book from our country. I didn't have to think long, it had to be "Buddenbrooks". Granted, it is a long story and that's probably one of the reaons why I love it so much but I was not the only one. We had a good discussion about all the different parts of the book, all the different subjects it covers.

There is so much more to this novel than just the decline of the family Buddenbrook. Rather, the decline of the whole society, especially the wealthy part of it, was discussed, the revolution, the lower classes who didn't put up with the bad treatment and poor salaries the received. Not any longer. All that led to the downfall of certain families, not everyone could keep up with their status after a lot was taken away from them.

The beginning of this was already shown in Tony's meeting with Morton, the student who told her about the different types of classes in society, who tried to open her eyes. Then there was Tony herself, always making the wrong decisions because she had to keep up appearances. Christian, the second brother in the family Buddenbrook, was more or less born into the wrong family but other than his nephew Hanno who seems to just like his uncle, he doesn't have anyone who understands him. Then, finally, Thomas Buddenbrook, the son and heir to a dynasty who doesn't see that the times are a-changing, who believes being named Senator will set him up forever and ever.

Well, the Buddenbrooks are a merchant family, one of the "first families in town". They got rich through their trade which was helped through the Hanseatic League which can be seen as a pre-European Union during a time where there were many many more little countries in Europe than there are today. It existed from the 13th to the 17th centuries and occupied most of the land fromt he Baltic and the North Sea, almost all of the Northern part of the European mainland and more than 300 cities were a member.

It is not surprising that the Buddenbrooks became rich as one of the leaders of Lübeck which was considered the Queen of the Hanseatic League. And it also not surprising that the family came to its end when the union that had helped them for so long did so, as well.

Even though Thomas Mann was still quite young when he wrote this novel (26 years old), it was mainly for this work that he received the Nobel Prize and "Buddenbrooks" is generally considered the first social novel and is considered "the greatest novel of the century".

Read it. You won't regret it.

From the back cover:

"Thomas Mann's first novel, Buddenbrooks, is drawn from his own life and experience.

Subtitled The Decline of a Family, his story of a prosperous Hanseatic merchant family and their gradual disintegration is also an extraordinary portrayal of the transition from the stable bourgeois life of the nineteenth century to a modern uncertainty. "

We discussed this in our international book club in August 2007 and in February 2015.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2024.

I also read "The Magic Mountain".

Thomas Mann received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929 "principally for his great novel, 'Buddenbrooks', which has won steadily increased recognition as one of the classic works of contemporary literature".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

I was lucky to be able to visit the Buddenbrook House in Lübeck, you can read about my experience here.