Thomas Mann

German novelist and Nobel Prize laureate (1875-1955) · United States · Writers · Died at 80 · also Czechia

Thomas Mann is read about 6,381 times a day, in 119 languages.

A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026

The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 390 days, one point a day.

Something wrong?

Compare

He dissected the German soul in novels that read like fever dreams - The Magic Mountain, Death in Venice, Doctor Faustus - and won the Nobel in 1929 for prose thick with irony, myth, and the psychology of artists who think too much.

Writers Writer / Author Fiction Stand Up Screenwriting Literature Poetry Music

A life in dates

1955Died12 August 1955Honorary Citizen of LübeckAward1952Feltrinelli PrizeAward1949Goethe Prize of the City of FrankfurtAward1938“Democracy is timelessly human, and timelessness always implies a certain amount of potential youthfulness.”In their wordsThe Coming Victory of Democracy (1938), p. 14, translated by Agnes E. Meyer, Knopf (1938)Read the whole statement

1932Goethe Plaque of the City of FrankfurtAward1929“A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.”In their words16 May 1929Essay on Freud (16 May 1929)Read the whole statement

Nobel Prize in LiteratureAward1919Honorary Doctor of the University of BonnAward1918“He is no longer with me - by my orders - but then that is merel the carrying-out of an order, after all a kind of negative being-with-me, as he would say.”In their wordsHerr und Hund (A Man and his Dog) (1918)Read the whole statement

“Extraordinary creature! So close a friend, and yet so remote.”In their wordsHerr und Hund (A Man and his Dog) (1918)Read the whole statement

1896“I think of my suffering, of the problem of my suffering. What am I suffering from? From knowledge - is it going to destroy me? What am I suffering from?”In their wordsLetter from Naples, Italy to Otto Grautoff (1896); as quoted in A Gorgon's Mask: The Mother in Thomas Mann's Fiction (2005) by Lewis A.Read the whole statement

“Here and there, among a thousand other peddlers, are slyly hissing dealers who urge you to come along with them to allegedly "very beautiful" girls, and not only to girls.”In their wordsLetter from Naples, Italy to Otto Grautoff (1896); as quoted in A Gorgon's Mask: The Mother in Thomas Mann's Fiction (2005) by Lewis A.Read the whole statement

1875Born6 June 1875

Also in Deutsch

Photos 8

Thomas Mann 1929

-1.2- Thomas Mann 1898

-10- Der Doktor Lessing. Ein Pamphlet

-11 A- Thomas Mann Atlas Haack

-11 B- Thomas Mann Atlas Haack

-11.1- Die neue Rundschau 1911 Thomas Mann

-11.1- Thomas Mann Chamisso 1911

-11.2- Chamisso Vorwort Thomas Mann

In their own words 10

Thomas Mann

10 statements, newest first

Democracy is timelessly human, and timelessness always implies a certain amount of potential youthfulness.
1938, The Coming Victory of Democracy (1938), p. 14, translated by Agnes E. Meyer, Knopf (1938), Own words
I have an epic, not a dramatic nature. My disposition and my desires call for peace to spin my thread, for a steady rhythm in life and art.
Dec 10, 1929, Nobel Banquet Speech (10 December 1929), Own words
A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.
May 16, 1929, Essay on Freud (16 May 1929), Own words

Wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0

Awards

Honorary Citizen of Lübeck1955

Feltrinelli Prize1952

Goethe Prize of the City of Frankfurt1949

Goethe Plaque of the City of Frankfurt1932

Nobel Prize in Literature1929

Honorary Doctor of the University of Bonn1919

Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts order

Honorary Doctorate from Princeton University

Honorary Doctor of Harvard University

Honorary Doctorate from Columbia University

Honorary doctor of the University of Oxford

Honorary Doctorate from the University of Cambridge

Officer of the Legion of Honour

Commander of the Order of Orange-Nassau

Honorary Doctor of ETH Zürich

Honorary Doctorate of Lund University

Honorary Doctor of Yale University

Honorary Doctor of the University of Jena

Goethe Medal for Art and Science

Honorary Doctor of Rutgers University

Pour le Mérite

Order of Orange-Nassau

Taylorian Lecture

Family

Parents

Thomas Mann

Partners

Spouse Katia Mann

Children

Brothers and sisters

Is this everyone?

Only relatives with a profile here are drawn, so a family can be larger than this. A line here can also be wrong.

Correct this family

About this person

Born into Hanseatic merchant class in 1875, Mann turned his own family into literature with Buddenbrooks in 1901, a portrait of bourgeois decay. He spent the next decades building symbolic epics from German and Biblical myth, Goethe, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer - The Magic Mountain in 1924, the four-book Joseph and His Brothers between 1933 and 1943. When Hitler took power in 1933, Mann fled to Switzerland, then to the United States in 1939, writing Doctor Faustus in exile. Three of his six children became writers; his older brother Heinrich was a novelist. He returned to Switzerland in 1952 and died there in 1955, one of the defining voices of German literature written against the regime.

Country

United States

Writers from the United States 6

Fame.am measures public visibility signals. It does not measure human value, talent, morality, or credibility.