Heinrich Mann

(1871 – 1950)

Biographical Sketch

Luiz (Ludwig) Heinrich Mann (Lübeck, Germany, March 27, 1871 – Santa Monica, CA, USA, March 11, 1950) was a German novelist who wrote works with strong social themes. His attacks on the authoritarian and increasingly militaristic nature of pre-World War II German society led to his exile in 1933.

Born in Lübeck, as the oldest child of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann and Júlia da Silva Bruhns, he was the elder brother of novelist Thomas Mann. His father came from a patrician grain merchant family and was a Senator of the Hanseatic city. After the death of his father, his mother moved the family to Munich, where Heinrich began his career as a freier Schriftsteller or free novelist.

Mann’s essay on Emile Zola and the novel Der Untertan (translated under the titles Man of Straw and The Loyal Subject) earned him much respect during the Weimar Republic, since it satirized German society and explained how its political system had led to the First World War. Eventually, his book Professor Unrat was freely adapted into the legendary movie Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel). Carl Zuckmayer wrote the script, and Josef von Sternberg was the director. The book’s author wanted his girlfriend, the actress Trude Hesterberg, to play the lead, but instead Marlene Dietrich was given her first sound role as the “actress” Lola Lola (named Rosa Fröhlich in the novel).

Together with Albert Einstein and other celebrities, Mann was a signatory to a letter to the Urgent Call for Unity condemning the murder of Croatian scholar Dr Milan Šufflay on 18 February 1931. – Mann became persona non grata in Nazi Germany and left even before the Reichstag fire in 1933. He went to France where he lived in Paris and Nice. During the German occupation he made his way to Marseille in Vichy France and there was aided by Varian Fry in 1940 to escape to Spain. He then went to Portugal and sailed to America.

The Nazis burnt Heinrich Mann’s books as “contrary to the German spirit” during the infamous book burning of May 10th 1933, which was instigated by the then Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

During the 1930s and later in American exile, Mann’s literary popularity went downhill. Nevertheless he wrote Die Jugend des Königs Henri Quatre (Young Henry of Navarre) and Die Vollendung des Königs Henri Quatre (Henry, King of France) as part of the Exilliteratur; i.e., the books in the German language written by writers of anti-nazi attitude who fled from Nazi Germany (Germany and Austria) between 1933 and 1945. The two novels sketched the life and importance of Henry IV of France and were acclaimed by his brother Thomas Mann, who spoke of the “great splendour and dynamic art” of the work. The plot, based on Europe’s early modern history from a French perspective, anticipated the end of French-German enmity.

Heinrich Mann died in Santa Monica, California, lonely and without much money, just months before he was to move to East Berlin to become president of the (East) German Academy of Arts. His ashes were later taken to East Germany.

Bibliography

Novels

In einer Familie (1894)
Im Schlaraffenland (1900)
(In the Land of Cockaigne)
Die Göttinen oder Die drei Romane der Herzogin von Assy, Die Jagd nach Liebe (1903)
Professor Unrat oder das Ende eines Tyrannen (1905)
(Small Town Tyrant; The Blue Angel)
Zwischen den Rassen (1907)
Die kleine Stadt (1909)
(The Little Town)
Das Kaiserreich (Trilogie)
(The Empire Trilogy):
- Der Untertan (1918)
  (The Patrioteer; Man of Straw; The Loyal Subject)
  – First published in private printing, 1916.
- Die Armen (1917)
  (The Poor)
- Der Kopf (1925)
  (The Chief)
Mutter Marie (1927)
(Mother Mary)
Eugänie oder Die Bürgerzeit (1928)
(The Royal Woman)
Die große Sache (1930)
Ein ernstes Leben (1932)
(The Hill of Lies)
Die Jugend des Königs Henri Quatre (1935)
(Young Henry of Navarre)
Die Vollendung des Königs Henri Quatre (1938)
(Henry, King of France)
Lidice (1943)
Der Atem (1949)

Novellas and Short Stories

Beppo als Trauzeuge (1889)
Das Wunderbare und andere Novellen (1897)
Ein Verbrechen und andere Geschichten (1898)
Flöten und Dolche (1905)
Mnais und Ginevra (1906)
Schauspielerin (1906)
Stürmische Morgen (1906)
Gretchen (1907)
Die Bösen (1907)
Das Herz (1910)
Die Rückkehr vom Hades (1911)
Bunte Gesellschaft (1917)
Der Sohn (1919)
Die Ehrgeizige (1920)
Die Tote und andere Novellen (1921)
Abrechnung (1924)
Kobes (1925)
Liliane und Paul (1926)
Sie sind jung (1929)
Die Welt der Herzen (1932)

Translations

Choderlos de Laclos, Liaisons Dangereuses (1905)

Plays

Varieté (1910)
Schauspielerin (1911)
Die große Liebe (1912)
Madame Legros (1913)
Brabach (1917)
Der Weg zur Macht (1919)
Das gastliche Haus (1924)

Essays, Addresses, Memoirs, Correspondence, Drawings

Eine Freundschaft: Gustav Flaubert und George Sand (1905)
Voltaire – Goethe (1910)
Geist und Tat (1910)
Zola (1915)
Macht und Mensch (1919)
Gedenkrede auf Kurt Eisner (1919)
Tragische Jugend (1920)
Deutschland und Frankreich (1923)
Diktatur der Vernunft (1923)
Zeit und Dichtung (1926)
Victor Hugo (1927)
– Address given in Paris.
Der tiefere Sinn der Republik (1927)
Dichtkunst und Politik (1928)
Sieben Jahre, Chronik der Gedanken und Vorgänge: 1921 – 1928 (1929)
Geist und Tat, Franzosen 1780 – 1939 (1931)
Das öffentliche Leben (1932)
Das Bekenntnis zum Übernationalen (1932)
Der Haß: Deutsche Zeitgeschichte (1933)
– Essays, dedicated to “meinem Vaterland” (“my fatherland”).
Der Sinn dieser Emigration (1934)
Aufbau einer geistigen Welt (1935)
Es kommt der Tag. Deutsches Lesebuch (1936)
Das geistige Erbe (1937)
Carl von Ossietzky (1937)
Mut (1939)
The Living Thoughts of Nietzsche (1940)
Deutsche Schuld und Unschuld (1943)
Mein Bruder (1945)
Ein Zeitalter wird besichtigt (1946)
Der König von Preußen (1949)
Briefe an Karl Lemke und Klaus Pinkus 1964
Thomas Mann – Heinrich Mann, Briefwechsel 1900 – 1949 (1965)
(Letters of Heinrich and Thomas Mann, 1900 – 1949)
Love Affairs and Tales of Atrocity: Heinrich Mann’s Unknown Drawings (2002)

Online editions of Heinrich Mann’s works:

Project Gutenberg

A Selection of Quotes

Der Untertan

“Wer treten wollte, muß sich treten lassen.”

Geist und Tat

“Das Misstrauen gegen den Geist ist Misstrauen gegen den Menschen selbst, ist Mangel an Selbstvertrauen.”

Der Unbekannte

“Es gibt Tage, wo das Leben übertrieben flau ist. Zu Bett gehen; weiter hilft nichts mehr.”

Interview, Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 20 November 1935

“Ich hörte, dass Karl May der Öffentlichkeit so lange als guter Schriftsteller galt, bis irgendwelche Missetaten aus seiner Jugend bekannt wurden. Angenommen aber, er hat sie begangen, so beweist mir das nichts gegen ihn – vielleicht sogar manches für ihn. Jetzt vermute ich in ihm erst recht einen Dichter!”

Find more quotes by Heinrich Mann on Goodreads.