Bundespräsident Frank-Walter Steinmeier published an excellent tribute to Heinrich Mann in Der Tagesspeigel on the occasion of the great writer's 150th birthday:
"Heinrich Mann wollte der Gesellschaft nützen, auf seine Art und mit seinen Mitteln. Er wollte Menschen verändern und auf die Wirklichkeit einwirken, als moderner Romancier, als kritischer Intellektueller, als Künstler und als Citoyen. Bis zuletzt arbeitete er daran, die Welt mit Hilfe des Wortes zu einem besseren Ort zu machen, allen Enttäuschungen zum Trotz.Er war ein Humanist und ein Aufklärer, geprägt von Voltaire und Zola, den er als leidenschaftlichen Ankläger in der Dreyfus-Affäre bewunderte. Vernunft und Wahrheit, Frieden und Freiheit, Gerechtigkeit und Güte, das waren die Ideale, um die sein Schreiben seit der Jahrhundertwende kreiste."
("Heinrich Mann wanted to be useful to society, in his own way and using his own talents. He wanted to change people and have an impact on the real world, as a modern novelist, as a critical intellectual, as artist and citizen. Up to the end he worked to make the world a better place with his writing, despite all the disappointments and criticism. He was a humanist and advocate for enlightenment, in the mold of Voltaire and Zola, whom he admired as a passionate accuser in the Dreyfus Affair. Reason and truth, peace and freedom, justice and goodness: these were the ideals that embodied his work after the turn of the century.)
Heinrich was overshadowed by his brother, who achieved international fame with the Nobel Prize in 1929. But unlike Thomas Mann, Heinrich was a passionate advocate for democracy and social justice from the beginning. A francophile, he embraced the ideals of liberté and égalité. He defended the Weimar Republic from its enemies, and early on clearly saw the danger of the Hitlers National Socialism. Heinrich Mann's books were some of the first to be burned after the Nazi seizure of power. Heinrich fled to Paris where he became an important voice for the German exile community. When the Nazis occupied France, Heinrich Mann escaped certain detention with the help of the American Varian Fry first to Spain and then to the United States. Unlike his brother, Heinrich Mann never really adapted to life in America; he died in Santa Monica in 1950.
I've read two novels (so far) of Heinrich Mann: Professor Unrat (1905), which was later made into a feature film -Der blaue Engel ("The Blue Angel") - which launched the career of the international film star Marlene Dietrich, and Der Untertan (1918) ("The Loyal Subject"), a masterpiece of social satire. The central figure in Der Untertan - Diederich Hessling - is a slavish and fanatical admirer of Kaiser Wilhelm II, as an archetype of Wilhelmine Germany, and a prototype of Theodor Adorno's Authoritarian Personality - a type that lives on today in the fanatical followers of Donald Trump. I've added Die kleine Stadt (1909) (mentioned by Steinmeier in his tribute) and Ein ernstes Leben (1932) (a novel based on the life of his wife Nelly Kröger) to my 2021 reading list.
Reading Tip: Michael Lentz's 2009 novel Pazifik Exil describes Heinrich and Nelly Mann's harrowing journey by foot (joined by Golo Mann, Franz and Alma Werfel, and Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger) over the Pyrenees. A later, very moving chapter, has Heinrich mourning at the grave of Nelly, who fell into alcoholism and committed suicide in 1946.
Recent Comments