The Works of Heinrich Mann.
Heinrich Mann (1871-1950). On March 27 1871 German novelist Luiz (Ludwig) Heinrich Mann was born. Being the elder brother of Nobel laureate Thomas Mann he wrote works with strong social themes. His numerous criticisms of the growth of fascism forced him to flee for his life after the Nazis came to power in 1933. His book "was freely adapted into the legendary movie "starring Marlene Dietrich in her first major role. Heinrich Mann was born in Lübeck as the oldest child of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann and Júlia da Silva Bruhns. His father came from a bourgeois family of grain merchants and was a Senator for economics and finance of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck. Already as a young man, Heinrich Mann suffered from a lung disease hemoptysis and spent time in sanatoria and at health resorts . After graduating from the Gymnasium Heinrich Mann began an apprenticeship as a bookseller in Dresden and in 1891 Mann did his voluntary service at the S. Fischer publishing house in Berlin. After the death of his father, the family moved to Munich in 1903 while Heinrich now being financially independent, studied at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and began his career as a freier Schriftsteller or free novelist. At first a disciple of the French realists especially Émile Zola and Guy de Maupassant he wrote impressions, sketches, novelettes, and some poetry. His first novel. In einer Familie (In a Family, 1894 was published at his mother's expense It was as a reviewer that he made a name for himself from 1891 to 1896 Heinrich Mann's first creative phase, from 1900 to 1914 began with a realistic, even naturalistic novel entitled Im Schlaraffenland (In the Land of Cockaigne, 1900 portraying the decadence of high society. In 1903 his most productive year, two more novels folowed, Die Göttinnen (Diana, 1903 a glorification of estheticism and Die Jagd nach Liebe (1903 another novel of decadence. Film Poster,. The Blue Angel (1930). Heinrich Mann merciless portrait of a tyrannical provincial schoolmaster Professor Unrat (Small Town Tyrant, 1905 became widely known through its film version Der blaue Engel (1928 directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Emil Jannings Marlene Dietrich and Kurt Gerron Originally, Heinrich Mann 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, which was the beginning of her world career. The novel earned Heinrich Mann also much respect during the Weimar Republic since it satirized German society and explained how its political system had led to the First World War. His Kaiserreich trilogy consisting of Die Armen (1917 Der Untertan (The Patrioteer, 1918 and Der Kopf (The Chief, 1925 carries even further his indictment of the social types produced by the authoritarian state. . Heinrich Mann was devastated in 1910 when his sister Clara Mann took her own life Two years later, Mann married the actress Maria Kanová from Prague. When his brother Thomas Mann in Gedanken im Kriege (Thoughts in War expressed support for the war, Heinrich Mann cut off all contact with him. It was in 1922 fostered by Thomas Mann's wife Katja that the two brothers reconciled. After 1918 Mann became a prominent spokesman for democracy Together with Albert Einstein and other celebrities Heinrich Mann was a signatory to an open letter in the New York Times condemning the murder of Croatian scholar Dr Milan Šufflay in 1931. In the same year Heinrich Mann became the president of the poetry department of the Prussian Academy of the Art which was closed two years later on account of Mann's political activities, which included signing the appeal to the Communist Party of Germany and the Social Democratic Party of Germany against the National Socialists. Mann became persona non grata in Nazi Germany and left even before the Reichstag fire in 1933. He first went to France where he lived in Paris and Nice During the German occupation he made his way through collaborationist Vichy France to Marseille where he succeeded to escape to Spain and further to Portugal and then to America. The Nazis burnt Heinrich Mann's books as "contrary to the German spirit during the infamous book burning of May 10 1933 which was instigated by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. During the 1930s and later in American exile Heinrich Mann's literary popularity went downhill. Nevertheless, from 1935 to 1938 he wrote Die Jugend des Königs Henri Quatre (Young Henry of Navarre and Die Vollendung des Königs Henri Quatre (Henri Quatre: King of Franc as part of the Exilliteratur. The two novels sketched the life and importance of Henry IV of France and were acclaimed by his brother Thomas Mann. The plot, based on Europe's early modern history from a French perspective anticipated the end of French enmity. In 1939 Heinrich Mann married his second wife Nelly Kröger, who suffered from mental illness and committed suicide in 1944 while the Manns' were living in California During the emigration became chairman of the Preparatory Commission of the German Popular Front and was named honorary president of the exiled Social Democratic Party of Germany 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 German Academy of Arts. At yovisto you can learn more about Heinrich Mann's famous brother Thomas Mann in a seminar by the Goethe Institute Boston on Thomas Mann and his Stories.