Klaus Mann

German writer and dissident (1906–1949)

Klaus Mann

Klaus Mann, Staff Sergeant 5th US Army, Italy 1944

Born| (1906-11-18)18 November 1906
Munich, Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire
Died| 21 May 1949(1949-05-21) (aged 42)
Cannes, France
Occupation| Novelist
Essayist
Genre| Socio-political fiction
Satire
Relatives| Thomas Mann (father)
Katia Pringsheim (mother)
see full family tree

Klaus Heinrich Thomas Mann (18 November 1906 – 21 May 1949) was a German writer and dissident. He was the son of Thomas Mann, a nephew of Heinrich Mann and brother of Erika Mann (with whom he maintained a lifelong close relationship) and Golo Mann.

Klaus moved to the United States to escape Nazism, and after training in counterintelligence as one of the Ritchie Boys, he served in Europe during World War II, becoming one of the first outsiders to witness the horrors of the concentration camps. His books Escape to Life (co-written with his sister Erika Mann), and The Turning Point have attained a historical importance as frequently cited primary documents of the experience of exile undergone by members of the German intelligentsia and arts community who fled the Third Reich.[1][2][3][4] This genre is referred to as Exilliteratur.

He is best known for his 1936 novel, Mephisto, about an actor who sells his soul to the devil, by attaching his career to the rise of the Nazis, which was made into a film of the same name, in 1981—a book that was banned in Western Germany after the war. A semi-fictional work whose protagonist is modeled on Mann's former lover Gustaf Gründgrens, Mephisto contains enough historical truth to have been banned for nearly a half-century—remaining under legal taboo for decades even after Gründgrens death—on grounds of personality rights. (That is, the character Höffgen in Mephisto was found to resemble Gründgrens so closely that the portrayal was considered a violation of his rights of publicity.)

## Life and career

[edit]

Born in Munich, Klaus Mann was the son of German writer Thomas Mann and Katia Pringsheim. His father was baptized as a Lutheran, while his mother was from a family of secular Jews. Due to his being the grandson of Júlia da Silva Bruhns, he was also of Portuguese-Indigenous Brazilian partial descent.[5]

Mann's early life was described by him as romantic, in beautiful upper-class surroundings (Je suis de mon temps. Kind dieser Zeit) but his homosexuality complicated his early adulthood, and he developed a difficult relationship with his father, who only lived out his own homosexuality in a platonic way and processed his experiences in a very sublimated way in literature. Klaus Mann began writing short stories in 1924 and the following year became drama critic for a Berlin newspaper. His first literary works were published in 1925. His first novel The Pious Dance, Adventure Book of a Youth (1926) is openly set in Berlin's homosexual milieu.

In 1924 he had become engaged to his childhood friend Pamela Wedekind, the eldest daughter of the playwright Frank Wedekind, who was also a close friend of his sister Erika. The engagement was broken off in January 1928.

Klaus Mann (right) with his sister Erika in 1927

In 1927, after a short time in various schools,[6] he traveled around the world with his sister Erika Mann, a year older than himself, visiting the U.S. In 1929, they reported on the trip in essays published as a collaborative travelogue entitled Rundherum. During his early travels often by car throughout Europe and North Africa as well as America and Asia, Erika took the wheel and determined the itinerary to compensate for Mann's inability to make personal and useful decisions. That assistance continued even into his later adulthood but could not save him from his own self-destructive behaviors and excessive drug use.[7]

During the time Erika travelled with Klaus to North Africa in 1929, they met Annemarie Schwarzenbach, a Swiss writer and photographer, who remained close to them for the next few years. Klaus made several trips abroad with Annemarie, the final one to a Soviet writers' congress in Moscow in 1934. During this time and after direct contact with Russian authors and intellectuals, he initiated his critical thinking towards communist ideals and totalitarian ideologies.[8]

### Drug use

[edit]

Since young adulthood, Klaus used drugs, mostly opiates, to which he later became heavily addicted. His diaries document an attempted morphine injection in 1933 when Hitler took power. Initially, the aspiring writer used opium, Eukodal and later heroin, possibly to increase his creative energy, as artists and intellectuals in literary circles often did at the time. He underwent drug detoxification in Budapest during his travels, and at the Kilchberg Sanatorium in Switzerland. After 1936, during his stay in New York his drug use and sexual adventures became unconstrained.[9]

### 1930s

[edit]

In 1932 Klaus wrote the first part of his autobiography, which was well received until Hitler came to power.[10] In 1933 Klaus participated with Erika in a political cabaret, called Die Pfeffermühle (The Pepper-Mill), which came to the attention of the Nazi regime. The play, which included a daring critique of Hitler, was first performed in Munich and subsequently in Zürich. To escape prosecution he left Germany in March 1933 for Paris, later visiting Amsterdam and Switzerland, where his family had a house.

The same year, Klaus Mann and Annemarie Schwarzenbach, together with Fritz Landshoff and Dutch publisher Emanuel Querido, founded Die Sammlung, a literary magazine, first published in September 1933 in Amsterdam. It was primarily affiliated with a number of influential German writers who fled from the Hitler regime during the first years of the establishment and consolidation of Nazi rule, but other internationally acclaimed authors such as Aldous Huxley and Heinrich Mann contributed essays and editorial work. The magazine was funded by Annemarie Schwarzenbach and Klaus's father Thomas Mann. Klaus served as editor-in-chief from 1933 to 1935, when Die Sammlung' ceased publication, in part due to disagreements between Klaus and his father, as well as other contributors, over frequent politically motivated content.

Klaus Mann not only played an important role in the consolidation of the German Exilliteratur but also communicated with authors who remained in Germany after 1933. In a letter exchange with Gottfried Benn, whose ambivalence towards Nazi rule was well known, Klaus expressed concern about Benn's continued membership in the national German academy of writers, pointing out the moral dilemma it posed, even urging him to leave the country to join the German intellectuals in exile.[11] His work Escape to Life, co-authored by his sister Erika, who at the time was a successful writer for the BBC, was the culmination of his efforts to unite German intellectuals against the de-humanizing politics of the German National Socialists.

In 1933 Klaus Mann also made acquaintance with Julien Green, who was a successful French author, and engaged in the French Resistance. Green, who lived in America, attempted to rationalize his homosexual tendencies in the context of religion. Text published by Green indicated a shared sexual behavior with a preference for underaged men. From the homosexual relationships Klaus experienced during his life, however, he tended to seek a bond with men equal to his age or older.[12] In November 1934 Klaus was stripped of German citizenship by the Nazi regime. He became a Czechoslovak citizen.

### Mephisto

[edit]

In 1936, Klaus Mann wrote his most famous novel, Mephisto, which was first published in Amsterdam. The novel portrays actor Hendrik Höfgen's rise to nationwide fame in 1936, from humble beginnings in the Hamburger Künstlertheater (Hamburg Artists' Theater) in 1926. After fleeing to Paris on receiving news of the Nazis' rise to power, worried about his communist past, he is helped by a former co-actress from Hamburg, Angelika Siebert, who travels to Berlin to convince the girlfriend of a Luftwaffe general to have him pardoned. On returning to Berlin he quickly manages to win over Lotte and her general, and with his support has a wonderful career.

On obtaining the role of Mephisto in Faust Part One he realizes that he actually made a pact with evil (i.e. Nazism) and lost his humane values (even denouncing his mistress as "Black Venus"). There are situations where Höfgen tries to help his friends or tell the prime minister about concentration camp hardships, but he is always concerned not to lose his Nazi patrons.

The character of Hendrik Höfgen was based on his former brother-in-law, the actor Gustaf Gründgens. Gründgens' adopted son brought a legal case to have the novel banned after its first publication in West Germany in the early 1960s. After seven years of legal hearings, the West German Supreme Court upheld the ban, although it continued to be available in East Germany and abroad. The ban was lifted, and the novel published in West.

In 1981, the novel was made into a film co-written and directed by István Szabó, starring Klaus Maria Brandauer, which faithfully followed the plot of the novel. As Höfgen's associates and friends flee or are driven underground by the Nazi regime, the popularity of his character ends up superseding his own existence, until he finds that his best performance is keeping up appearances for his Nazi patrons. The novel was adapted into a play by Ariane Mnouchkine and later published in the 1994 collection; Plays by Mediterranean Women.[13]

### Move to the USA

[edit]

In 1936, he moved to the United States, living in Princeton, New Jersey, and New York. In the summer of 1937, he met his partner for the rest of the year, Thomas Quinn Curtiss, who was later a longtime film and theater reviewer for Variety and the International Herald Tribune. Mann's novel Der Vulkan was published in 1939 at the onset of World War 2, and was another attempt by him to portray not only Germans but other European exiles during that time. Despite considered one of his best novels, it never generated any significant sales and was only translated into French.[14]

In 1940 Klaus Mann founded another literary magazine for German writers living in exile in the United States, Decision. It lasted for only a year, but consolidated American intellectual opposition to the war with Sherwood Anderson, W. Somerset Maugham, Vincent Sheean and Robert E. Sherwood onto its board of directors. At the time, he was living in February House, and his housemates W. H. Auden and Carson McCullers provided editorial and layout assistance.[15] He eventually moved to his father's house in Pacific Palisades when he was unable to support himself financially.

Mann became a U.S. citizen in 1943. The process of naturalization was delayed because of an investigation the FBI conducted into Klaus Mann's political and sexual activities, as he was openly gay, but not an adherent of marxist ideologies.[16] Throughout his life in the U.S., he identified himself as a liberal antifascist and cosmopolitan.

### World War II

[edit]

In World War II, after training at Camp Ritchie, and becoming one of the Ritchie Boys, a US Army counterintelligence unit, he served as a staff sergeant of the 5th U.S. Army and the British Corps in Italy. Klaus was engaged in psychological warfare designing leaflets intended for German soldiers stationed in Italy and North Africa. In Italy, he was also involved with difficult interrogations of German POWs, including seasoned SS officers.

In his second 1942 autobiography (Der Wendepunkt, the Turning Point), he critically observed the segregation of white army personnel from their black counterparts at Camp Ritchie. In summer 1945, he was sent by units of the U.S. 5th Army and the British 8th Army to Germany. Klaus Mann, a German-American, used the publication Stars and Stripes to report from Postwar-Germany.

As he visited liberated concentration camps in official function, he was one of the first eye-witnesses to report on the horrors of mass extermination during Nazi rule in Germany. Audiovisual documents of his emotional reporting at these sites in the later 1940s became historical records and are still regarded today as a verification of these crimes against humanity.

## Death and legacy

[edit]

Klaus Mann's grave

Mann died in Cannes from an overdose of sleeping pills on 21 May 1949,[17] following further drug treatment. His death is generally reported as a suicide, linked to financial pressures, opiate addiction, and disillusionment over his treatment by the USA as a homosexual, and supposed communist,[18] but Mann's biographer Frederic Spotts argues that the engaged author's communications and attitude preceding his sudden overdose suggest accident rather than suicide.[19] He was buried in Cannes at the Cimetière du Grand Jas.

A number of biographies of Klaus Mann appeared much later after his death in Cannes in 1949. Other than one German language author, Nicole Schaenzler, all biographies were written and edited by English or American contributors. Because he wrote frequent autobiographical content, a separation of his literary achievements, mostly unsuccessful during his time, from his life, are difficult. Mann remained active in literary circles, and his personal and spiritual connections with André Gide, and later examination of Gide in his work Avant la Lettre (1943) shed significant light on his time and himself.

Later historians celebrated Klaus Mann as a modern liberal or transnational who attempted to break down national boundaries, but Klaus's biographical notes reveal that he felt essentially German, and had positive memories of his upbringing in Bavaria. In a pursuit to describe post-war Germany after the destructions of World War 2, he attempted to find his origins while collecting painful impressions from a Germany occupied by foreign military forces and impacted by the loss of its original borders.[20]

## Bibliography

[edit]

### Novels and autobiographies

[edit]

* Der fromme Tanz, 1925
* Anja und Esther, 1925
* Kindernovelle, 1926 [published in the U.S. as The 5th Child, 1927]
* Revue zu Vieren, 1927
* Alexander, Roman der Utopie, 1929
* Auf der Suche nach einem Weg, 1931
* Kind dieser Zeit, 1932
* Treffpunkt im Unendlichen, 1932
* Journey into Freedom, 1934
* Symphonie Pathétique, 1935
* Mephisto, 1936
* Vergittertes Fenster, 1937
* Escape to Life, 1939 (with Erika Mann)
* Der Vulkan, 1939
* The Turning Point, 1942
* Avant la lettre, 1943
* André Gide and the Crisis of Modern Thought, 1943
* The Chaplain, 1945

### Essays and travel reports

[edit]

* Vor dem Leben, Erzählungen. Enoch Verlag, Hamburg 1925 (heute enthalten in Maskenscherz. Die frühen Erzählungen).
* Kindernovelle, Erzählung. Enoch, Hamburg 1926 (ebd.).
* Rundherum. Ein heiteres Reisebuch. (Mit Erika Mann). S. Fischer, Berlin 1929. Neuausgabe Rowohlt, Reinbek 1996, ISBN 3-499-13931-6.
* Abenteuer. Novellen. Reclam, Leipzig 1929.
* Auf der Suche nach einem Weg. Aufsätze. Transmare Verlag, Berlin 1931.
* Das Buch von der Riviera (Mit Erika Mann). aus der Reihe: Was nicht im „Baedeker“ steht, Band XII. Piper, München 1931. Neuausgabe Rowohlt, Reinbek 2003, ISBN 3-499-23667-2; Neuausgabe Kindler, Hamburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-463-40715-9.
* Die Sammlung. Literarische Monatsschrift. (Unter dem Patronat von André Gide, Aldous Huxley, Heinrich Mann herausgegeben von Klaus Mann.) Querido, Amsterdam. September 1933 – August 1935. Neuausgabe Rogner und Bernhard Verlag, München 1986 bei Zweitausendeins. Zwei Bände. ISBN 3-8077-0222-9.
* Vergittertes Fenster. Novelle (über die letzten Tage von Ludwig II. von Bayern). Querido Verlag, Amsterdam 1937; danach S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1960 (heute enthalten in Speed. Die Erzählungen aus dem Exil.)
* Escape to Life Deutsche Kultur im Exil. (Zusammen mit Erika Mann). Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1939. Neuausgabe Rowohlt, Reinbek 1991, ISBN 3-499-13992-8.
* The Other Germany. (Zusammen mit Erika Mann), Modern Age, New York 1940 (Volltext im Internet Archive).
* Decision. A Review of Free Culture. Ed. by Klaus Mann. New York, Januar 1941 – Februar 1942.
* André Gide and the Crisis of Modern Thought. Creative Age, New York 1943 (dt.: Andre Gide und die Krise des modernen Denkens). Neuausgabe Rowohlt, Reinbek 1995, ISBN 3-499-15378-5.
* Heart of Europe. An Anthology of Creative Writing in Europe 1920–1940. Ed. by Hermann Kesten and Klaus Mann. L. B. Fischer, New York 1943.
* André Gide: Die Geschichte eines Europäers. Steinberg, Zürich 1948.
* Die Heimsuchung des europäischen Geistes. Essay 1948. Neuausgabe bei Transit Buchverlag 1993, ISBN 3-88747-082-6 (auch enthalten in Auf verlorenem Posten. S. 523–542).

## Film adaptations

[edit]

* Mephisto, directed by István Szabó (1981, based on the novel Mephisto)
* Treffpunkt im Unendlichen, directed by Heinrich Breloer and Horst Königstein [de] (1984, TV film, based on the novel Treffpunkt im Unendlichen)
* Flight North, directed by Ingemo Engström [de] (1986, based on the novel Journey into Freedom)
* The Volcano, directed by Ottokar Runze (1999, based on the novel Der Vulkan)

## See also

[edit]

* Germany portal
* LGBTQ portal
* Literature portal

* Dohm–Mann family tree
* Exilliteratur

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Chamberlin, William Henry (1 December 1942). "The Turning Point". The Atlantic. Retrieved 29 February 2024.
2. ^ Tóibín, Colm (6 November 2008). "I Could Sleep with All of Them". London Review of Books. Vol. 30, no. 21\. ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved 29 February 2024.
3. ^ Calasso, Roberto (2015). "Vienna Gas Company". The Unnameable Present. FSG.
4. ^ Sebald, W.G. (1996). The Emigrants.
5. ^ Kontje, Todd (2015), Castle, Gregory (ed.), "Mann's Modernism", A History of the Modernist Novel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 311–326, ISBN 978-1-107-03495-2, retrieved 25 August 2023
6. ^ Nicole Schaenzler: Klaus Mann. Eine Biographie. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt – New York 1999, ISBN 3-593-36068-3, p. 30
7. ^ Erika und Klaus Mann: Rundherum - Ahenteuer einer Weltreise. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1982.
8. ^ Nicole Schaenzler: Klaus Mann, p. 302
9. ^ Zauberers Sohn, Kind dieser Zeit (in German). Spiegel Online. Retrieved 6 March 2019.
10. ^ Nicole Schaenzler: Klaus Mann, p. 211
11. ^ Klaus Mann, Brief an Gottfried Benn, 9. Mai 1933 (in German). Deutsches Literatur Archiv Marbach (with permission of Frido Mann). Retrieved 12 March 2019.
12. ^ Frédéric Martel, « Le siècle d’enfer de l’écrivain catholique et homosexuel Julien Green » [archive], sur Franceculture.fr, 12 septembre 2019 (consulté le 7 juin 2020).
13. ^ Aurora Metro Books. Retrieved 10 June 2025.
14. ^ The Volcano - A novel set among emigrants. www.rowohlt.de. Accessed 11. Aug 2023.
15. ^ Tippins, Sherill (2016). February house. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 95\. ISBN 978-0-544-98736-4. OCLC 953747323.
16. ^ Klaus Mann, Notizen in Moskau, 1934. (in German). 100(0) Schlüssel Dokumente zur Deutschen Geschichte im 20. Jahrhundert. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
17. ^ "Report Klaus Mann Died After Overdose of Pills". Chicago Tribune. 25 May 1949. p. 12.
18. ^ The Turning Point, B. Fischer, 1942, p. 86
19. ^ Cursed Legacy. The Tragic Life of Klauss Mann, Yale UP, 2016, p. 298
20. ^ „Transnational Auto/Biography and European Identity: Klaus Mann's Portrait of André Gide“ Edinburgh University Press. Accessed 11 Aug. 2023.

## Further reading

[edit]

* Hauck, Gerald Günter. Reluctant Immigrants: Klaus and Erika Mann In American Exile, 1936-1945. 1997.
* Huneke, Samuel Clowes. 'The Reception of Homosexuality in Klaus Mann's Weimar Era Work.' Monatshefte für deutschsprachige Literatur und Kultur. Vol. 105, No. 1, Spring 2013. 86–100. doi: 10.1353/mon.2013.0027
* Keller, James Robert. The Role of Political and Sexual Identity in the Works of Klaus Mann. New York: Peter Lang, 2001. ISBN 0-8204-4906-7
* Mann, Klaus. Il cappellano Archived 15 January 2019 at the Wayback Machine, by Pier Giorgio Ardeni and Alberto Gualandi, Pendragon 2018
* Mauthner, Martin. German Writers in French Exile, 1933–1940 London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2006 ISBN 978-0853035404
* Schicker, Juliane. 'Decision. A Review of Free Culture' – Eine Zeitschrift zwischen Literatur und Tagespolitik. München: Grin, 2008. ISBN 978-3-638-87068-9
* Spotts, Frederic. Cursed Legacy: The Tragic Life of Klaus Mann New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0300218008
* Harpole, Kimberley, and Maierhofer, Waltraud. 'Women Performing the American "Other" in Erika and Klaus Mann's Rundherum (1929).' Sophie Journal. Vol.4, 2017. 1-32.

## External links

[edit]

* Media related to Klaus Mann at Wikimedia Commons
* Quotations related to Klaus Mann at Wikiquote
* Works by Klaus Mann at Faded Page (Canada)
* The Works, Diaries and Letters are in the Munich Literatur-Archiv "Monancensia"
* Tagebuch 1931–1949 – Titel – Mann Digital – Monacensia – Digital

* v
* t
* e

German-language literature

Related articles|

* German language
* History of Germany
* History of Austria
* History of Switzerland
* History of Liechtenstein
* Old High German literature
* Middle High German literature
* Early New High German literature
* Sturm und Drang
* Weimar Classicism
* Romanticism
* Literary realism
* Weimar culture
* Exilliteratur
* Pop literature
* Austrian literature
* Swiss literature
* German studies

Related categories|

* Austrian writers
* German writers
* Liechtenstein writers
* Swiss writers in German
* Category:Translators of William Shakespeare
* Reformation era literature

Medieval|

* Minnesang
* Courtly romance
* Der von Kürenberg
* Dietmar von Aist
* Reinmar von Hagenau
* Hartmann von Aue
* Walther von der Vogelweide
* Wolfram von Eschenbach
* Albrecht von Johansdorf
* Heinrich von Morungen
* Gottfried von Strassburg
* Dietrich von Bern
* Nibelungenlied

Early modern|

* Simon Dach
* Paul Fleming
* Hans Folz
* Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen
* Andreas Gryphius
* Christian Hoffmann von Hoffmannswaldau
* Johann Michael Moscherosch
* Martin Opitz
* Hans Sachs
* Angelus Silesius
* Anthony Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick
* Georg Wickram

18th century|

* Barthold Heinrich Brockes
* Christian Gellert
* Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
* Johann Christoph Gottsched
* Johann Christian Günther
* Friedrich Hölderlin
* Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
* Meta Klopstock
* Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz
* Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
* Magnus Gottfried Lichtwer
* Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg)
* Jean Paul
* Friedrich Schiller
* Johann Gottfried Schnabel
* Christoph Martin Wieland

19th century|

* Bettina von Arnim
* Achim von Arnim
* Clemens Brentano
* Georg Büchner
* Adelbert von Chamisso
* Annette von Droste-Hülshoff
* Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
* Joseph von Eichendorff
* Theodor Fontane
* Gustav Freytag
* Jeremias Gotthelf
* Franz Grillparzer
* Jacob Grimm
* Wilhelm Grimm
* Gerhart Hauptmann
* Christian Friedrich Hebbel
* Johann Peter Hebel
* Heinrich Heine
* Georg Herwegh
* Paul Heyse
* E. T. A. Hoffmann
* Friedrich Hölderlin
* Gottfried Keller
* Heinrich von Kleist
* Nikolaus Lenau
* Karl May
* Conrad Ferdinand Meyer
* Eduard Mörike
* Johann Nestroy
* Wilhelm Raabe
* Adalbert Stifter
* Theodor Storm
* Ludwig Tieck
* Ludwig Uhland

20th century|

* Ilse Aichinger
* May Ayim
* Ingeborg Bachmann
* Hermann Bahr
* Vicki Baum
* Johannes R. Becher
* Gottfried Benn
* Thomas Bernhard
* Hugo Bettauer
* Heinrich Böll
* Thomas Brasch
* Volker Braun
* Bertolt Brecht
* Rolf Dieter Brinkmann
* Hermann Broch
* Arnolt Bronnen
* Hermann Burger
* Elias Canetti
* Paul Celan
* Alfred Döblin
* Heimito von Doderer
* Friedrich Dürrenmatt
* Lion Feuchtwanger
* Marieluise Fleißer
* Erich Fried
* Max Frisch
* Stefan George
* Günter Grass
* Peter Handke
* Marlen Haushofer
* Hermann Hesse
* Georg Heym
* Wolfgang Hilbig
* Hugo von Hofmannsthal
* Ödön von Horváth
* Ricarda Huch
* Peter Huchel
* Ernst Jandl
* Uwe Johnson
* Ernst Jünger
* Franz Kafka
* Marie Luise Kaschnitz
* Erich Kästner
* Bernhard Kellermann
* Hermann Kesten
* Irmgard Keun
* Sarah Kirsch
* Egon Erwin Kisch
* Siegfried Kracauer
* Karl Kraus
* Else Lasker-Schüler
* Kurd Laßwitz
* Gert Ledig
* Siegfried Lenz
* Heinrich Mann
* Klaus Mann
* Thomas Mann
* Friederike Mayröcker
* Christian Morgenstern
* Erich Mühsam
* Heiner Müller
* Adolf Muschg
* Robert Musil
* Erich Maria Remarque
* Rainer Maria Rilke
* Joseph Roth
* Nelly Sachs
* Ernst von Salomon
* Paul Scheerbart
* Arthur Schnitzler
* Helga Schubert
* Kurt Schwitters
* W. G. Sebald
* Anna Seghers
* Berta von Suttner
* Ernst Toller
* Georg Trakl
* Kurt Tucholsky
* Robert Walser
* Josef Weinheber
* Peter Weiss
* Franz Werfel
* Christa Wolf
* Stefan Zweig

Contemporary
writers|

* Zsuzsa Bánk
* Thomas Brussig
* Dietmar Dath
* Jenny Erpenbeck
* Rainald Goetz
* Durs Grünbein
* Peter Handke
* Judith Hermann
* Elfriede Jelinek
* Reinhard Jirgl
* Wladimir Kaminer
* Daniel Kehlmann
* Esther Kinsky
* Alexander Kluge
* Barbara Köhler
* Christian Kracht
* Monika Maron
* Clemens Meyer
* Terézia Mora
* Herta Müller
* Sharon Dodua Otoo
* Emine Sevgi Özdamar
* Teresa Präauer
* Julya Rabinowich
* Rafik Schami
* Ingo Schulze
* Lutz Seiler
* Clemens J. Setz
* Botho Strauss
* Yoko Tawada
* Uwe Timm
* Ilija Trojanow
* Jan Wagner
* Martin Walser
* Peter Wawerzinek
* Wolf Wondratschek
* Feridun Zaimoğlu
* Juli Zeh

German-language
Nobel laureates|

* Theodor Mommsen
* Rudolf Christoph Eucken
* Paul Heyse
* Gerhart Hauptmann
* Carl Spitteler
* Thomas Mann
* Hermann Hesse
* Nelly Sachs
* Heinrich Böll
* Elias Canetti
* Günter Grass
* Elfriede Jelinek
* Herta Müller
* Peter Handke

German-language
literary awards|

* Ingeborg Bachmann Prize
* Georg Büchner Prize
* Sigmund Freud Prize
* Adelbert von Chamisso Prize
* Hans Fallada Prize
* Goethe Prize
* Heinrich Heine Prize
* Kleist Prize
* Leipzig Book Fair Prize
* Nelly Sachs Prize
* Kurd Laßwitz Award

* v
* t
* e

Thomas Mann

Novels|

* Buddenbrooks
* Royal Highness
* The Magic Mountain
* Joseph and His Brothers
* Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns
* Doctor Faustus
* The Holy Sinner
* Confessions of Felix Krull

Novellas|

* Gladius Dei
* Tristan
* Tonio Kröger
* Death in Venice
* A Man and His Dog
* Disorder and Early Sorrow
* Mario and the Magician
* The Transposed Heads
* The Tables of the Law
* The Black Swan

Short stories|

* Little Herr Friedemann
* The Clown
* Tobias Mindernickel
* The Road to the Churchyard

Other works|

* Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man
* On the German Republic
* The Coming Victory of Democracy
* Listen, Germany!

Family|

* Katia Mann (wife)
* Erika Mann (daughter)
* Klaus Mann (son)
* Golo Mann (son)
* Monika Mann (daughter)
* Elisabeth Mann Borgese (daughter)
* Michael Mann (son)
* Júlia da Silva Bruhns (mother)
* Heinrich Mann (brother)

Prizes|

* Thomas Mann Prize

Authority control databases

International|

* ISNI
* VIAF
* FAST
* WorldCat

National|

* Germany
* United States
* France
* BnF data
* Japan
* Italy
* Australia
* Czech Republic
* Spain
* Portugal
* Netherlands
* Norway
* Latvia
* Croatia
* Chile
* Greece
* Korea
* Sweden
* Poland
* Vatican
* Israel
* Catalonia
* Belgium

Academics|

* CiNii

Artists|

* MusicBrainz
* KulturNav
* FID

People|

* Trove
* Deutsche Biographie
* DDB

Other|

* IdRef
* SNAC
* Yale LUX

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template