Politics and literature: Hans Wißkirchen's great biography of Heinrich and Thomas Mann
“What are these two ignorant magicians talking about?” Golo Mann thought this again and again when he heard Heinrich and Thomas, his uncle and his father, talk about politics. But what about the political judgment of these two great 20th-century authors? How did these two sons of the bourgeoisie from Lübeck become ardent defenders of democracy? Hans Wißkirchen, president of the German Thomas Mann Society, paints a differentiated picture in his biography of the brothers, in which politics and literature cannot be separated and which, thanks to previously unknown letters, sheds new light on the period of their early exile in particular. Because both brothers are given an equal say for the first time, they repeatedly correct each other. Both come from the ideological space of the turn of the century.
For both of them, democracy cannot be taken for granted. Precisely for this reason, they know what is at stake and are very familiar with their opponents. A committed, indispensable book about Heinrich and Thomas Mann and the recurring threat to democracy.
