Thomas Mann's War: Literature, Politics, and the World Republic of Letters

by Tobias Boes

Overview

In Thomas Mann's War, Tobias Boes traces how the acclaimed and bestselling author became one of America's most prominent anti-fascists and the spokesperson for a German cultural ideal that Nazism had perverted.

Thomas Mann, winner of the 1929 Nobel Prize in literature and author of such world-renowned novels as Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain, began his self-imposed exile in the United States in 1938, having fled his native Germany in the wake of Nazi persecution and public burnings of his books. Mann embraced his role as a public intellectual, deftly using his literary reputation and his connections in an increasingly global publishing industry to refute Nazi propaganda. As Boes shows, Mann undertook successful lecture tours of the country and penned widely-read articles that alerted US audiences and readers to the dangers of complacency in the face of Nazism's existential threat. Spanning four decades, from the eve of World War I, when Mann was first translated into English, to 1952, the year in which he left an America increasingly disfigured by McCarthyism, Boes establishes Mann as a significant figure in the wartime global republic of letters.

Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501761706
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	10/15/2021
Pages:	378
Sales rank:	1,154,902
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Tobias Boes is Associate Professor of German at the University of Notre Dame. He is author of Formative Fictions. Follow him on X @tobiasboes.

Table of Contents

Introduction: For the Sake of Survival
1. Luddism
2. Communion
3. Cyberculture
4. Distortion
5. Revolutionary Suicide
6. Liberation Technology
7. Thanatopography
Conclusion: American Carnage and Technologies of Tomorrow
Acknowledgments
Notes
Works Cited
Permissions
Index

What People are Saying About This

Heinrich Detering

During his exile in the US, Thomas Mann confronted fascism and championed liberal virtues with all his creative powers and passion. This enthralling book tells the fascinating story of a world citizen for a time that needs a role model like him.

Hans Rudolf Vaget

This brilliantly conceived study is a timely reminder of Thomas Mann as a writer of international consequence. Tobias Boes makes the bold and utterly convincing case that the German Nobel laureate produced a pioneering paradigm for a growing number of contemporary authors the world over, severed from their native cultural communities, have had to reinvent themselves.

Veronika Fuechtner

Thomas Mann's War is a beautiful and erudite book based on new international archival research. It creatively connects Thomas Mann's politics in American exile with the media politics of his time. By exploring issues such as practices of lecturing, translation or publication, it uncovers the ways Mann was reinvented politically and aesthetically as a writer.

Editorial Reviews

Thomas Mann's War is important and timely. It is a reminder that literature is one of the first things to come under attack when authoritarianism takes hold, something for which there is ample evidence in our present moment, from China to Russia, from Turkey to Saudi Arabia.

-- "The Wall Street Journal"

Boes's exhaustive, meticulous survey should come to represent an exemplar for scholarship seeking to document the lasting significance of an author's work.

-- "Publishers Weekly"

Boes's superb account is based on extensive archival research, including Mann's personal letters, as well as keen assessments of his novels.

-- "The National Interest"

From the Publisher

08/12/2019

Boes (Formative Fictions), an associate professor of German at the University of Notre Dame, poses a deceptively simple question in this outstanding study of Thomas Mann: what is the author’s continued relevance to the “world republic of letters?” The answer involves understanding the significance of Mann’s decision in 1938 to flee Nazi Germany for the U.S. Boes examines Mann’s time in the U.S., which lasted until 1954, at the height of McCarthyism, and follows his evolution from holding that art should be separate from politics (a long-held belief expressed in his 1918 book Reflections of an Nonpolitical Man) to becoming the de facto voice of German intellectualism in exile during WWII. In addition to analyzing Mann’s key works of the time, such as the Joseph novels and Doctor Faustus, Boes also discusses the role of his publishers, Fischer in Germany and Knopf in the U.S., in shaping his career; the part played by middlebrow culture, in particular the Book of the Month Club, in popularizing Mann with American audiences; and Mann’s own mixed feelings towards his resulting celebrity. Revealing how this writer “instinctively grasped” the important yet fraught role of writers in an emerging “globally interconnected world,” Boes’s exhaustive, meticulous survey should come to represent an exemplar for scholarship seeking to document the lasting significance of an author’s work. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Boes's superb account is based on extensive archival research, including Mann's personal letters, as well as keen assessments of his novels.

The National Interest

Thomas Mann's War is important and timely. It is a reminder that literature is one of the first things to come under attack when authoritarianism takes hold, something for which there is ample evidence in our present moment, from China to Russia, from Turkey to Saudi Arabia.

The Wall Street Journal

"Thomas Mann's War is important and timely. It is a reminder that literature is one of the first things to come under attack when authoritarianism takes hold, something for which there is ample evidence in our present moment, from China to Russia, from Turkey to Saudi Arabia."

The Wall Street Joural

"Boes' superb account is based on extensive archival research, including Mann's personal letters, as well as keen assessments of his novels."

The National interest

"This brilliantly conceived study is a timely reminder of Thomas Mann as a writer of international consequence. Tobias Boes makes the bold and utterly convincing case that the German Nobel laureate produced a pioneering paradigm for a growing number of contemporary authors the world over, severed from their native cultural communities, have had to reinvent themselves."

Hans Rudolf Vaget

"Thomas Mann's War is a beautiful and erudite book based on new international archival research. It creatively connects Thomas Mann's politics in American exile with the media politics of his time. By exploring issues such as practices of lecturing, translation or publication, it uncovers the ways Mann was reinvented politically and aesthetically as a writer."

Veronika Fuechtner