Heinrich Mann - author, rebel and pioneer

Heinrich Mann defied his father, defended the Weimar Republic and antagonized the Nazis. Despite literary successes, he died in deep resignation.

by Vivienne Schumacher

Heinrich Mann was born on March 27, 1871 in Lübeck. The vita of his younger brother Thomas Mann has been researched in every detail. But to this day there are gaps in the knowledge of Heinrich Mann's life. That's amazing, since the biographies of the two brothers are closely intertwined - both personally and literary. Nevertheless, not everything seems to be known:Letters and documents by the author have appeared again and again over the past decades.

Brother Thomas pushes Heinrich off his throne

Heinrich was born as the eldest child in the Mann family's Lübeck apartment. As the firstborn, he is the potential successor to his father, Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann, who runs a forwarding company and six years later becomes Lübeck's Senator for Economics and Finance. His mother Julia is 20 years old when she gives birth to Heinrich. He grows up with several nannies - and it seems like his mother can't do much with her first son. In his novel "Eugénie oder Die Bürgerzeit" (1926), Heinrich Mann tells the story of a boy who is neither loved nor wanted by his mother. He later refers to this boy himself as an autobiographical figure.

Heinrich is not an only child. When he was four years old, he had a brother:Thomas. The mother prefers the younger; the firstborn is dethroned. While Thomas Mann later describes his childhood in idyllic pictures, Heinrich writes stories of betrayal and neglect. Two more sisters follow, Julia (1877) and Carla (1881), as well as brother Viktor (1890).

Henry - the rebel

When Heinrich was 13 years old, he decided to become a writer. In the years that followed he wrote poems and plays. Some are even printed and read by the family. The father comes to terms with the fact that his firstborn will not become a businessman and thus not the heir to the company. He wants to urge Heinrich to study law. But he resists and leaves the Gymnasium in 1889 without a degree.

In the autumn of that year he begins an apprenticeship as a bookseller in Dresden - a compromise with his father. But he also breaks off this training and goes in 1890 for two years as a trainee at S. Fischer Verlag in Berlin. In the same year, the 100th anniversary of his father's forwarding company takes place. Heinrich does not appear.

Father Thomas Johann Heinrich leaves a difficult legacy

A year later, Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann dies, leaving Heinrich with a difficult inheritance. In his will it says:"As far as they [the guardians] can, my eldest son's tendency towards literary activity is to be counteracted. In my opinion, he lacks the prerequisites for thorough, successful activity in this direction:sufficient studies and comprehensive knowledge The background of his tendencies is dreamy self-indulgence and ruthlessness towards others, perhaps from lack of thought." In old age, Heinrich Mann will report that his father allowed him to pursue a literary career shortly before his death. At the same time, he will create moving drawings depicting his dying father and himself.

After the liquidation of the father's company, the family loses social respect. The Manns leave Lübeck and move to Munich. Heinrich travels and is without a fixed address in the following years. Contrary to what she wished in her will, Julia supported her son in his writing and financed his first novel "In Eine Familie" (1894), in which the protagonist closely resembles herself. Similarities to family members appear again and again in his works, as do autobiographical elements.

Close bond:Heinrich Mann and his sister Carla

Heinrich has a special relationship with his younger sister Carla. He supports her in her desire to become an actress and uses her life as "material" for his books. In 1903 he wrote the novel "The Hunt for Love", the content of which was very similar to his relationship with Carla. The protagonist always travels with a skull in which she keeps poison - just like his sister, who is ten years younger. In 1906 he wrote the novella "Actress". Carla offers him that he may use her letters for this story. He copies entire passages from her letters. In 1910, Carla took her own life - with the cyanide from her skull. Heinrich finds it difficult to get over it.

Maria Kanová and the Fall of the Empire

Two years later - Heinrich travels a lot to performances of his plays through Germany - the young writer meets and falls in love with the Prague actress Maria Kanová. At the same time he begins his work on "Der Untertan". The novel appears as a serial in a Munich magazine, but is discontinued at the beginning of the First World War. Maria and Heinrich married in August 1914, and their daughter Henriette Maria Leonie was born in 1916.

In the period before the First World War and in the first years of the war, Heinrich increasingly turned to socially critical issues. While his younger brother Thomas advocated and glorified the campaign in the essay "Thoughts in War" at the end of 1914, Heinrich developed into the center of the bourgeois opposition and opposed the war. In his "Zola" essay (1915) he professes his support for democracy and rejects the Empire. The brothers quarrel personally and publicly over their lyrics. Only in 1922, when Heinrich falls seriously ill at the age of 51, will they be reconciled.

Between the World Wars:Reckoning with the Empire

The post-war years are Heinrich Mann's most successful years. In 1918 "Der Untertan" was published as a book and became his greatest success. In the novel he settles accounts with the German Empire and from then on is considered a pioneer of the revolution and a representative of German culture. His novel protagonist Diederich Hessling symbolizes what is to be overcome in the Weimar Republic. In political speeches and writings, the now famous writer expresses his ideas about a republic and becomes an opponent of the National Socialists in the 1930s.

Heinrich lived in Munich with Maria and his daughter until 1928, when he separated from his wife and went to Berlin. There he met his second wife, the barmaid Nelly Kröger, during one of his many visits to the bar. The woman, who is 27 years her junior, and the prominent poet develop a close relationship, but Nelly comes from a humble background and is not accepted in Heinrich's upper-class family.

With Käthe Kollwitz and Albert Einstein against the NSDAP

In 1930 director Josef von Sternberg filmed Heinrich Mann's novel "Professor Unrat" (1905) - with Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings in the leading roles. A year later, at the height of his career, the poet was appointed President of the Poetry Section at the Prussian Academy. At the beginning of 1933 he signed an appeal for a union of SPD and KPD against the NSDAP - together with Käthe Kollwitz and Albert Einstein. He speaks and writes against anti-Semitism and for democracy. He is a thorn in the side of the Nazis. Heinrich Mann leaves Germany before they can expel him from the Prussian Academy.

Book burning and emigration to the USA

On February 21, 1933, Heinrich Mann traveled to France to write his great novel "Henri Quatre". Nelly Kröger follows him shortly afterwards. His German citizenship was immediately revoked in his home country and during the book burnings in 1933 the Nazis also publicly destroyed his books. In southern France, the opponent of the war is involved in several organizations that have declared war on Nazi Germany. He still believes that National Socialism will not last long.

But he should be wrong. In 1940 he fled to Portugal via Spain with his wife Nelly and a few other writers. Initially spared by the Nazis, his brother Thomas had meanwhile also left Germany and emigrated to America. In the USA he organizes passports and visas for everyone so that the refugees can embark on the voyage to the USA in November 1940.

Heinrich Mann's dark years in exile

While Thomas Mann's works were being translated and he was professionally successful in the USA, his older brother became dependent. His books are hardly translated and he is almost unknown as a writer. Nevertheless, Heinrich writes one work after the other in Santa Monica, California. But none can be sold.

Book tip

In the magician's net
Another story of the Mann family
by Marianne Krüll
Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag 1993
ISBN:3-596-11381-4

His wife Nelly cannot cope with her life in exile and Heinrich's family still does not tolerate her as his wife. She begins to work in a hospital, and they both have to make ends meet. Heinrich is now over 70 years old. He depends on Nelly and his younger brother, who also supports him with money. Nelly Mann starts drinking and takes her own life in 1944 at the age of 46 with sleeping pills.

Call to Berlin:man dies shortly before starting

In 1949 - the German Democratic Republic was just being founded - Heinrich Mann was appointed President of the new Academy of Poets at the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Before he could accept this post, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage on March 11, 1950 in Santa Monica. A letter from Thomas Mann says:

"He had grown very old lately, afflicted by changing ailments. He no longer worked, wrote a few letters, read a little, listened to music. [...] Then, one no longer knows what hour of the night, when he was asleep, that Hemorrhage in the brain, with no sound or movement on his part. [...] It was basically the most merciful solution."