Did you Know that Thomas Mann was a brazilian's son ? He was born in Lubeck, Germany, on June 6, 1875, second son of a merchant
and senator of the Free City, Johann Heirich Mann, and his wife Júlia da Silva Bruhns, brazilian, daughter of a german plantation owner in Rio de Janeiro, state. With her mother's death, Júlia was taken to Germany at the age of seven. Thomas hated to attend classes, owing an innate resistance to meet its requirements, what later he could learnt to correct, with much difficulty.Whatever education I have, it was acquired in a free and autodidact way, since formal education was not able to instill me basic knowledge, said Thomas. With fifteen, with his father's death, Thomas, his mother and the younger childrens, left the town to settle Munich, in south of Germany.
Later, in order to prepare for a career in journalism, started to attend lectures in history, economy, art history and
literature, at the university and polytechnic.At this time spent some years with his elder brother Heinrich, in Italy.
In 1898, his first short stories collection , Der Kleine herr Friedmann is
published. In Rome, also started to write the novel Buddenbrooks, wich was published in 1901, and since then has been such a favourite with the german public.
In 1905 married the daughter of Alfred Pringsheim, who had the chair of mathematics at the University of Munich.From his marriage had come six children:three boys and three girls.
In 1913 it was published the novel Death in Venice ( Tod in Venedig), wich together with Tonio Kröger, is considered his most valid achievement in that genre.
While was writing its final sections, he conceived the idea of The Magic Mountain, wich was interrupted in the very beggining of First World War. Although the war hadn't made him physical demands, while it lasted, it stopped any intellectual activity, that led him to reappraisal his basic life principles and a deep self-inquiry, what in short gave place to Reflextions of an Unpolitical Man, published in 1918. Since the reopening of the borders of the neutral or hostile countries, during the war, he started to give lectures in Holland, Switzerland and Denmark.In 1923 went to Spain, and in the following year went to London, and two years later to Paris, In 1927 visited Warsaw in Poland. Meanwhile, in 1924, after several delays, the two volumes of The Magic Mountain were published.
With all the wards and titles generously given to him, and especially the distinction of Nobelprize of literature, given to him by the Swedish Academy in 1929, that took him deeply emotioned, were not enough to change his perception that, the real value and significance of his work for posterity, would only be left for the future generations.
From 1930/33, with Hitler's rising, till his death in 1955, August 12, he lived exiled in Switzerland and United States, still writing several masterpieces, as Doctor Faustus ( 1947), Joseph and his Brothers from 1933 till 1943, Felix Krull, among others.
Thomas Mann is regarded today, without any doubt, one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, and a genius of the modern literature, at the level of James Joyce, Marcel Proust, etc...