Thomas Mann and the Cost of Nationalism

In this time of resurgent nationalism, the life and death of Thomas Mann provide a cautionary tale into the true nature of that often misguided sentiment.

Generally considered the greatest German writer of the 20th Century, you would expect Thomas Mann to be enshrined in the Valhalla of Germany’s heroes. Instead, he lies in a secluded cemetery on a hillside in Switzerland. The story of how this most representative of Germans became a permanent exile from his homeland illustrates the dangers of a rampant nationalism.

Born in 1875 into a once wealthy German trading family, at the age of 26 he published his first major work — the bestselling novel Buddenbrooks– which chronicled the lives and decline of several generations of a German family very much like his own. In 1912 he published one of the seminal works of 20th Century literature, Death in Venice. It portrayed the psychological conflicts of a highly revered German writer set within the decay of European society in the years just before the Great War.

Mann the German Nationalist

During that War, Mann became an ardent German nationalist, publishing a lengthy work defending Germany against what he saw as the superficiality of Germany’s foes. The War, he said, was for Germany “a purification, a liberation, a great hope.” So strident was his defense of “German values” that he refused to speak with his brother, Heinrich, one of the few intellectuals in Germany opposed to the War.