Thomas Mann (1875–1955) was a German novelist, essayist, and social critic. Through works marked by symbolism and irony, he examined artistic isolation, the transformation of bourgeois society, and the intellectual crises of Germany and Europe. “Buddenbrooks,” modeled partly on his own merchant family in Lübeck, traces the decline of a prosperous family across four generations and established his international reputation. Mann received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. After the Nazis came to power, he lived in exile and used wartime radio broadcasts to urge German listeners to resist National Socialism.
