Heinrich Mann

Heinrich Mann (Lübeck, 1871 – Santa Monica, California, 1950) was a German novelist whose work focused on the social and political life of his time. He wrote in German through the Imperial, Weimar and exile periods. Today he is often remembered as the elder brother of Thomas Mann, though his own work deserves attention in its own right.

Born into a well-off family of grain merchants in the Hanseatic city of Lübeck, he was shaped by his father's death and the move to Munich, where his mother settled the family and he began to earn his living as a writer. In 1914 he married the Czech actress Maria "Mimi" Kanova; they divorced in 1930. Mimi, who was Jewish, died after years of detention in the Theresienstadt ghetto.

His novel Professor Unrat and the novel The Loyal Subject, which mocked the imperial German establishment, earned him respect in left-wing circles during the Weimar Republic. His antiwar stance during the First World War led to a public quarrel with his brother, who in Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man labelled him one of the "literary men of civilisation". Heinrich, for his part, moved toward socialism and backed the Bavarian revolutionary Kurt Eisner.

Professor Unrat was loosely adapted for the screen in 1930 as The Blue Angel, with Marlene Dietrich in the role Mann had wanted for his lover, the actress Trude Hesterberg. After the Nazis rose to power his books were burned and he went into exile. He passed through France, reached Spain in 1940 with help from Varian Fry and others, and eventually arrived in the United States. There he lived in hardship, supported by his brother. In exile he wrote about Henry IV of France, a work Thomas praised.

For years his reputation stood in the shadow of his brother's. His legacy lies in the political novel of the early twentieth century and in its critical portrait of the imperial middle class. He died in 1950, months before he was due to move to East Berlin to lead the Academy of Arts. His ashes were later taken to East Germany and buried in the Dorotheenstadt Cemetery.