Thomas Mann at 150: At War with Words Against Hitler, for the German Soul.
From Nobel laureate to wartime broadcaster—how literature's giant became democracy's strongest voice against Nazi Germany.
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June 5, 2025. German Chancellor Merz visits President Trump for the first time since he came into office. Oval Office. The usual meeting with the press. Merz brings up D-Day, whose anniversary falls the next day. Trump, with his characteristic half-smile, remarks: "Not a pleasant day for you, eh?" Merz, well-coached by his advisors—"Remember: always show gratitude, gratitude, gratitude"—replies: "Well... in the long run, this was the liberation of my country from the Nazi dictatorship… and we know how much we owe you."
So yes. Much gratitude. But here we are again.
An American President, of German descent, speaking to a German Chancellor as if that Germany still defined him. As if he still represented that Germany.
I was in Lübeck last weekend, and I found myself wondering: What did Thomas Mann embody when he arrived in New York in the spring of 1938? When he delivered his lectures across the country about The Coming Victory of Democracy?
He represented another Germany. And nobody in America would have questioned that. Mann was grateful to America—he acknowledged that "for the duration of the present European dark age, the centre of Western culture will shift to America." But Americans were grateful to Thomas Mann too. For having chosen the US for his exile. The "greatest man of letters" of their time chose America.
Because, at that time, America and democracy were one.
And again, I found myself wondering: Would New Yorker Trump, back then in 1938, have attended Mann's lectures? Or would he have gone, a year later, to the infamous Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden?
Who knows.
June 6, 2025 marks Thomas Mann's 150th birthday.
Throughout Germany, he is everywhere—events, new editions, podcasts, TV programs, discussions. Lots of literature. Lots of intimate recounts. (Why the hell is everybody so interested in his not-so-solved sexuality?)
But, too, lots of politics. Mann was among the ones who dared say no to Hitler and yes to democracy. Mann was the most famous exiled intellectual of his time. But there is more for our times: his words still resonate.
While I've read a bunch of his literary masterworks, I discovered only today his political writings and speeches. I listened. I read. I made my effort to go through Mann's typical long, dense sentences.
And yes. What he wrote about democracy and freedom still has lots to say to us: as Germans, as Europeans, and beyond. Follow me. Let's reread. Let's relisten.
1938, Thomas Mann in the USA: "Where I am, there is Germany."
February 21, 1938. The Queen Mary docks in New York. Thomas Mann and his wife step onto American soil. Reporters swarm. Cameras roll. Since 1933, they had found refuge on Lake Zurich. But even Switzerland no longer felt safe. The "Anschluss" of Austria loomed.
Mann was already one of the world's most famous writers. Nobel Prize winner, 1929. First non-English author on Time magazine's cover, 1934. He wasn't shy with the press. Asked if exile felt lonely, he admitted it was hard to bear, but added:
"What makes it easier is the realization of the poisoned atmosphere in Germany. Where I am, there is Germany. I carry my German culture in me."
He didn't see himself as an exception. Not even as representing "another Germany." He was the one true Germany. This became his American mission: to testify for the idea of Germany. To tear it away from Hitler's deadly embrace. He had already written it a year before. The University of Bonn had stripped him of his honorary doctorate. His open letter to the dean became legendary:
"Deserved or not, my name had become connected in the world's eyes with a conception of Germanness that it loved and honored. That I, of all people, should clearly contradict the crude falsification that this Germanness was now suffering—this was a demand difficult to reject…" Letter to the Dean of the University of Bonn, January 1, 19371
So Thomas Mann embarked on his lecture tour across America:
"The Coming Victory of Democracy."
Vom zukünftigen Sieg der Demokratie, 1938
Fifteen lectures. Fourteen cities. Between 2,000 and 6,000 people each time. The book sold over 25,000 copies—helped by an endorsement from Eleanor Roosevelt. But the title revealed more. This wasn't just about fighting fascism. It was about reawakening democracy itself. Because democracy was at risk, not only in Europe:
"That democracy today is not a secure possession, that it is under attack, gravely threatened from within and without, that it has once again become a problem - America feels this too. It senses that the hour has come for democracy's self-reflection, for its remembrance, re-examination and renewed awareness - in a word: for its renewal in thought and feeling." "The Coming Victory of Democracy" 19382
But to win, democracy needed to regain its inner strength. Mann used a stronger metaphor—one that today's listeners might find sexist: freedom needed to reclaim "its masculinity" (ihre Männlichkeit). It had to learn to defend itself:
"A pacifism that admits it will not want war at any price brings about war instead of preventing it."
Hence his warning, with the Munich Agreement talks in mind:
“Every fulfillment of German demands means a cruel and discouraging blow to the forces within the German people directed toward freedom and peace.”3
While Thomas Mann toured America, Europe was surrendering the Sudetenland to Hitler. Czechoslovakia had no say. We know the results. Four days before Munich, Mann took the stage at Madison Square Garden. "Save Czechoslovakia!" rally. His conclusion went down in history:
“Hitler must fall. This—and nothing else—will preserve the peace.”
From that moment—and after deciding to permanently move to the United States in September 1938—Thomas Mann became, in American eyes, not only "the Germany we can love."
He became in his own words
“Hitler's most intimate enemy."
The Making of a Reactionary.
And yet, Mann's background should have made him a reactionary. Perhaps one of those intellectuals who, despite turning up their noses at vulgar activists, would later join Hitler's National Socialism.
Upper-class family from Lübeck. Good schools, even though attended without success. Writing as absolute passion. And in 1905, an excellent marriage to Katia Pringsheim—heir to a wealthy Jewish family of intellectuals and industrialists in Munich. By 1901, Mann had already written his monumental Buddenbrooks. When war broke out in 1914, Mann was steeped in Romanticism and national fervor. He became fascinated by the war politics of the German Empire and its authoritarian state. Like many European intellectuals, he saw war as liberation and hope: "This war is a moral necessity, a liberation, an immense hope." He wrote it in a small book published at the war's end: 4
“Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man”
Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen
1915-1918
Convoluted text. At times heavy. Politically disturbing. Mann considered himself nonpolitical then. An intellectual could not be interested in politics. Not in the vulgar "democratic" politics advancing in those years. Yet that cultural writing contained political messages. In the book, Mann describes the war as a debate about Europe's great ideas. A debate fought with arms and blood.
Germany stood between republican France, liberal England, and religious Russia. The country became "the spiritual battleground for European antitheses."
In this battleground, Germany could not align with Western "civilization"—all reason, enlightenment, democracy. German culture was inward, spiritual, artistic. Inherently authoritarian. To preserve itself, that culture could not mix with everyday politics. Not with the chaos of democracy.
"Germany is culture, soul, freedom, art—not civilization, society, voting rights, literature." • "Democracy means discussion, but Germany is destiny." • "Culture is fundamentally an aristocratic concept, while democracy is a political concept."5
In short: democracy and politics were "foreign and poisonous to the German character." Only an "authoritarian state" was the appropriate form of governance for Germany. Mann wasn't alone in these thoughts. "Revolutionary conservatism" had been stirring German society since 1800. A counterweight to social democracy and democratic methods.
His thinking would change within a few years. Because meanwhile, after the First World War, Germany was changing. These were the Weimar years. So culturally rich. So materially poor. So turbulent. And the Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man would become the writing to hide. If possible, to forget. It was translated into English only after the writer's death, in 1983.
The Weimar Shift: From Unpolitical to Political Activist.
The Republic is our destiny
Speech: "On the German Republic", 13 October 1922
24 June 1922. A gunshot in Berlin changes everything.Walther Rathenau, Germany's Foreign Minister, lies dead on the street. Right-wing extremists murdered him. The country was stunned. But many were pleased: they saw in Rathenau the embodiment of that "democratic and Jewish" republic they despised.6
Under the shock of Rathenau's murder, Thomas Mann seized his moment.
October 1922, Berlin. A celebration for writer Gerhart Hauptmann, Nobel Prize winner 1912. There, Mann delivered his speech: "On the German Republic." The audience could not have been less receptive. Anti-republican students. Nationalists frustrated by German defeat and by the nascent democracy.
Mann, still calling himself conservative, tried something brilliant. He used their own cultural references to convince them. The Republic wasn't foreign. It belonged to German tradition: "The Republic—it is here, it is fact, it is our destiny. It is a matter of filling it with spirit, making it humane, making it German." and "The German Republic is not un-German, it is not ahistorical. It stands entirely within German tradition."
Mann played his hometown card. He was a son of Lübeck—which was a republic within the Reich:
"The Republic... how do you like that word from my mouth? Poorly—judging by certain noises that one must unfortunately interpret as scraping. And yet that word has been familiar to me since my youth. My homeland was a republican federal state of the Reich."7
You can almost hear the students' uncomfortable shuffling.
Mann used Novalis and Goethe. Tradition and sentiment. A long, highly intellectual speech. Hard to read. He explained that being "men of peace" didn't mean being "pacifists"—an insult to ears already unconsciously ready for new war. Yet Mann pressed on:
"War is a lie, even its results are lies. No matter how much honor the individual may bring to it, war itself is devoid of all honor today."8
Republic. Peace. Democracy. This is what the new Germany needed. The conservative Mann, facing those young students, declared his allegiance to the republic. Hoping to pull them back from right-wing extremism.
"Es lebe die Republik!", "Long live the republic!" His speech concluded. It was the first of many. The author Mann was becoming the political activist Mann. As much success as the author achieved in those years, the activist remained unsuccessful. Unable to prevent Germany from facing the worst.
From Proud German to Convinced European.
Europe is our destiny
Editorial “European Community of Fate” 25.12.1923
Lecture “Europe as a Cultural Community” 18.05.1930
German Address: “An Appeal to Reason” 17.10.1930
The 1920s rolled on. Mann kept writing, but something else consumed him now. Events. Public addresses. Editorials. The author was becoming an activist.
His developing perspectives: democracy as the condition for culture to thrive; Europe as a "Community of Fate." The paradox he observed was tragic. During the war, people felt how common European destiny was. But the hard peace—winners suspicious of losers—was killing that consciousness. In a Christmas essay for the Berliner Tageblatt, December 1923, he wrote:
“The pathos of a shared European destiny had tragic vitality during the war. The horrors of peace proved more fatal to it.”9
May 1930, Berlin. Mann, now a Nobel laureate, takes the stage at the Pan-Europa Congress. He speaks to a hopeful audience and fully embraces their vision of a united Europe. A continent not of victors and losers, but of culture, cooperation, and future.
"This is about the living conditions of our children. It's unlikely that we fifty-year-olds will live to see the Europe in which our children should live, want to live. But we can [...] help work to make it happen."10
A year later, in Erlangen, the same speech meets a cold silence. Meanwhile, Mann had become a figure reviled by ultra-conservatives and National Socialists. He had surprised everyone with his positions. A man of his background calling on bourgeois parties to work together with Social Democrats. A "common front" to defend Weimar against Nazi "inhuman fanaticism" and "barbarism."
He did that on 17 October 1930, at the Beethovensaal, in Berlin. There, Mann delivered one of his most important speeches: “An Appeal to Reason.”
Thomas Mann was responding to Hitler's success. The NSDAP had just won big in September, becoming the second-largest party in the Reichstag. Mann responds with calm defiance. He knows the economy is broken. But that’s not the full story:
“The outcome of the Reichstag elections, my esteemed listeners, cannot be explained in purely economic terms. (…) The German people are not radical by their natural disposition (…)”11
What he sees is deeper: a rupture in consciousness.
"The sense of a turning point in history, which heralded the end of the bourgeois epoch dating from the French Revolution. A new state of human consciousness was proclaimed—one that was to have nothing more to do with bourgeois principles: freedom, justice, education, optimism, belief in progress."12
Mann described these new times as noisy and without limits, a society obsessed with spectacle: boxing matches before roaring crowds, movie and sports stars paid millions. These were the images of the time. Above all, bourgeois freedom was being reinvented as arbitrariness and violence:
“Everything seems possible, seems permissible against human decency, and if the doctrine also suggests that the idea of freedom has become bourgeois junk, as if an idea so intimately connected with all European pathos, from which Europe virtually constitutes itself and for which it has made such great sacrifices, could ever really be lost, thus the doctrinally abolished freedom now appears again in contemporary form as savagery, mockery of a supposedly obsolete humanitarian authority, as unleashing of instincts, emancipation of crudeness, dictatorship of violence.”13
Mann looked beyond Germany. He saw political violence rising across Europe: Italy forcing South Tyrol to become Italian, Soviet Russia using hunger as a weapon, Poland boiling. He did not want this for Germany, because Germany was not this:
"Is this German? Is fanaticism, the limb-throwing recklessness, the orgiastic denial of reason, human dignity really at home in some deeper soul layer of Germanness?" • "Germany today is the most unfortunate country in Europe. It is torn apart by hatred, poisoned by demagoguery." • "The true Germany, the Germany of Goethe and Beethoven, must defend itself against this barbarism." • "I call upon German reason to come to its senses and put a stop to the madness that has befallen our country."14
When Thomas Mann delivered his "Appeal to Reason," writers disrupted the lecture with loud heckling. National-conservative leanings. Among them: Ernst Jünger. SA men—the Nazi Party's paramilitary—joined the protest. But sustained applause ultimately overcame their sabotage. The situation seemed not lost yet. Until 1933.
The True Germany, Exiled.
January 30, 1933. Hitler becomes Chancellor. Thomas Mann was abroad on a lecture tour. His children warned him: Don't return to Germany. He listened. He would never live there again. In March 1933, he settled in Küsnacht, near Zurich.
The Nazi regime struck back immediately. His house in Munich was expropriated by December 1933. Still, his books remained available in Germany—until 1936. After that, they were only printed by exile publishers. First in Austria. Then in Sweden.
In 1935, he wrote a powerful lecture:
"Achtung, Europa."
It was meant for a cultural congress of the League of Nations in Nice, where countries from all over the world were advocating for peace. But he did not go. He feared retaliation. Someone else read the speech, in French. Newspapers in Zurich and Budapest printed it in 1936.
A "giant wave of eccentric barbarism” was rolling over the continent, Mann wrote. And called for vigorous resistance. Democratic values to be defended with "militant humanism." His warning was crystal clear:
“Europe, beware! Barbarism is approaching—a barbarism that disguises itself as heroism." • "What is happening today is nothing less than an attack on European civilization, on everything that has made Europe great and dignified."• "Germany is no longer Germany. It has become a tool of barbaric forces that threaten Europe." • "The intellectuals of Europe must stand together against the powers of darkness that want to settle over our continent."• “Europe must remember its values: humanity, reason, tolerance—all that fascism wants to destroy.” • "Still there is time. Europe can still save itself, if it finds the courage to look truth in the face."15
But those words had a cost. In December 1936, Mann was stripped of his German citizenship. His books were banned throughout the Reich. The University of Bonn revoked his honorary degree.
He answered with an open letter:
"I Accuse the Hitler Regime."
First published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, then in the U.S., in The Nation. The letter circulated in Germany too, hidden inside fake books: a fake "Letters from Classic German Authors" volum, or wrapped like Wagner librettos, or disguised as post advertisements.16
By 1938, he no longer felt safe in Switzerland. That year, the Mann family left Europe for the USA.
One week after Mann's arrival in New York, his book Joseph in Egypt was released. It was the third in his biblical series and proved a literary triumph — the high point of Mann's critical acclaim from a purely literary point of view.
But this marked a turning point. From now on, Mann would be celebrated in America less for fiction, more for his fight for democracy. He became the "most important German voice in exile." And, when war began, a voice for both Germans and Europeans.
His works from exile became a powerful counter-narrative to Nazi propaganda. They and their author represented a truer Germany. One that still believed in Goethe. In Beethoven. In Kant. In reason.
German Listeners!
First, Princeton, as a visiting lecturer. Then California. In the spring of 1941, the Mann family resettled in California. By 1944, Mann had become a United States citizen. There, he resumed work on what many considered his American magnum opus: the Joseph tetralogy, a modern retelling of the Old Testament patriarch. Its final volume, Joseph the Provider (Joseph, der Ernährer), was published in 1943.
But it was in a different role — not as novelist but as moral voice — that Thomas Mann found perhaps his most urgent calling during the war years.
In the autumn of 1940, the BBC's German Service had an idea: a German voice speaking to Germans. Mann's daughter Erika worked for them. She suggested a collaboration. It started in November 1940. The broadcasts began.
"German Listeners!"
("Deutsche Hörer!")
was Mann's signature greeting.
Between 1940 and 1945, Mann delivered nearly sixty such addresses.
At first, he sent scripts to London. Others read his words. But after relocating to California, Mann insisted on speaking them himself. So began one of radio's strangest technical achievements. Mann recorded in an NBC studio in Los Angeles. The record flew to New York. From there, telephone lines carried his voice across the Atlantic to London, where it was recorded again. Then broadcast over Europe. The route was long — but the voice was unmistakable: calm, resonant, unmistakably German:
“German Listeners, this is the voice of a friend, a German voice, the voice of a Germany that showed - and will show again - a different face to the world than the hideous Medusa mask that Hitlerism has forced upon it.”17
A warning voice. That's what he called himself. The only service an exiled German could provide.
That service included telling the brutal truth. Mann didn't spare his listeners. He spoke of what everyone knew but nobody said. The meat grinder of war. Boys of 16 and 18 fed to the front. Every German house mourning someone. He spoke of gas chambers. Of crematoria. Of the systematic murder of Jews. When others whispered, Mann shouted into microphones. He told Germans something uncomfortable: they were responsible. Not just Hitler. Not just the Nazis. Germans.
“The unspeakable things that have happened and are happening in Russia, to the Poles and Jews - you know about them. But you'd rather not know, out of justified horror of something equally unspeakable: the monumentally growing hatred that must one day crash down upon your heads when your people's and machine's strength fails. Yes, horror of that day is appropriate. And your leaders exploit this fear. They, who led you to commit all these atrocities, tell you: now that you have committed them, you are inextricably chained to us. Now you must persevere until the bitter end, or hell will rain down upon you. Hell came to Germany when these leaders came to you. To hell with them and all their accomplices. Only then can salvation, freedom and peace still come to you.” BBC, German-language Service, November 194118
Mann understood the psychology of complicity. The willful blindness. The comfortable ignorance. And there would be a price to pay.
When Allied bombs fell on German cities, Mann felt it personally. Lübeck was hit. His hometown. The medieval churches. The Renaissance city hall. Buildings he'd known as a boy. It pained him. But he wouldn't apologize for it.
“Did Germany believe it would never have to pay for the atrocities that its head start in barbarism allowed it to commit? It has barely begun to pay. (…). In the latest British raid over Hitler's land, old Lübeck has suffered. This concerns me. It is my hometown. The attacks were aimed at the port of Travemünde and its war industry facilities there. But there have been fires in the city. And it pains me to think that the Marienkirche, the magnificent Renaissance City Hall, or the Shipowners' Guild House might have been damaged. But I think of Coventry and have no objections to the lesson that everything must be paid for.” BBC, German Language Service, April 1942.19
Tuning in to Mann's broadcasts was a capital offense in Nazi Germany. Death for listening to a writer in exile. But millions did it anyway: behind curtains, under blankets, with radios set low. Goebbels called the broadcasts meaningless propaganda. But Mann's voice was getting through. The voice of another Germany.
May 8, 1945. Germany surrenders. The war ends. The world celebrates. Mann's final broadcast on May 10 contained no triumph — only sorrow:
“German listeners, German listeners! How bitter it is when the world's jubilation celebrates the defeat—the deepest humiliation—of one's own country. How terribly this reveals once again the abyss that had opened between Germany and the civilized world. The bells of victory and peace toll, glasses clink, embraces and congratulations abound. But the German—who was once denied his Germanness by the most unqualified of all, who had to flee his horrifically transformed homeland and build a new life under friendlier skies—he lowers his head amid the worldwide joy.” BBC, German Language Service, 10 May 194520
But he saw hope in the darkness. Germany's return to humanity. Hard and sad, yes. Because Germany couldn't free itself. Liberation had to come from outside. Still, it was liberation. The end of the nightmare. The beginning of something else.
“I say, despite everything, this is a momentous hour—Germany's return to humanity. It is harsh and sad, for Germany could not bring this about through its own strength. Terrible damage, nearly impossible to erase, has been done to the German name, and power has been squandered. But power is not everything—indeed, it is not even the main thing. German dignity was never merely a matter of power. It was once German, and may become so again, to earn respect and admiration through human contribution and free spirit.” Ibidem
Epilogue. Return to Europe.
August 1947. Fourteen years after fleeing Nazi Germany. Nine years after settling in America. Thomas Mann stepped back onto European soil. London, Zurich, Amsterdam were his main stops. The continent lay in ruins. No one knew what would come next.
But Mann saw something. Hope in the rubble. In conversations and addresses, he spoke of a new humanism—an emerging ethos among Europe's younger generation, scarred but searching for meaning. From this, he believed, "a new life and a new future for Europe and for the whole world" could take shape.
In 1949, two years later, on the two-hundredth anniversary of Goethe's birth, Thomas Mann received invitations to lecture in Germany.
His first return to his homeland since 1933. The night train carried him and Katia across from Zurich to Frankfurt, in the American Sector. The German reception proved chilly. To many Germans, Mann remained a traitor—the writer who had abandoned his homeland in its darkest hour and sided with the Allies while his countrymen suffered. Still, Mann moved ahead and accepted invitations also from the East Soviet zone. Two lectures. And two Germanies in the making.
On August 1, 1949, Mann spoke in Weimar. The Berlin Airlift continued its operations, even though Stalin had lifted the blockade three months earlier. Tensions in the divided city remained at a fever pitch. Mann saw hope even here. He praised the Soviets for lifting the blockade. An act of peace, he called it.
Back in America, the reaction was swift and brutal. Mann's words in Weimar, his refusal to speak in Cold War binaries, alarmed the anti-communist press and angered the government.
Lecture invitations in America were quietly withdrawn. Doors once open began to close. The media turned hostile. The same country that had welcomed him as a refugee now treated him as a liability. McCarthyism didn't care about Nobel Prizes.
The Mann family packed again. In 1952, Thomas Mann, his wife Katia, and their daughter Erika left the United States and returned to Europe. They settled in Kilchberg, just outside Zurich, by the calm waters of Lake Zurich.
A long journey had come full circle. From Exile to Exile. It did not matter. Germany was where Thomas Mann was. And with him, European Humanism.
📚Books.
The choice is immense. But with reference for this post, here are my three recommended books:
1/3 Kai Sina´s Was gut ist und was böse (”What is Good and What is Evil”). Thomas Mann was also a political activist who passionately advocated that it is everyone's responsibility not just to endure politics, but to make it their own cause. "It is placed in our hands," he called out to the opponents of the democratic state in 1922, "in the hands of each individual." The book also delves into his relationship with Zionism, which he supported passionately. Published in Germany by Ullstein in late 2024.
2/3 Thomas Mann's War by Tobias Boes, published in the USA by Cornell University Press in 2019. It particularly explores Thomas Mann's American years and how the acclaimed and bestselling author became one of America's most prominent anti-fascists and the spokesperson for a German cultural ideal that Nazism had perverted.
3/3 Thomas Mann - 1949: Rückkehr in eine fremde Heimat (Return to a Foreign Homeland), graphic novel. Drawing from Thomas Mann's diaries, letters, travel reports, and his Swiss driver's memories, this graphic novel chronicles Mann's first journey from the United States to tour the newly divided Germanys. During his ten-day visit, he and his wife Katia travel from Frankfurt am Main through Nuremberg and Munich to Weimar. A superb work. Published in Germany by Knesebeck, 2025
»Verdient oder nicht, mein Name hatte sich nun einmal für die Welt mit dem Begriff eines Deutschtums verbunden, das sie liebt und ehrt; daß gerade ich der wüsten Verfälschung klar widerspräche, welche dies Deutschtum jetzt erlitt, war eine in alle freien Kunstträume, denen ich mich so gern überlassen hätte, beunruhigend hineintönende Forderung. Eine Forderung, schwer abzuweisen für Einen, dem immer gegeben gewesen war, sich auszudrücken, sich im Wort zu befreien, dem immer Erleben eins gewesen war mit reinigend bewahrender Sprache.« Dr. Thomas Mann, An den Herrn Dekan der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität Bonn, 1 Jan, 1937 (University Archive Bonn)
»Daß Demokratie heute kein gesichertes Gut, daß sie angefeindet, von innen und außen her schwer bedroht, daß sie wieder zum Problem geworden ist, das spürt auch Amerika. Es spürt, daß die Stunde gekommen ist für eine Selbstbesinnung der Demokratie, für ihre Wiedererinnerung, Wiedererörterung und Bewußtmachung – mit einem Wort: für ihre Erneuerung im Gedanken und im Gefühl.« "The Coming Victory of Democracy" 1938 (The lecture was written originally in German, but translated and delivered in English - while Q&A were delivered via an interpreter, since Mann´s German at that time was still unsecure)
»Mit einem Pazifismus, der eingesteht, den Krieg um keinen Preis zu wollen, führt man den Krieg herbei, statt ihn zu bannen.« / »Jede Erfüllung deutscher Ansprüche bedeutet einen grausamen und entmutigenden Schlag gegen die auf Freiheit und Frieden gerichteten Kräfte im deutschen Volk.«
»Dieser Krieg ist eine sittliche Notwendigkeit, eine Befreiung, eine ungeheure Hoffnung.« Betrachtungen eines Unpolitische, 1918
»Deutschland ist Kultur, Seele, Freiheit, Kunst und nicht Zivilisation, Gesellschaft, Stimmrecht, Literatur.« • »Demokratie ist Diskussion, Deutschland aber ist Schicksal.« • »Kultur ist im Grunde ein aristokratischer Begriff, und Demokratie ist ein politischer Begriff.« Betrachtungen eines Unpolitische, 1918
Recommended book: Thomas Hüetlin, Berlin, 24. Juni 1922: Der Rathenaumord und der Beginn des rechten Terrors in Deutschland (The Birth of German Right-Wing Terror), 2023
»Die Republik... wie gefällt euch das Wort in meinem Munde? Übel, - bestimmten Geräuschen nach zu urteilen, die man wohl leider als Scharren zu deuten genötigt ist. Und doch ist mir jenes Wort, anders als den meisten von euch, von jung auf vertraut und geläufig. Meine Heimat war ein republikanischer Bundesstaat des Reiches, wie diejenigen, aus denen es heute durchaus besteht.« Von Deutscher Republik, Berlin, 13. Oktober 1922
»Der Krieg ist Lüge, selbst seine Ergebnisse sind Lügen, er ist, wieviel Ehre der Einzelne in ihn hineinzutragen willens sein möge, selbst heute aller Ehre bloß,…« Von Deutscher Republik, Berlin, 13. Oktober 1922
»Das Pathos europäischer Schicksalsgemeinschaft hatte tragische Lebensmöglichkeit während des Krieges. Die Greuel des Friedens waren ihm tödlicher.« Europäische Schicksalsgemeinschaft 25 December 1923
»Es handelt sich um die Lebensbedingungen unserer Kinder. Daß wir Fünfzigjährigen das Europa noch sehen werden, in dem unsere Kinder wohnen sollen, wohnen wollen, ist kaum wahrscheinlich. Aber wir können […] wirken helfen, daß es werde.« Europa als Kulturgemeinschaft, 18.5.1930
»Der Ausgang der Reichstagswahlen, meine geehrten Zuhörer, kann nicht rein wirtschaftlich erklärt werden. Wenn es nach dem bisher Gesagten den Anschein hatte, als wäre das meine Meinung, so bedarf das Gesagte der Korrektur. Auch vor dem Auslande wäre es weder klug noch entspräche es den inneren Tatsachen, wenn man die Dinge so einseitig darstellte. Das deutsche Volk ist seiner natürlichen Anlage nach nicht radikalistisch, und wäre das Maß von Radikalisierung, das nun wenigstens für den Augenblick zutage getreten ist, nur eine Folge wirtschaftlicher Depression, so wäre damit allenfalls ein Anwachsen des Kommunismus, aber nicht der Massenzulauf zu einer Partei erklärt, die auf die militanteste und schreiend wirksamste Weise die nationale Idee…« Deutsche Ansprache. Ein Appell an die Vernunft, Berlin, 17. Oktober 1930
»[…] die Empfindung einer Zeitwende, welche das Ende der von der Französischen Revolution datierenden bürgerlichen Epoche und ihrer Ideenwelt ankündigte. Eine neue Seelenlage der Menschheit, die mit der bürgerlichen und ihren Prinzipien: Freiheit, Gerechtigkeit, Bildung, Optimismus, Fortschrittsglaube, nichts mehr zu schaffen haben sollte, wurde proklamiert und drückte sich künstlerisch im expressionistischen Seelenschrei, philosophisch als Abkehr vom Vernunftglauben, von der zugleich mechanistischen und ideologischen Weltanschauung abgelaufener Jahrzehnte aus, als ein irrationalistischer, den Lebensbegriff in den Mittelpunkt des Denkens stellender Rückschlag, der die allein lebenspendenden Kräfte des Unbewußten, Dynamischen, Dunkel-schöpferischen auf den Schild hob, den Geist, unter dem man schlechthin das Intellektuelle verstand, als lebensmörderisch verpönte und gegen ihn das Seelendunkel,[…]« Deutsche Ansprache. Ein Appell an die Vernunft, Berlin, 17. Oktober 1930
»Alles scheint möglich, scheint erlaubt gegen den Menschenanstand, und geht auch die Lehre dahin, daß die Idee der Freiheit zum bourgeoisen Gerümpel geworden sei, als ob eine Idee, die mit allem europäischen Pathos so innig verbunden ist, aus der Europa sich geradezu konstituiert und der es so große Opfer gebracht hat, je wirklich verlorengehen könnte, so erscheint die lehrweise abgeschaffte Freiheit nun wieder in zeitgemäßer Gestalt als Verwilderung, Verhöhnung einer als ausgedient verschrienen humanitären Autorität, als Losbändigkeit der Instinkte, Emanzipation der Roheit, Diktatur der Gewalt.« Deutsche Ansprache. Ein Appell an die Vernunft, Berlin, 17. Oktober 1930
»Ist das deutsch? Ist der Fanatismus, die gliederwerfende Unbesonnenheit, die orgiastische Verleugnung von Vernunft, Menschenwürde, geistiger Haltung in irgendeiner tieferen Seelenschicht des Deutschtums wirklich zu Hause? Dürfen die Verkünder des radikalen Nationalismus sich wirklich... […] Deutschland ist heute das unglücklichste Land Europas. Es ist zerrissen von Hass, vergiftet von Demagogie." […] Das wahre Deutschland, das Deutschland Goethes und Beethovens, muss sich gegen diese Barbarei zur Wehr setzen. […] Ich rufe die deutsche Vernunft auf, sich zu besinnen und dem Wahnsinn Einhalt zu gebieten, der über unser Land gekommen ist.« Deutsche Ansprache. Ein Appell an die Vernunft, Berlin, 17. Oktober 1930
»Europa, hüte dich! Die Barbarei ist im Anzug, eine Barbarei, die sich als Heroismus verkleidet.« • »Was heute geschieht, ist nichts Geringeres als ein Angriff auf die europäische Zivilisation, auf alles, was Europa groß und ehrwürdig gemacht hat.« • »Deutschland ist nicht mehr Deutschland. Es ist zu einem Werkzeug barbarischer Kräfte geworden, die Europa bedrohen.« • »Die Geistigen Europas müssen zusammenstehen gegen die Mächte der Finsternis, die sich über unseren Kontinent legen wollen.« • »Europa muss sich besinnen auf seine gemeinsamen Werte: Humanität, Vernunft, Toleranz - alles, was der Faschismus zu zerstören trachtet.« • »Noch ist es Zeit. Noch kann Europa sich retten, wenn es den Mut findet, der Wahrheit ins Gesicht zu sehen.« Achtung, Europa!, 1935
Briefwechsel mit der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität Bonn (1936/1937), kuenste-im-exil.de
»Deutsche Hörer, es ist die Stimme eines Freundes, eine deutsche Stimme, die Stimme eines Deutschland, der fand, dass der Welt ein anderes Gesicht zeigte und wieder zeigen wird als die scheußliche Medusenmaske, die der Hitlerismus ihm aufgeträgt hat.« BBC, deutschsprachiger Dienst, März 1941
»Das Unaussprechliche, das in Russland, das mit den Polen und Juden geschehen ist und geschieht, wisst ihr. Wollt es aber lieber nicht wissen, aus berechtigtem Grauen vor dem ebenfalls Unaussprechlichen, dem ins Riesenhafte heranwachsenden Hass, der eines Tages, wenn eure Volks und Maschinenkraft erlahmt, über euren Köpfen zusammenschlagen muss. Ja, Grauen vor diesem Tag ist am Platz. Und eurer Führer nutzen es aus. Sie, die euch zu all diesen Schandtaten verführt haben, sagen euch, nun habt ihr sie begangen. Nun seid ihr unauflöslich an uns gekettet. Nun müsst ihr durchhalten bis auf Letzte, sonst kommt die Hölle über euch. Die Hölle Deutsche kam über euch, als dieser Führer über euch kamen. Zur Hölle mit ihnen und all ihren Spießgesellen. Dann kann euch immer noch Rettung, kann euch Freiheit und Friede werden.« BBC, deutschsprachiger Dienst, November 1941
»Hat Deutschland geglaubt, es werde für die Untaten, die sein Vorsprung in der Barbarei ihm gestattete, niemals zu zahlen haben? Es hat kaum zu zahlen begonnen. Über den Kanal und in Russland. Noch was die Royal Air Force in Köln, Düsseldorf, Dissen, Hamburg und anderen Städten bis heute zu Wege gebracht hat, ist nur ein Anfang. Hitler prahlt, sein Reich sei bereit zu einem 10-jahr-20-jährigen Kriege. Ich nehme an, dass ihr Deutsche euch euer Teil dabei denkt. Zum Beispiel, dass in Deutschland nach einem Bruchteil dieser Zeit kein Stein mehr auf dem anderen wäre. Beim jüngsten britischen Raid über Hitlerland hat das alte Lübeck zu leiden gehabt. Das geht mich an. Es ist meine Vaterstadt. Die Angriffe galten dem Hafen von Travemünde, den kriegsindustriellen Anlagen dort. Aber es hat Brände gegeben in der Stadt. Und lieb ist es mir nicht zu denken, dass die Marienkirche, das herrliche Renaissance-Rathaus oder das Haus der Schiffergesellschaft sollten Schaden gelitten haben. Aber ich denke an Coventry und habe nichts einzuwenden gegen die Lehre, dass alles bezahlt werden muss.« BBC, deutschsprachiger Dienst, April 1942.
»Deutsche Hörer, Deutsche Hörer. Wie bitter ist es, wenn der Jubel der Welt der Niederlage der tiefsten Demütigung des eigenen Landes gilt? Wie zeigt sich darin noch einmal schrecklich der Abgrund, der sich zwischen Deutschland und der gesitteten Welt aufgetan hatte. Die Sieges, die Friedensglocken dröhnen, die Gläser klingen, Umarmungen und Glückwünsche ringsum. Der Deutsche aber, dem von den allerunberufensten einst sein Deutschtum abgesprochen wurde, der sein grauenvoll gewordenes Land Meiden und sich unter freundlicheren Zonen ein neues Leben bauen mußte, er senkt das Haupt in der weltweiten Freude. Das Herz krampft sich ihm zusammen bei dem Gedanken, was sie für Deutschland bedeutet, durch welche dunklen Tage, welche Jahre der Unnmacht zur Selbstbestimmung und abbüßender Erniedrigung es nach allem, was es schon gelitten hat, wird gehen müssen. Und dennoch, die Stunde ist groß, die Stunde, wo der Drache zur Strecke gebracht ist, das Wüste und krankhafte Ungeheuer, Nationalsozialismus genannt, verröchelt und Deutschland wenigstens von dem Fluch befreit ist, das Land Hitlers zu heißen. Wenn es sich selbst hätte befreien können, früher, als noch Zeit dazu war oder selbst spät, noch im letzten Augenblick, wenn es selbst mit Glocken klang und Behof Musik seine Befreiung, seine Rückkehr zur Menschheit hätte feiern können, anstatt das nun ans Ende des Hitlertums zugleich der völlige Sammenbruch Deutschlands ist, das wäre besser, wäre das allerwünschenswerteste gewesen. Das konnte wohl nicht sein. Die Befreiung musste von außen kommen. […] Ich sage, es ist trotz allem eine große Stunde. Die Rückkehr Deutschlands zur Menschlichkeit. Sie ist hart und traurig, weil Deutschland sie nicht aus eigener Kraft herbeiführen konnte. Furchtbarer, schwer zu tilgender Schaden ist dem deutschen Namen zugefügt worden und die Macht ist verspielt. Aber Macht ist nicht alles. Sie ist nicht einmal die Hauptsache. Und nie war deutsche Würde eine bloße Sache der Macht. Deutsch war es einmal und mag es wieder werden. der macht Achtung Bewunderung abzugewinnen durch den menschlichen Beitrag, den freien Geist.« BBC, deutschsprachiger Dienst, 10 Mai 1945.