His decision to settle in the United States was influenced by an invitation to become an honorary faculty member at Princeton University. He traveled all over the continent, delivering widely publicized speeches. One of the most prestigious American publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, had already hired Helen T. Lowe-Porter to translate Mann's works into English, enabling him to address himself to a large circle of people who were interested both in his literary works and in his political views. As an articulate and passionate opponent of fascism and as an outspoken partisan of Roosevelt's policies at home and abroad, he exercised a considerable influence on the country he had chosen as his residence.
The reasons he gave the students at Princeton for the success of his novels in Germany also explain the enormous interest he elicited in the United States. Characterizing his novel Der Zauberberg (1924; translated as The Magic Mountain, 1927), which had been placed next to the works of Cervantes and Voltaire in a course on world literature, Mann explained that "the subject matter of The Magic Mountain was not by its nature suitable for the masses. But with the bulk of the educated classes these were burning questions, and the national crisis had produced in the general public precisely that alchemical keying up in which had consisted the actual adventure of young Hans Castorp.
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