During his second visit there, in 1935, Harvard University awarded him an honorary doctorate, President Roosevelt received him in the White House, and, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, he was celebrated as "the most eminent living man of letters." In 1938, the year he left Europe for exile in the United States, he had seventeen years of great productivity ahead of him.
Mann was one of the few German-speaking intellectuals who received a warm welcome in the United States; within a short time he was fully integrated into American society. 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 in both his literary works and his political views. Consequently, as a political exile and later as an American citizen, he accepted the responsibilities of the artist to take public stances. As an articulate and passionate opponent of fascism and an outspoken partisan of Roosevelt's policies at home and abroad, Mann exercised a considerable influence on the country he had chosen as his residence, and in many respects Americans could consider him their own.
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