Thomas Mann (1875-1955) was born in the North German city of Lubeck. His father was a wealthy businessman and municipal leader. His mother was half-Portuguese; the daughter of a German trader, she had spent her childhood in Brazil. When Mann’s father died in 1891, the family moved south to Munich. Showing little interest in business, both Thomas and his older brother Heinrich decided to pursue writing careers. Heinrich Mann gained global renown for his novel Professor Unrat (1905), made world-famous by the film version The Blue Angel, with actress Marlene Dietrich in her first starring role. At 25 Thomas Mann garnered substantial praise, and enjoyed high sales, for his first novel Buddenbrooks (1900), a story about three generations of a merchant family. He went on to write a series of popular and critically respected novels and novellas, including Tonio Kroger (1903), Death in Venice (1912), The Magic Mountain (1924), and Joseph and His Brothers (1933). In the midst of the series, in 1929, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Mann meanwhile became disaffected from Germany. Although a patriot and a passionate believer in German culture, he grew more liberal in his politics after World War I.
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