Paul Thomas Mann

Born in Lübeck in 1875, Thomas Mann emerged as one of the twentieth century's defining literary figures. His debut novel, Buddenbrooks (1901), earned him the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature, while his wife Katia’s illness inspired his masterpiece, The Magic Mountain (1924). Mann’s sharp critique of bourgeois society eventually turned into fierce opposition to Nazism. Consequently stripped of German citizenship and forced into exile, he fled to the United States before settling in Switzerland. Blending psychological depth with social commentary, Mann’s works remained a monument to literary genius and moral conviction until his death in 1955.