Heinrich Mann
1871–1950
Biography
Heinrich Mann (1871–1950) was a German novelist and essayist, and the elder brother of the novelist Thomas Mann. He was born in Lübeck, a Hanseatic merchant city, into a family of grain merchants, and he began as a satirist of the German middle classes. His early novels and essays turned a sharp eye on the vanity and pretensions of the bourgeoisie. By the years before the First World War he had become one of the most outspoken critics of imperial Germany.
The two books of his on this site are Professor Unrat (1905) and Der Untertan (1918). Professor Unrat tells of a schoolmaster whose life falls apart after he becomes infatuated with a cabaret singer. It was filmed in 1930 as The Blue Angel, with Marlene Dietrich, and the film gave his story a wide audience. Der Untertan follows a paper manufacturer's son who rises in the world by fawning on his superiors, a portrait of obedience in Wilhelmine Germany.
The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 forced him into exile. He lived in France before reaching the United States in 1940, and he died in California in 1950. Both books on this site show the concern that runs through his work: a satire of the habits of deference that he believed had prepared the ground for authoritarian rule.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
Der Untertan
by Heinrich Mann
Der Untertan is one of the best known novels of German author Heinrich Mann. The title character, Diederich Hessling, a dedicated 'Untertan' in the sense of a person subservient to a monarch or prince, is an immoral man who is meant to serve as an allegory of both the reign of…
Summary from Wikipedia: Der Untertan (CC BY-SA 4.0)Professor Unrat, oder, Das Ende eines Tyrannen
by Heinrich Mann
Raat, a tyrannical schoolmaster in a north German town whom his pupils call Unrat, tries to catch his students at a disreputable harbour cabaret. Instead he falls for the singer Rosa Fröhlich, and his fall turns into a strange revenge on the town that mocked him. The novel…
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.