Volume 43, Number 4 · February 29, 1996
The Mann Nobody Knew
By Gordon A. Craig
Thomas Mann: Eine Biographie
by Klaus Harpprecht
Reinbeck: Rowohlt Verlag, 2253 pp., DM 98
Thomas Mann: A Biography
by Ronald Hayman
Scribner, 672 pp., $35.00
Thomas Mann: A Life
by Donald Prater
Oxford University Press, 554 pp., $35.00
Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature
by Anthony Heilbut
Knopf, 618 pp., $40.00
Tagebücher 1954–1955
by Thomas Mann, edited by Inge Jens
Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag, 977 pp., DM 128
In 1945, Klaus Harpprecht, then eighteen years old, was in an American prisoner-of-war camp, having spent the previous two years as a flak volunteer and artillery soldier and having been wounded during the German retreat. In the camp there were only four books, which belonged to a former schoolteacher: a Latin grammar, a Bible in the Luther translation, a collection of lyric poetry, and a copy of Thomas Mann's The Buddenbrooks. Those who wanted to read these put their names on lists and were allowed twenty minutes per book per day. That was enough to carry them far away from their pent-up confinement with more than ten thousand other prisoners. The Latin grammar served as a kind of gymnastics for the mind; the other books as an assurance that whatever became of their country, the German language—the language of Martin Luther, of Gryphius, Goethe, and Mörike, and of The Buddenbrooks—would survive. About the author of the novel, Harpprecht knew only that he was now living in California, but by the time he was released, two months later, he was convinced that this man had written the century's most beautiful work of German narrative prose.
Review, 6620 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |