His children called him a “magician”, the readers of the “juggler of the language”. With novels, such as “The Budenbrook”, “Magic Mountain”, “Death in Venice” or “Doctor Faustus”, Thomas Mann went to world literature and became the most important German -speaking writer of the 20th century, in Greek known by the Greek Paraskevopoulos and Vassilis Tsalis, of Yiannis Kalli and formerly Toula Siet. In 1929 he was honored with Nobel Prize in Literature, almost four years later he was forced to abandon Nazi Germany. From American exile, he was addressed through the short waves to listeners in Germany, upset his stature against Adolf Hitler.

This year it is 150 years since the birth of “ruler of urban literature”, as the famous literary critic Marcel Reich-Raich-Raichi, and in Germany, many events are being prepared, not only in Lyvel’s birthplace but also in his life stations. , in Munich, Zurich and Los Angeles, but also in Nida, Lithuania on the Baltic coast, where he had built his summer villa. Fisher Publications are released this year in pocket editions of Thomas Mann’s most important works with a new confrontation, while his work and work are dedicated to many new books and studies.

Gazing at the lagoon

Born on June 6, 1875, Thomas Mann was the son of a senior official in the municipality of Lyveki, the former capital of the powerful Hansesa Union. The father died early, the family moved to Munich in 1891, but Thomas Mann remained loyal to the city he was born, as we see from her scattered traces in his work. So on June 6th, Lyweki will take place for Man, while the old Budenbrook house, a institution today, where the author’s grandparents lived and playing a central role in his homonymous family epic, inaugurates a neighboring museum due to repairs due to repairs. The exhibition: “My time. Thomas Mann and the Republic. “

A few weeks later and 700 kilometers away, there is a launch of Thomas Mann International Festival at its renovated cottage in Nida, Lithuania. There, in a narrow strip of land entering the lagoon, in an area full of sand dunes called “Sahara of the North”, Thomas Mann had built with his Nobel prize his summer wooden villa and from the first floor, where he was where he was His office was gazing at the lagoon. Only for three summers. After the rise of the National Socialists to power in 1933 the roads were closed.

Until then, Thomas Manch’s main residence was in Munich, where he lived almost forty years. There he met Katia’s wife and there was six children born. Events will also take place in Munich, including the presentation in mid -May of the book “Dear Miss Hers.” This is Man’s unpublished correspondence with the librarian Inda Herts who had also organized his own library. The villa where the Man family lived and forced to leave in 1933 was destroyed in the war.

The white house of exile

What has been maintained to this day and hosts every year fellows is the “White House of Exile”, as one of Man’s grandchildren, a white villa between the Phoenicians on the outskirts of Los Angeles, described it in his book, where Thomas Mann lived As a fugitive from Germany for a decade, nine time zones away from Lyveli and Munich. In the early years of exile, Thomas Mann passed them out of Zurich. In 1938 he moved to the US, where he taught as a visiting professor at Princeton University. He later settled on the west coast and in 1942 in the white villa in Pacific Palisades.

This era in California is inextricably linked to Thomas Man’s radio broadcasts entitled “German Hearing!” He recorded there and then the BBC emitted by Toldopros Nazi Germany. These broadcasts are published in late January in a book by Fisher. In these radio interventions, Thomas Mann left no doubt about the responsibilities of Germany and the German people for the crimes of the Nazi regime. But not everyone in this honest German voice from abroad, many did not forgive him, Thomas Mann created enemies. So, when he returned to Europe in 1952, he preferred to settle in Switzerland, where he died in 1955 in a Zurich hospital.

In closing, we mention only two of this year’s relevant editions. An anthology entitled “With Thomas Man in the Sea”, a choice of the writer’s most beautiful texts by the well -known actor Ulrich Toukour. But also the booklet “Diary with Thomas Mann”, in which the philologist Felix Lindner chooses a proposal from the diaries, the personal texts of the great Thomas Man.

Edited by: Spyros Moskov