Events
All five houses of the network regard themselves as spaces of debate about the life and work of Thomas Mann.
What role does Thomas Mann’s lifelong concerns play in today’s world? In what way can the Mann family’s literature and political attitudes provoke us to think about the pressing issues of our times? Migration and exile, gender issues or political engagement and democracy are only a few of the topics that are of great relevance to the present day. Our houses regularly organize a series of digital and analog events on these topics and beyond. Visit our calendar of events and exchange ideas with us within an international context.
Reading and conversation in the garden of the Thomas Mann House
The Magician": Reading by Colm Tóibín and talk with Friedhelm Marx
Los Angeles
In his new novel, "The Magician," award-winning Irish author Colm Tóibín tells the life of Thomas Mann as a novel. From his childhood in Lübeck to his marriage in Munich, from his opposition to the Nazis to his American exile.
Just as Tóibín described the life of Henry James in "The Master," his new book chronicles the life of the Nobel Prize winner, the brilliant, complex artist whose life unfolds at a time when change and war are shaking Europe. The novel contains fascinating sections about interwar Germany: the inflation, the growing discontent, the chaos, but also the artistic and sexual freedom that Mann's children Erika and Klaus experienced and lived out. We see Thomas and Katia Mann struggling to find their way in a new and strange home, first in Princeton and later in Los Angeles.
"The work of a first-rate novelist artful, moving and very beautiful," The New York Times Book Review wrote of the work. The author will be in conversation with literary scholar and Thomas Mann expert Friedhelm Marx.