'Ewig verbundene Geister': Thomas Mann's Re-engagement with Nietzsche, 1943–1947

Abstract

During the mid-1940s, Thomas Mann made determined and sustained efforts to explicate and account for Germany's catastrophic wager with the dark forces of National Socialism. In Mann's fictional writing of the period 1943–1947 and in his more discursive texts, Friedrich Nietzsche emerges as a key figure in these attempts to contextualize Germany's Faustian bargain. After a consideration of Nietzsche's presence (and absence) in the novel Doktor Faustus, the article examines in detail the case Mann presents in his essay Nietzsche's Philosophie im Lichte unserer Erfahrung (1947). It is argued that, in this essay, Mann revisits and to a large extent re-affirms his earlier engagements with Nietzsche. The essay's apparent aim is to situate Nietzsche within recent German experience, yet beneath the objective reckoning with Germany's fate Mann undertakes a self-examination which tackles the question of Nietzsche's intellectual and emotional magnetism. Within this framework Mann discusses, often in a highly self-critical manner, questions of suffering, intellectual affinity and, most important of all, love. Mann's efforts to distance himself from Nietzsche serve only to underscore the extent of his debt to this enthralling yet deeply problematic figure. In the immediate post-war period, Mann's critical admiration for Nietzsche's character emerges essentially unchanged, alongside an enduring sympathy with his fate.