Thomas Mann’s political writings between 1914 and 1918

Abstract

The subject of this article is Thomas Mann's political writings from 1914 to 1918 and their place on the map of his work. The author argues that texts such as Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man, considered by many scholars to be an exception among Mann's writings caused by an outburst of national feeling on the threshold of the First World War — as they gravitate towards German nationalism and revolutionary conservatism — are in fact an integral part of his oeuvre, as they complete the themes that the German writer had addressed in novels and novellas written before The Magic Mountain. Foremost among these themes is the situation of the Bürger as a specifically German form of citizenship at the moment of the clash between Kultur and Zivilisation. In Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man, Mann praises its twentieth-century, post-industrial incarnation, which Fritz Ringer calls the Mandarin. At the same time, Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man serves as a space for the German writer to introduce irony as his leading artistic technique, preparing Mann to take no side in Settembrini's dispute with Naphta in a novel about a Swiss sanatorium.