Paul Thomas Mann was a German novelist, social critic, philanthropist and essayist, lauded principally for a series of highly symbolic and often ironic epic novels and mid-length stories, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and intellectual and an underlying eroticism informed by Mann's own struggles with his sexuality. He is noted for his analysis and critique of the European and German soul in beginning of the 20th century using modernized German and Biblical myths as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer.

He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929, in large part for his achievement in the epic Buddenbrooks (1901), about the decline of a bourgeois family over several generations. Other major works include The Magic Mountain (originally Der Zauberberg, 1924), set in a highly symbolic sanatorium that portrays the conflicts at the heart of European civilization at the time, Lotte in Weimar (1939) in which he returned to the world of Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), Doktor Faustus (1947), the story of composer Adrian Leverkühn and the progressive destruction of German culture in the two World Wars, and The Confessions of Felix Krull (originally Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull, 1954) which was left unfinished upon his death.
One of his greatest works was the tetralogy Joseph and His Brothers (Joseph und seine Brüder) 1933–42, set in the biblical world. The story about the conflict between personal freedom and political tyranny was based on Genesis 12-50.... More • http://en.wikipedia. ... homas_Mann View • Books • Images • Videos • Search Related • Gemini • Germany • June 06 • Literature • Writers • People