Who Was Thomas Mann?

Thomas Mann was a German writer, journalist, and literary critic. He was born on 6/6/1875, in the Free City of Lübeck in the German Empire and died on 8/12/1955 in Zürich, Switzerland at the age of 80. That little opening actually tells you something about him before we even get to his life and literary works. He was 25 years old at the turn of the 20th century and he lived through 2 World Wars. You can also learn quite a bit about Thomas Mann from Jeopardy clues. Let’s take a look:

ABOUT THE LIFE OF THOMAS MANN:
• THE LIVES OF AUTHORS: This “Magic Mountain” author left Germany for the same L.A. street where O.J. Simpson later lived
• 1933: In Berlin, in May, this was done to works of Freud, Einstein and Thomas Mann, among others
• AUTHORS : W.H. Auden married Erika Mann, this novelist’s daughter, so she could leave Nazi Germany
• WORLD LITERATURE: Heinrich Mann, this novelist’s brother, wrote the novel on which the film “The Blue Angel” was based

ABOUT “BUDDENBROOKS”
• THE AGE OF MANN: Lubeck, Germany’s Buddenbrookhaus is named after this German author’s “Buddenbrooks”
• THE NP FOR L: In 1929: T.M., “principally for his great novel ‘Buddenbrooks'”
• THEIR FIRST NOVELS: “Buddenbrooks” (1901)
• FICTIONAL CHARACTERS: Johann & Gotthold are 2 of the Buddenbrooks, the title family in a novel by this German author
• LITERATURE: “Buddenbrooks” was the first important novel by this 20th century German author

ABOUT “MAGIC MOUNTAIN”
• MOUNTAINS OF LITERATURE: “Der Zauberberg” in German, this Thomas Mann novel tells the story of a man who stays in a TB clinic for 7 years
• LITERATURE: Thomas Mann’s “Magic Mountain” is set in a Swiss sanatorium for this disease
• LITERATURE ON THE MAP: This author based the novel “The Magic Mountain” on a trip to Davos, Switzerland to treat his wife’s bronchitis
• LITERARY MOUNTAIN CLIMBING: Hans Castorp goes to a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps in this Thomas Mann novel
• SAY THE “MAGIC” WORDS: Thomas Mann wrote this novel while living in Munich

ABOUT “DEATH IN VENICE”
• LITERARY TOWNS & CITIES: A writer becomes infatuated with a boy & his family in 1912’s “Death in Venice” by this author
• SHORT STORIES & NOVELLAS: This “morbid” Thomas Mann novella has the German title “Der Tod in Venedig”
• A CLASSIC SETTING: Gustav von Aschenbach leaves Munich for Italy in this Thomas Mann novella whose title is a spoiler
• IN THE “D” TALES: This Thomas Mann novella mentions the “airy splendor of the…Bridge of Sighs, the columns of lion and saint on the shore”
• DEATH IN VENICE: It’s the main character Gustave von Aschenbach who succumbs in this author’s “Death in Venice”
• LAST LINES: Thomas Mann work that ends, “A shocked and respectful world received the news of his decease”
• OPERA: A Thomas Mann novella was the source for Benjamin Britten’s last opera, “Death in” this city

ABOUT “DOCTOR FAUSTUS”
• LITERARY DOCTORS: This German author’s novel “Doctor Faustus” reimagines the doc as a 20th century composer
• THAT DOCTOR IS UNREAL!: This doctor is the title of works by both Thomas Mann & Christopher Marlowe
• A THOMAS GUIDE: His 1947 novel “Doctor Faustus” symbolically paralleled the rise of Nazism
• WORLD OF AUTHORS: The main character in his 1947 novel “Doktor Faustus” is a German composer named Adrian Leverkuhn

MISCELLANEOUS THOMAS MANN CLUES
(Note: similar subjects are grouped together, e.g., Lotte in Weimar and Return of the Beloved are the same.)
• WORLD LITERATURE: This “Faust” author is the hero of Thomas Mann’s novel “The Beloved Returns”
• HISTORICAL NOVELS: A brief episode in Goethe’s life inspired this “Death in Venice” author to write “Lotte in Weimar”
• AWARDS: Thomas Mann won the prize named for this German author in 1949, his bicentennial

• WORLD LITERATURE: “Joseph & His Brothers”, a group of novels based on a Bible story, is this German author’s longest work
• THE WRITE BROTHERS: The younger brother of novelist Heinrich Mann, he wrote “Joseph and His Brothers”

• WORLD LITERATURE: “Little Herr Friedemann” was this “Buddenbrooks” author’s 1st collection of short stories
• TIM, TOM, TAMMY: The first collection of this author’s short stories was 1898’s “Der Kleine Herr Friedemann”

• NOVELLAS: Thomas Mann wrote a 1903 novella about an unheroic guy ironically titled this name of Isolde’s lover

• NOBEL LITERARY NOMINEES: This “Magic Mountain” author nominated his friend Hermann Hesse, who joined him in the Nobel club

• NOVELLAS: This German left “Venice” behind with his novella “Mario and the Magician”

For more info on Mann’s personal life, his family, his Czech and U.S. citizenship and more, see The Stages in Author Thomas Mann’s Life

Source: These and other clues about Thomas Mann can be found on J-Archive. (Please note that the list includes a few clues where Mann was given as a wrong response.)