On his book Thomas Mann's War: Literature, Politics, and the World Republic of Letters
Cover Interview of November 20, 2019
A close-up
Most readers browsing through the book in a bookstore will
probably end up lingering over the fourth chapter, which has not only a catchy
title (“Hitler’s Most Intimate Enemy”), but also a large number of arresting
visuals. Among these is my favorite picture in the book. It shows a pro-Nazi
color guard of the German American Bund assembled in front of a giant portrait
of George Washington in Madison Square Garden. Nowadays, we are so used to
triumphalist narratives about the “greatest generation” that we forget how,
prior to Pearl Harbor, there were powerful anti-interventionist and even
pro-Nazi forces in America.
The chapter analyzes Mann’s activities on the American home
front during the early years of World War II: his lecture tours, his addresses
to Washington insiders at the Library of Congress, his anti-Nazi essays, and
his participation in various conferences and committees. Mann tirelessly urged
ordinary Americans to defend liberal democracy against authoritarian
encroachment, and he clearly struck a nerve. Journalists report that New
Yorkers would cheer when they saw his face on a newsreel at the local movie
theater.
Redpath Chautauqua Collection, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa.
Honestly, though, the chapter that I’m most proud of is
probably the fifth, which deals with the fate of Mann’s books on the European
continent during the years in which the Nazis were assembling their empire. I’m
very interested in what my colleague Venkat Mani has called “bibliomigrancy”—that
is, the question how the physical journey of books contributes to their
reception and to their place in the literary canon.
When we think about books and the Nazis, the first thing
that comes to mind are the bonfires upon which they burned the works of authors
they deemed undesirable. But it’s not as if all of Mann’s books simply went up
into smoke during the years from 1933 to 1945. In fact, Mann’s German publisher
Gottfried Bermann Fischer played a game of cat and mouse with the Nazis. He
moved his operations first to Austria, then to neutral Sweden, and finally, in
part, to the United States. From there, he oversaw ever-changing distribution chains
that put Mann’s newest works into the hands of readers not only in neutral
countries, but also in fascist states such as Romania. The movement of books became
directly tied to the movement of armies. For instance, Sweden was allowed to export
literature across Nazi soil in sealed freight cars because in return it allowed
the Germans to transport military materiel into occupied Norway.
As a result of these journeys, the books themselves were
changed, and so was the image they conveyed of their author. One of my most
cherished possessions is a copy of the so-called “Stockholm Edition” of The
Magic Mountain, which my grandfather purchased after the war. It begins
with an explanatory preface that Mann had composed at Princeton, and in which
he praises the acuity of a Jewish-American critic. What might his European
readers have thought of this essay as they hunkered down to read Mann’s work amidst
the wailing of air-raid sirens?
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
A close-up
Most readers browsing through the book in a bookstore will probably end up lingering over the fourth chapter, which has not only a catchy title (“Hitler’s Most Intimate Enemy”), but also a large number of arresting visuals. Among these is my favorite picture in the book. It shows a pro-Nazi color guard of the German American Bund assembled in front of a giant portrait of George Washington in Madison Square Garden. Nowadays, we are so used to triumphalist narratives about the “greatest generation” that we forget how, prior to Pearl Harbor, there were powerful anti-interventionist and even pro-Nazi forces in America.
The chapter analyzes Mann’s activities on the American home front during the early years of World War II: his lecture tours, his addresses to Washington insiders at the Library of Congress, his anti-Nazi essays, and his participation in various conferences and committees. Mann tirelessly urged ordinary Americans to defend liberal democracy against authoritarian encroachment, and he clearly struck a nerve. Journalists report that New Yorkers would cheer when they saw his face on a newsreel at the local movie theater.
Honestly, though, the chapter that I’m most proud of is probably the fifth, which deals with the fate of Mann’s books on the European continent during the years in which the Nazis were assembling their empire. I’m very interested in what my colleague Venkat Mani has called “bibliomigrancy”—that is, the question how the physical journey of books contributes to their reception and to their place in the literary canon.
When we think about books and the Nazis, the first thing that comes to mind are the bonfires upon which they burned the works of authors they deemed undesirable. But it’s not as if all of Mann’s books simply went up into smoke during the years from 1933 to 1945. In fact, Mann’s German publisher Gottfried Bermann Fischer played a game of cat and mouse with the Nazis. He moved his operations first to Austria, then to neutral Sweden, and finally, in part, to the United States. From there, he oversaw ever-changing distribution chains that put Mann’s newest works into the hands of readers not only in neutral countries, but also in fascist states such as Romania. The movement of books became directly tied to the movement of armies. For instance, Sweden was allowed to export literature across Nazi soil in sealed freight cars because in return it allowed the Germans to transport military materiel into occupied Norway.
As a result of these journeys, the books themselves were changed, and so was the image they conveyed of their author. One of my most cherished possessions is a copy of the so-called “Stockholm Edition” of The Magic Mountain, which my grandfather purchased after the war. It begins with an explanatory preface that Mann had composed at Princeton, and in which he praises the acuity of a Jewish-American critic. What might his European readers have thought of this essay as they hunkered down to read Mann’s work amidst the wailing of air-raid sirens?