His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual.
His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized versions of German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Friedrich Nietzsche , and Arthur Schopenhauer.
Mann was a member of the hanseatic Mann family and portrayed his family and class in his first novel, Buddenbrooks. When Adolf Hitler came to power in , Mann fled to Switzerland. Mann is one of the best-known exponents of the so-called Exilliteratur , German literature written in exile by those who opposed the Hitler regime. His mother was Roman Catholic but Mann was baptised into his father's Lutheran religion. Mann's father died in , and after that his trading firm was liquidated.
The family subsequently moved to Munich. Mann lived in Munich from until , [ clarification needed ] with the exception of a year spent in Palestrina , Italy, with his elder brother, the novelist Heinrich. His career as a writer began when he wrote for the magazine Simplicissimus.
In , Mann married Katia Pringsheim , who came from a wealthy, secular Jewish industrialist family. She later joined the Lutheran church. The couple had six children: Erika b. In , Katia was treated for tuberculosis for a few months in a sanatorium in Davos , Switzerland, where Thomas Mann visited her for a few weeks, which inspired him to write his novel The Magic Mountain , published in He was also appalled by the risk of international confrontation between Germany and France, following the Agadir Crisis in Morocco, and later by the outbreak of the First World War.
